Project Hail Mary, Artemis II and My Introduction to Hopecore

I have been bordering on pushy, telling my friends and acquaintances to go see the movie Project Hail Mary. 

We watched it as a family the first Tuesday after release, and all four of us adored it. Any one of us would have happily turned around and walked right back in for a secodn showing, had that been an option. Fenya thought there was a chance of it ending up as her favourite science-fiction movie ever. For myself, I haven't been this evangelical about a movie in terms of bugging folks to see it in a theatre since Inception. I asked a friend who hadn't seen it if he wanted to go so I would have an excuse to watch it in IMAX.

And there are a lot of different reasons for this:

• a solid story, driven by science but wrapped in humanity
• a remarkable performance by Ryan Gosling (who also produced it), and almost half his screen time has no other humans to interact with
• a commitment to practical effects wherever possible, including puppetry and physical models of spaceships
• perhaps the best alien character since Mr. Spock, but far, far more alien

But that isn't the reason I am pushing folks so hard to not wait for this to stream, to see it in a darkened room with strangers.

The premise of the story revolves around the need to send a middle school science teacher 12 light years away in a last-ditch hope to save Earth's rapidly dimming star. Drew Goddard's screenplay (based on Andy Weir's (The Martian) novel) does not soft-peddle the horror of this, having the topic introduced in a classroom, resulting in 8th graders very quickly connecting the dots between a cooling planet, a global food crisis, and probable breakdown of society, and (understandably) getting quite upset.

But even with that grimness, underscored by the frank admission by the project's director (Sandra Huller) that the 30 year timeline they are working with assumes the world's governments working together to ration food (which they won't), hope permeates almost every scene. Sometimes desperately, sometimes whimsically, but very nearly omnipresently.

And that hope is closer to the reason for my zeal, but not the core of it.

Seeing a film that dramatizes so clearly and spectacularly the need for curiosity, openmindedness and friendship in desperate times, while we as a society and a species face a wholly different but still entirely fraught circumstance, was something I think I needed in my soul.

And experiencing it with a room full of people I don't know, and hearing sounds in the dark that made me realize they felt something similar as well? 

That was transcendent. 

I don't want to say much more about the movie itself because there are so many tiny discoveries to be made and I want you to have all of them, even if you do wait to see it at home (but please go if you can). And I really don't want to oversell it because a co-worker went to see it and disliked it so much she left before it finished, but I have to tellyou, that feeling it gave me felt awfully, awfully good, and I want more people to experience it. And I am sorry it didn't play out that way for my colleague, but hey, there is no accounting for taste, right?.

And looking on Threads (Meta/ Facebook's version of Twitter), it looks like a lot of folks share my sentiment about the flick, one of which introduced me to the term 'hopecore', which, please God, let this become a thing.

Hopecore, eh? You know, I am not entirely sure what that is....but I am pretty sure I want more of it.

Now, I fully realize that what I find touching you might find treacly or overly sentimental or whatever, so bear that in mind, but if these testimonials leave even the slightest bit curious, get our there before it leaves theatres. I've seen it twice already and will go again if it coerces someone else into seeing it in the wild.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, four genuine hero astronauts travelled further than any other humans ever last week, as the Intrepid spacecraft carried the Artemis II crew on a loop around the moon.

My sister and her husband (who is probably an even bigger NASA fan than me!) were up last week and we were able watch the launch together. I will admit, my heart was in my throat from liftoff to maybe the two minute mark, because Challenger's fate at 73 seconds into their flight abjectly refused my polite but firm requests to leave my mind, but it was honestly a beautiful thing to see and I am grateful we could all see it together.

But what was most surprising was how much interest was maintained throughout the mission - not just by my fellow space nerds, but the public in general seemed genuinely entranced by this mission. Maybe there was more interest up here in Canada because one of our own, Jeremy Hansen, was on a lunar mission for the very first time. Whatever the reason, hearing people in the grocery checkout line talk about the insertion burn or folks in church discussing the lunar slingshot was tremendously gratifying.

Similar to Project Hail Mary though, while the technology was amazing, the humanity was what a lot of us found most moving. 

First of all, one of the most diverse space crews ever, with a black pilot, female mission specialist, and a Canadian.

The emotion they shared went beyond mere excitement, such as when they shared the enormity of seeing a tiny Earth dwarfed by the Moon's proximity, and a giddy voice from mission control responded with a line from PHM:

Peak eye leakage for me came when they named a crater after the late wife of the mission commander, Reid Wiseman:

(Get effed, toxic masculinity!)

Anyways, the day after safely splashing down off the coast of San Diego, the Artemis II crew had a lot of great stuff to say, like Jeremy Hansen:

“What you saw was a group of people who loved contributing, having meaningful contribution and extracting joy out of that. And what we’ve been hearing is that was something special for you to witness. I would suggest to you that when you look up here, you’re not looking at us. We are a mirror reflecting you, and if you like what you see, then just look a little deeper. This is you.”

And Christina Koch:

“A crew is a group that is in it all the time, no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable. A crew has the same cares and the same needs, and a crew is inescapably beautifully, dutifully linked. I know I haven’t learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me. But there’s one new thing I know, and that is planet Earth: You are a crew.”

The greatest delight for me, though, continues to be the positivity, the optimism, the sense of hope in a time where it feels like we could really use more of it.

I watched Project Hail Mary on an UltrAVX screen and then again in IMAX. Glory and I watched the recovery of the capsule on my iPad while we ate dinner.

Whatever screen I might be viewing, please Lord, let there be more hopecore for me to see.

You-Know-Who Off the Starboard Bow

I am willing to wager that, in 1985, the nerdiest group at Leduc Composite High School was probably our Star Trek game club.

Sure, we would get together over lunch to play the excellent Star Trek role-playing game FASA produced, similar to the D&D club. But one of the best parts of the deluxe boxed set I had splurged on was that it not only came with all the RPG rules, character sheets and a book of scenarios, oh no. It also came with their Starship Tactical Combat system, a good-sized hex map and a set of counters.

This was my favourite space combat system for years; fast, elegant, and fun to play, with a dizzying array of spaceships to choose from in a great collection of sourcebooks. 

Best of all though, in addition to allowing players to command individual or groups of ships, it came with a set of helm displays so that each RPG character could control their own bridge station: the captain would give their orders and general plan, the engineer would allocate power to movement, weapons and shields, and three different crew would then execute the orders as best they could, based on energy allotment, dice rolls and enemy action.

Before beginning our campaign in earnest, we thought it a good idea to try a simulator session to familiarize ourselves with the system, a la Kobayashi Maru. The Constitution class was a bit overgunned for the classic Klingon D7, so as the gamemaster I ran a D10 heavy battlecruiser as OpFor and we set the two vessels up facing each other a good ways apart. 

In space games there is not a lot of terrain to contend with, so most engagements start out looking like a game of chicken. As I recall, the turns were broken into segments, and the more energy you had allocated to movement, the more segments you would move on. Once per turn, you could choose to fire any powered-up weapons in the correct firing arc (such as port, forward, aft, etc.).

I did my best not to listen in on their plans, as that would be both unfair and unrealistic - after all, how would the Klingons overhear enemy bridge chatter which was such a key part of the Trek canon? And besides that, I already had a fairly significant advantage.

What? Gawd, no, not any sort of tactical genius (snort) - ask anyone who's played me. No, my advantage was made crystal clear as Capt. Earl asked his crew for tactical input and they made a variety of cases for him to consider. My Klingons, meanwhile, had perfect communication and execution as their entire bridge complement (and everyone else for that matter) were all controlled by a single player - me.

After taking some ineffectual long range shots at one another, the Federation ship (whose name Earl and I believe was the USS Excalibur) and Riskadh-class battlecruiser closed to knife-fighting range. The Excalibur had reduced movement to intensify their forward firepower and shields, while I...had not.

"Helm, bring us straight in. Weapons, hold fire until point blank range," Capt. Earl ordered as he leaned forward in his desk. Each segment, the two warships moved closer and closer to each other. "Almost there..." he murmured - just before the segment arrived for my double-move and I skipped the D10 directly over the Excalibur and into the hex directly behind it.

Now, at that time, in that system, the Constitution class had absolutely no aft-firing weapons.

The D10 did, though. 

Not big ones, just two small disruptor batteries. However, if one had not allocated any real power to the aft shields because they'd reinforced the front, any disruptors at all are bad news, particularly at point blank range.

The Excalibur was rocked with structural and systems damage, but nowhere near out of the fight - a wounded and cornered animal, more than capable of evening the odds.

Frustrated and disappointed but his composure uncracked, Capt. Earl gave his orders: "Damage control parties to all decks. Arm photon torpedoes! Bring us around and let them have both barrels before they can pull out of range and make another pass."

The Excalibur's damaged state did not give them any spare energy to speak of, so movement would need to be slow in order to allow sufficient power to the weapons and forward shields. As the segments counted down, they finally and painstakingly turned a single hex face, while the D10 had not yet moved. 

A few more segments and then another turn in place...one more turn and the photon torpedoes would have a bead on the Klingon ship! Even if I had reinforced my rear shields, they could not possibly withstand such an onslaught. 

As it happened though, I had not allocated any power to my rear shields at all.

Finally, they used their last remaining movement point to turn the final hex face and point their incredibly dangerous nose towards my Klingon's exposed backside. 

But in that final segment I also got to move, and having remained still for an entire turn and allocated almost no power to shields, was now permitted to move straight backwards two hexes. Which I did! And which brought my own panoply of now-overcharged weapons directly to bear on the familiar and still unshielded aft facing of the Excalibur.

There was a low moan from several of the crew as I collected all the dice I needed and let fly. With no shields to blunt the disruptors' assailment the Excalibur's systems were demolished and the superstructure was irreparably damaged. 

Crestfallen, the crew looked to Captain Earl, who gave the only orders he still could: "All hands - abandon ship. I say again abandon ship. All crew to the escape pods. Comms, launch a signal buoy with our position and distress beacon..."

After a moment, I said, "well, good thing this was a simulation, right? There is no way you will let me get away with that nonsense next time!"

In fact, as I recall it, there was enough time to get a rematch in during that same lunch period, and the Excalibur's now-seasoned crew made a much better showing.

Still, the look on their faces when I moved backwards to attack them from behind a second time still makes me smile four decades later.

In Good Hands - Predator: Badlands (+), Reviewed

What is it about the 1987 Predator movie that has made it so compelling for nearly four decades now? Looking back, it felt more like a one-off than any sort of franchise starter; an action film/creature feature hybrid with slasher movie overtones. But whisper "over here" within earshot of most nerds my age...

The connection to the Alien(s) franchise (simply by being made by the same film studio) came afterwards, almost by chance it seems, and in comic form at first, not films. The Aliens vs Predator comics were bold and imaginative, the movies...less so. Like so many 90s "versus" films, they crutched far too much on the spectacle of  two headliners battling each other instead of any grander context, insight or even irony.

Predator: Badlands breaks tradition and precedent in two important ways: first, the alien Predator (or Yautja, as they call themselves) is the protagonist instead of the villain or anti-hero. 

Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is puny by Yautja standards, and although the trailers make it clear just how deadly the planet he ends up on is (Genna, described on-screen as a "Death Planet), I was not aware of just how desperate his situation is even before arriving there. 

Secondly, the introduction of Weiland-Yutani, the Earth mega-corporation introduced in 1986's Aliens (and which has just been getting more and more malicious ever since) comes in a way that makes sense: a damaged android named Thia (Elle Fanning), abandoned here during a bio-survey, offers to share what she has learned about Genna and its fauna to help Dek find his prey - the unkillable Kalisk.

And as far as I am concerned, that is all you need to know. 

I will tell you that there is a lot I loved about Badlands:

I love that there is so little dialogue in the first act.

I love that Dek speaks in Yautja for the entire films, despite the fact they drop a universal translator into the mix early on. (The actor comfortably drops lines in this created language during interviews, and has wished it was real so he could talk to others on the set without breaking character... <3 ).

I already adore Elle Fanning (primarily due to The Great), but loved how (for instance) she uses her double jointed elbows to make propping up her severed upper half seem even more inhuman and unnerving. 

I love Schuster-Koloamatangi's performance, and not just for his physicality (which is compelling and fierce!), but the intensity of him delivering lines we can't understand without subtitles, the disdain he conveys even through all the alien makeup and animation, and the insecurity you can sometimes sense behind it.

I love that we cannot say with any certainty when this particular film is set (pre-Alien? post-Alien Resurrection?), and even more, I love that it doesn't really matter. (I will say some of the gear looks shinier than Aliens...)

Some people are upset by the PG-13 rating this film received, but I am all for it: build more fans! Does having a sympathetic creature make this film too Disney? Hell no, wait 'til you see what it does... Despite the fact that this film does not contain a single solitary human being, it still feels as brutal and unforgiving as a Predator movie needs to be.

But Predator: Badlands still somehow manages to work a little pathos in there as well. 

I say 'well done' to director Dan Trachtenberg, who also gave us the excellent Prey in 2022, pitting an extra-big, extra-raw Predator against low-tech indigenous Americans. If you have Disney+ and haven't watched this yet, I urge you to get on it; I think Prey is the best Predator movie since the first one, and I enjoyed a bunch of the others.

Trachtenberg also gave us the first animated Predator feature earlier this very year, Killer of Killers. The girls and I watched it Friday night, and I highly recommend it. In fact, I think it gives an even clearer picture as to where he is taking this franchise.

This film establishes what was suggested in the very first film: that the Yautja have been coming to Earth to hunt for a very, very, long time. Three vignettes pit immensely capable fighters against different hunters in three different settings: the Viking Age, feudal Japan and WWII. The samurai/ninja action of the middle segment is some of the best I have seen depicted, and the creativity of the fights in the Viking piece is jaw-dropping in places. The linking portion that ties the three stories together is the least compelling, but suggests an intriguing future - as does the post-credits scene. (!)

Three movies in, I feel that the Predator franchise has a guiding hand now that the Aliens one never did, each subsequent creator moving further away from the core to put their own stamp on things (and yes, that goes for you too, Ridley!). My hope now is for Trachtenberg to keep his hands on the wheel for as long as possible, and I will be there for every bit of the ride.

"...a close personal friend: the M41A pulse rifle"

When Jeff gave me a box of parts that he told me could be assembled into a 1:1 model of one of the most iconic make-believe firearms in cinematic science-fiction history, I was both elated and intimidated (and grateful!). In the end though, I ended up with a very neat conversation piece.

I was elated because in 1986, I must have seen James Cameron's Aliens 8-10 times in the theatre. There wer at least four Tuesdays in succession where, having discovered someone who hadn't seen it, demanded they accompany me to the Paramount Theatre on Jasper Ave (sigh) to see it on the cheap.

My friend Rob and I cobbled together our own director's cut using the deleted footage included in the tv broadcast, and stitched it together with a cinematic VHS version using three daisy-chained VCRs and a pencil and paper list of pause points.

And yeah, science-fiction has a lot of great, neat weapons, but somehow the pulse-rifle manages to stand out. Partly it is the realism and industrial blandness of the design, partly it is how ubiquitous it becomes through some of the most brilliant action pieces of its time. One of the major reasons though is how they draw back the curtain on it when Lance Corporal Duane Hicks (Michael Biehn) outlines its capabilities and operation to the film's heroine Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).

This combined with Lt. Gorman's detached recitation of the amunition type ("10mm exploding tip caseless, standard light armour-piercing - why?") both demystifies the pulse rifle whch makes it plausible to have it tear alien monsters apart, but also explains why it might deflect off more armoured foes.

The ammo counter, practical magazine, muzzle flash and distinctive sound have carried on a long ways from the cinematic release and through many a video game as well. So obviously, I wanted to make the most of the opportunity and do it justice, which is where the trepidation crept in. 

There was also a very real risk that the parts would languish in a box as many other projects have, collecting dust until some idyllic future point w

here I would have the time to lavish all the time on it that it might require.  But luckily, I figured out a short cut that let me assemble and paint it in less than a week.

I found a can of flat (ultra-flat, in fact!) olive-drab green spray paint at Michaels and purchased it with one of the ubiquitous coupons. After gluing the various half-pieces together with either two-part epoxy or superglue, and heeding Jeff's caution that a specific order of assembly would be required,  I sprayed all the "body" or housing pieces this colour, masking the bit of gun barrel and shroud protruding from the one end.

I then reversed the masking and sprayed all the "metal" parts black, and hoestly, that covered about 80% of the painting.

The receiver and ejector port (wait, isn't this ammo caseless? well, moving on...) well black bits on mostly green real estate, but it was a simple matter to carefully hand-paint those elements. First basic black, then a bit of zinc acrylic (leftover from another Aliens project, lol) on the exposed metal bits, as well as the loading port on the under-barrel grenade launcher.

Next up was painting all the recessed screws, which, though not the easiest to reach, really contributes to the verisimillitude of the whole thing, and did not take all that long. Lastly, the LED ammo counter in blacks and reds.

I had found a suitable descriptive plaque online that Jeff graciously printed out for me, and one that was painted, I was done - I had escaped the curse of the dusty box (for once)!

Now came the rub: how to display it? At two feet in length, there weren't many places I could put it, and didn't really want it on the walls of the Batcave downstairs at any rate. Luckily there was a suitable space in the unfinished part of the basement, on the way to the laundry area and deep freeze - out of the way but not hidden.

But how to hang it? I didn't trust the superglue to hold the weight of the model is suspended by the nadle, and no 3M Command Hooks were long enough to safely secure its width. 

Luckily enough, the 'decorative hooks' section of Home Depot turned up these brilliant wide, flat hooks that are not only flat black and the perfect size, but they fold up out of the way to boot!

Four screws later, the M41A was safely racked in its new home.

But this weekend, Glory graciously agreed to don her jacket full of USCM patches and let me photograph her with it for scale.

Sadly, there was no time to search out a better backdrop than the plain white wall of our garage (never a steam tunnel or well-lit modern industrial plant around when you need one!), but once again we refused to sacrifice the good on the altar of the perfect.

It also underscored how non-cosplay friendly my build was; simply changing poses was enough to break off the shoulder stock, but what the glue taketh away, it also giveth back, so we were back in business in short order. 

I wonder what might have worked better in terms of adhesive; I thought hot glue would be too thick for how flush some of the pieces were meant to sit, and found the epoxy a little difficult to work with. Maybe someday they will make some kind of polystyrene filament for 3D printing so you can use model cement on it?

Regardless, until I can justify getting an Airsoft version or something else more fun to play with, or hit the lotto and can buy a more prop-like replica, I am happy to have a piece of make-believe firepower on my basement wall.

Satchel Pages: Con-Version VI

I was wondering what to blog about tonight as I haven't a lot of time, so weightier topics must be postponed in favour of sleep. I came across this picture of the satchel I often use for toting gaming manuals and rulebooks along.

There is a lot of nerdy and actual history contained in those pins and badges, from the silly (like the revolutionary graffiti badge from the Amiga game "Fernandez Must Die") to the tragic (the Challenger mission patch for STS-51L featuring an apple for teacher Christa McAuliffe, the first civilian to die in space) and a heap of pop culture for good measure. 

There are quite a few Games Workshop promos in there (including the brilliant new Ultramarine Chaplain pin Bryce got me at a store event recently) and more than a few comic-related ones that are kind of cryptic - like the old Kree military symbol and the badge for Thanagarian police like Hawkman and Hawkgirl.

What a similarly afflicted person might recognize or deduce, those with more mainstream interests might be able to look up, but this one could be tricky: 

The Roman numeral is tricky to make out (honestly thought it was a VII at first...), but Con-Version is pretty visible and there is a Wikipedia page for them.

This was a lapel pin I got at Con-Version VI, a sci-fi con in Calgary in 1989. Some of the lads and I attended a few times in the late 80s and early 90s, with Audrey even coming along to one in 1995 before we moved to Toronto for four years.

The rat on the pin is because the guest that year was Harry Harrison, author of the Stainless Steel Rat book series, featuring a charming confidence man and adventurer in an interplanetary future. I believe this was also the year our alien rock band *Unpronounceable In English made its debut at the costume contest, as we each got a set of the novels as a prize for Best Performance Under Fire.

I may have the program book around here someplavce but it is just as possible it was lost in the purge of our basement bookshelves last year. An archived Fancyclopedia article mentions how they held their final con in 2010, and I see someone trying to sell other lapel pins on eBay.

The pin is a neat bit of nerdy decor and also a useful tether to a time long past and a different person who is still, somehow, me. When I inevitably give away or misplace the pin, how long will the event linger in my memory? Will that person be gone with it?

For now. it is a helpful kind of nostalgia that takes little space and no effort to maintain, so it remains, as do I.

Balancing Act(s) - Dune Part Two, Reviewed

(Spoiler-free, I think? I mean, this book is pretty old...)

Movie adaptations of literary classics (and I certainly include Frank Herbert's 1965 masterpiece Dune in that category) are a decidedly tricky business for everyone involved, from the producers trying to replicate success from one medium to another, to writers choosing what parts of the canon to keep, remove or change; directors and production designers trying to re-depict vistas, characters and technology on the screen; and fans of the original material and previous adaptations holding their breath to see how the latest interpretation has turned out - to their eyes, at least.

Director and co-writer Denis Villeneuve's 2021 Dune adapted the first half or so of the novel, and was acclaimed by many critics and fans (myself included) despite being viewed as an unfinished work. It is hard to believe that such an epic depiction of family, politics, betrayal and war serves primarily to set the stage for an even more titanic tale of clashing cultures, revenge, prophecy, propaganda and planetary deliverance, and which is ten minutes longer to boot.

So does Villeneuve deliver the goods with his conclusion, Dune Part Two? Does he stick the landing? Well, yes and no.

It is a marvelous adaptation in the truest sense of the word; one artist rearranging elements of another's work to create a new version in a different medium. The broad strokes remain largely unchanged, depicting the struggles of Paul Atreides (Timotheé Chalamet) and his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) as they look for succor amongst the hardened and suspicious desert Fremen. Paul strives to balance his compulsion to avenge his murdered father with his desire to avoid a galactic holy war in his name.

Meanwhile, Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem) believes more and more in the possibility that young Paul is the mahdi, the deliverer promised by prophecy but also contrived by the manipulations of the Bene Gesserit religious order. Jessica leans into this belief (and the possibility that Paul is also fulfilling the BG prophecy of the kwisatz haderach) while Paul actively avoids it, and his eventual Fremen love interest Chani (Zendaya) openly disputes it.

It's been a while since I read the novel but I don't recall the external tension being this pronounced, with so many disbelievers among the Fremen of Sietch Tabr, with the underground shelters of the southern hemisphere being depicted as more fundamentalist ("[Stilgar] is from the south. Could you not hear his accent?" made me laugh.) And Chani's perspective and resistance to manipulation is a welcome addition, giving her character far more depth than in the novel.

In fact, all the female characters enjoy more nuance and agency in this movie than in the novel; Chani, Jessica, Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh), and even Paul's sister (Anya Taylor-Joy) who, unlike the book, remains both unborn and unnamed by the end of this version. 

Villeneuve has his work cut out for him, balancing the agendas for not only all these characters but more, as well as the various factions they represent. But he not only does so with a clarity the 1984 film and 2000 mini-series don't match, he still finds appropriate moments for action scenes that blend brilliant spectacle and scale with plot momentum and character dynamism. The first Fremen attack on a Harkonnen spice harvester is a feast for the senses, with drama and a real sense of consequence.

He also continues to display a singular and masterful visionary eye, depicting the introductory gladiator battle of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (a hairless and nearly unrecognizably cruel Austin Butler) not just in black and white (in order to differentiate the sands of the Harkonnen homeworld of Giedi Prime from those of Arrakis), but in infra-red, under a black sun. Amazing!

Dune Part Two is a great story with wonderful performances by an amazing cast, but it would almost be worth seeing in IMAX even with the sound off just for the amazing visuals. And not just the cinematography by Greig Fraser (The Batman, Rogue One) either, although his sunsets, desert vistas and transitions between Paul's visions are at times breathtaking. The costumes and production design are artful and ambitious in a way that far too few films, even science-fiction, are too timid to attempt.

Fans of previous adaptations (including Jodorowsky's unmade version) may see nods and homages to them in this film as well; I saw traces of H.R. Giger in the cityscapes of Harkonnen-occupied Arrakeen and the costumes and architecture of Giedi Prime, and David Lynch's art deco flourishes elsewhere.

And the sound! IMAX increases the bass and resonance as much as the screen size, bringing even more impact to the distorted vocals of the Spacers Guild (presumably?), unfamiliar languages, the thud of descending harvesters and the roar of cresting sandworms. 

I am thrilled beyond words at the notion that more of Herbert's lexicon (Fedaykin, crysknife; Bene Gesserit, etc.) will be getting an even larger footprint in popular culture. What future filmmakers are seeing this film, glimpsing this unique world, and becoming inspired to create their own works in the future?

Now, there will inevitably be those who will say that Villeneuve and his co-writer Jon Spaihts took liberties with the canon and that they were excessive or unneeded, but I will not be one of them. Every departure seemed to make for a better movie in my regard, a film that felt expansive and epic yet personal and tightly spooled despite being the better part of three hours long (2:46). So why can't I be more fulsome in my assessment of Part Two? 

For much the same reason I can't say The Empire Strikes Back is a better film than Star Wars. Without giving too much away, despite ending the movie at virtually the same point as the novel, the sense of resolution is muted, and the movie wisely avoids the temptation to tie a triumphal ribbon around the whole affair. Instead, arrows are pointed to the future, a natural point to pause (but not really finish) the story is reached, and Villeneuve, clearly a fan of the novel's sequels, has already committed to a third film incorporating Herbert's sequel Dune Messiah. 

A sequel has not yet been greenlit by Warner Bros., but this is not surprising; Part Two was not confirmed until 4 days after the release of Dune, so perhaps the same will hold true for the next film? I certainly hope so and will buy a ticket (in IMAX again) as soon as I am able.

In the meantime, though, how can you judge whether or not someone has stuck the landing when they are so evidently eager and unfinished? 

Neon Style and Surprising Substance - Unicorn by Gunship, Reviewed

It’s funny - when I was a teen in the 1980s, watching people evoke the ‘50s and ‘60s in their clothes and music, I remember wondering aloud if people in the future would do the same for the decade we were in at the time.

“I doubt it,” my friend Dave gamely assured me. “It’s just too conservative a period; there’s not much to latch onto.”

Maybe he was right about the quantity, but the 80s resonance did indeed persist. My daughters in their twenties are fully conversant in bands of the period, it showed up a surprising amount in last year's TV hit “The Last of Us”, and there is a whole musical subgenre dedicated solely to the electronica of the time which is still going strong.

One of the seminal bands of this synthwave movement, Gunship, recently released their third full-length album, Unicorn, and since their excellent previous release Dark All Day was one of the few releases I have bought on CD in the past few years, I was anxious to give it a listen.

A half-dozen or so videos were released before the album came out, and although all were catchy, none of them grabbed me the way that “Art3mis & Parzival”, “When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies”, and the title track did from Dark All Day. Even the first couple listens of the album left me thinking, “well, it’s no DAD, but new Gunship is always good.”

Repeated listens, however, have given this collection time to really grow on me, and if you are a fan of synthwave or any danceable keyboard music at all, I can wholeheartedly recommend Unicorn. And Gunship even pushes the envelope a little bit on this record, venturing out into broader EDM territory, as well as some metal-sounding and even pop-like tracks. Rest assured, your 808 tones and drums full of gated reverb are all still here though.

This variety is very credibly supported by a solid stable of collaborators, including Gavin Rossdale of Bush, Carpenter Brut, Lights, Health and the inimitable Tim Capello, the jacked sax man from The Lost Boys who plays "I Still Believe." In fact, Tim gets to wail on four different tracks (!) so if you are not a saxophone fan, proceed with caution, I guess?

Unicorn, an album whose tagline is "Imagination is a weapon," scratches a lot of itches for me. A lot of it is upbeat, high-tempo stuff like "Blood for the Blood God" (40K fans, represent!) that makes a great soundtrack for getting stuff done. Other tracks are more dramatic and powerful, like "Ghost" or my current favourite, "Tech Noir 2", which features legendary director and synth afficionado John Carpenter (!!) reprising his role as intro narrator from the original "Tech Noir," but updated now with some post-apocalyptic optimism.

I'm recording this because the survivors no longer envy the dead
The final war is over
Its architects forever entombed in melted glass and steel
I watched the efforts of our species dance away on the radioactive wind
Civilisation retreated by millennia
All of human history wrought to dust
Our cities, now scorched black mausoleums serve as a reminder
There can be no victory in war
Birth is the answer to the question of our mortality
With resolute defiance we choose to grasp at the delicate thread of life
My son, the gift of survival is yours
Please, may you never submit
There will be more...

Cinematic and TV references abound in Gunship tracks, another treat for yours truly. "All roads paved with crushed-up skulls" should bring anyone who's seen it back to the opening of 1984's Terminator. I know "It is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven," is a quote from Paradise Lost, but I also know most of us nerds first heard it on Star Trek. And cueing in Tim Capello's first sax solo on the album right after the lyrics "surrounded now but no surrender/ the odds against the betting man/ beyond the odds but I still believe" on "Monster in Paradise" is cheeky and perfect and I will never not love it. Even their logo looks inspired by the old Golan Globus logo from so many VHS viewings.

Cyberpunk overtones abound as well, as the '80s vision of the future lives on as depicted in "Taste Like Venom" as well as in the Edgerunners Netflix series and video games. Speaking of video games, "DooM Dance" (with its significant capitalization) talks about "raising hell" while "Empress of the Damned" includes a reference to "the cake is a lie" in a song where the chorus testifies "I can't be killed with conventional weaponry."

And just to make sure my enjoyment is not solely nostalgia-driven, I calibrated with Glory, after she came through the kitchen while I had the album blaring and said, sadly, "I wish clubs played music like this." She thinks it is a great album, particularly for this time of year, with multiple candidates for various Halloween or spooky season playlists. The darkness and adventurous violence are offset by brilliantly positive nuggets like "don't cry because it's over/ smile because it was" ("Run Like Hell").

Just like cyberpunk depicts a sci-fi future through an extremely 80s lens (presumably both mirrored and louvered), Gunship's strength is club music that probably hasn't been played in too many clubs, tragically. (If I am wrong, I am begging you to let Glory and I know!). And while there probably aren't too many raves in my future, I hope the band follows through on their plans to start touring and playing their music live. 

In the meantime, anyone interested in a semi-nostalgic look at a future that never came from an '80s that never was should give Unicorn a listen - there is a lot to like.

Total Immersion or Just All Wet? Avatar: The Way of Water, Reviewed

How strange to see yet another long-gestating sequel less than 12 months after watching Top Gun: Maverick! I mean, Avatar: The Way of Water barely compares in terms of elapsed time (three-and-a-half decades vs just over one) but the latter spent a lot of that time in production, so the anticipation for some folks might have been even more pronounced. 

Strangely, that anticipation was not increased for me, despite enjoying the first film quite a bit (in spite of its many flaws); we had talked about seeing it over Christmas but never got around to it. And honestly, the three-hour-plus runtime made weekday viewings impossible afterwards, but we had a window to see it Sunday afternoon, over two months since its release, and we took it - mostly so its four Oscar nominations could bring our "seen it" total to 55.

So although the plot is a big improvement over the simplistic original, some of its other problems remain: both the "noble savage" and the "mighty whitey" tropes are in full display, although the latter is perhaps a bit more subdued now. Writer/director James Cameron has maintained the "fish out of water" angle by having former earth marine and current Na'Vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their four children flee their forest home after the Sky People (earth folks) return. The threat of losing their children to the newly recombinated and incredibly vengeful Col. Quaritch (Steven Lang), now in his own Na'Vi body is just too much.

And the retread itself is not problematic, but when you see the amount of cultural appropriation in the depiction of the Matkayina clan (or reef people), it is difficult to see why the filmmakers did not foresee this as a problem. It is one thing to have a hunter give thanks to an earth-spirit of mother nature figure after making a kill like we saw in 2009's Avatar, but there are whole pages torn from South Pacific islander culture here. From the facial tattoos to the weapons to some of the names to the tongues stuck out in defiance just prior to going into battle, there were so many Maori callouts I was astonished they didn't try to shoehorn a re-named haka in there someplace.

But as unfortunate as that was, I have to say that, overall, we all enjoyed the film. (Sigh.) And it is all due to a visionary filmmaker being allowed to pursue his passions.

In addition to being a good writer and great director (YMMV), Cameron is a committed diver and underwater enthusiast who also uses his fame and money to highlight ecological causes. He is a man with a deep-seated and obvious love for his homeworld, in particular the enormous portion of it that lies beneath the waves. In The Way of Water, he gets to idealize an unspoiled aquatic paradise, populate it with all manner of fascinating creatures (only some of which are essentially analogs to existing earth fauna), and then introduce them to the Sullys, and thus, to us.

The visuals of the movie are simply spectacular, with little to none of the uncanny valley effect that seems to still plague so many digitally generated characters, particularly when jumping or falling, or when interacting with flesh and blood actors. If I was a harsher critic, I might say it is a shame that Cameron had to ruin his brilliant travelogue by throwing a brutal revenge plot in there at all, (and if he ever makes his Pandora travelogue, you can sell me an IMAX 3D ticket to it right now, thank you).

But the truth is that Steven Lang is a great character actor and fantastic villain, and I was so happy to have him back in the story that it almost made up for watching him threaten children in practically every. Scene. He is in.

The action sequences are clear, well-executed, and intensely dramatic in places - Cameron has lost none of his edge in the intervening decade! And his child characters dwell pretty consistently in that grey area of bright, brave and curious offspring who are neither boat anchors nor saviours.

There is also no mention of the miracle mineral unobtanium this time around - there is an even more valuable prize to be found in the seas that Clan Sully hope to call home, and even if there wasn't, it turns out that the Sky People (us, basically) have used up their own home now and are anxious to resettle on Pandora, with the marines (and Col. Quarritch's Blue Team) here to literally pave the way.

As a result of this, Avatar: The Way of Water does not conclude as tidily as the original, but with three more sequels on the way, we suspected this going in, right?

In the end, my enjoyment and appreciation of this flawed but amazing piece of moviemaking stems from the same place as it did in 2009: a movie that not only takes me away from my own reality for three hours as a form of escapism, but which depicts another world with such immense detail and applied immersion that I honestly come away with the sensation of having been elsewhere.

Or, at the very least, having imagined that I have, aided by tremendous visuals, an engaging story and the most effective use of 3D since, well, 2009.

If you liked the first film at all, you owe it to yourself to see it on a big screen and despite the fact I normally forego the 3D presentation, I highly recommend that as well.

Strange (New Worlds) Tidings

I finally had an opportunity to watch the first three episodes of the new Star Trek series Strange New Worlds, on the weekend.

Set on the familiar U.S.S. Enterprise but under earlier Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), the series is a real return to form for the franchise, eschewing long-form, arc-driven stories in favour of more episodic morality tales very much in keeping with the original series (TOS).

The original Trek used the guise of sci-fi entertainment to raise many controversial issues of the day, including racial segregation, gender equality, and superpower involvement in Viet Nam. TOS established a legacy of progressive leadership, perhaps best exemplified in Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. encouraging Nichelle Nichols to remain on the show as communications officer Uhura. While by no means a major character, King felt the critical imagery of a black woman officer, already unheard of in either television or the real armed forces gf the day, being treated as a peer by white males, needed to be kept in the limelight.

SNW seems to be following suit even in its first episode, even if naysayers will invariably accuse them of 'going woke' (check your receipts, idiots; Trek always has been 'woke'). Never a franchise to shy away from speechifying, Capt. Pike (possibly the handsomest captain to date? you be the judge!) delivers an address to government and rebel heads on a first-contact world. He compares their development to the history of his own planet, Earth:

My world is called Earth. And though it's far from here, uh, my people and yours are, uh, very much alike. This is my world today. But we were not always peaceful. 

This is Earth in our 21st century. Before everything went wrong. It's a lot like your world today. Recently I was treated to a glimpse of my future. It was not all I'd hoped. After all, what good is there in knowing your future? A friend of mine asked me that recently and... didn't understand what he meant. ( short chuckle ) Until now. I've seen my future. Let me show you yours. 

Our conflict also started with a fight for freedoms. We called it the Second Civil War, then the Eugenics War, and finally just World War III. This was our last day. The day the Earth we knew ceased to exist.

Global suicide. 

What we gave you is the means to exterminate yourselves. And from the looks of you, you're gonna do it. You'll use competing ideas of liberty to bomb each other to rubble, just like we did, and then your last day will look just like this.

When Pike says "Let me show you [your future]," the video display turns from the idyllic utopia of the 24th century into images of current-day civil unrest. including a protest sign reading "AUDIT THE VOTE" and the ominous scene of a gallows erected outside the U.S. Capitol.

Seeing those images while constant revelations about the poor state of American democracy play out from the Jan. 6 committee, and mere days after Roe Vs Wade was repealed and even more divisiveness appeared south of the border really gave me pause for thought. 

And not that things are so much better where I live - the leading candidates for Premier of Alberta are both couching a lot of separatist ideology in terms like "sovereignty" and "autonomy", and Federal Conservative leadership candidates jostle over embracing or rejecting the "Freedom Convoys" of trucks while arguing over Bitcoin as a buttress against inflation. "Competing ideas of liberty" indeed!

Make no mistake - the battle for hearts and minds, information and disinformation and misuse of political powers both by those in power and those who wish to supersede the rule of law makes this a very, very dangerous time for society in general and democracy in particular.

In the future history of Star Trek, the crucible of the Last World War spawned a peaceful planetary government and eventually the United Federation of Planets.

I hope we can get to a brighter future, all of us, without the need for another Dark Ages, but who can say where we are on the cycle of history? 

In the meantime, I wish this new incarnation of Star Trek all the best, and I hope people of all ideologies not only watch it but do so with an open mind. Because changing our collective minds begins with exposure to new ideas, and the best science-fiction does that with one hand while entertaining us with the other.

Live long and prosper, everyone.

Not Just Dixie-Whistling You Are

I belong to a Toastmasters club at work (ToastmAPSters, get it?), and we've been trying to keep meetings and speech projects going while everyone is working from home, but it's been tough and weird, as so much has been. Holding our regular (now bi-weekly) meetings in the Microsoft Teams platform has worked fairly well for the most part.

The Toastmaster of the Day serves as master of ceremonies, introducing the speakers and evaluators and keeping things moving along. They also create a theme for the meeting as well as a Word of the Day related to the theme. Whenever this word is heard, attendees indicate having heard it by knocking on the table; it encourages people to work a specific word when they are speaking, and also makes a good exercise in active listening.

This week, our TOTD chose Star Wars as the theme, and "hope" as the WOTD, which I thought was pretty clever of them. At the beginning of the meeting,she explained how the very first Star Wars movie from 1977 is now known as "Episode IV: A New Hope." This turned out to be a good thing, as two or three people of the dozen or so in attendance had never seen it!

The theme also provides an opportunity for the TOTD to ask anyone expected to speak a related question so they have something interesting to say during their introduction. After all, two of the more common intro elements, where do you work and what do you do don't cover very much ground in a corporate club like ours. This week's intro question was, "which Star Wars character do you feel you are most like?"

Now, my relationship with Star Wars has been both complicated and tumultuous since seeing it at age 10. My love of adventure and sci-fi movies and my appreciation for movie-making in general, as well as my interest in religion, weaponry and feudal Japan can all be traced back to seeing Episode IV at a young age. But then the prequels came and kicked my taste for all things Star Wars right out of my mouth, so I didn't bother watching any of the adjacent animated series or anything. After a long period of laying fallow then, the most recent trilogy came out, and I became optimistic again. I really enjoyed the first film (though it was derivative), appreciated the bold moves made by the second, and then watched the studio undo all that change as well as the well-deserved happy ending to the original trilogy by bringing back the original villain along with a nonsensical plot and by-the-numbers emotional closure for the new characters.

But then people I know and respect starting speaking in glowing terms of new series The Mandalorian on Disney+. And I read that showrunner Jon Favreau is actively trying to homage one of my favourite Japanese comics, Lone Wolf and Cub (holy crap, how have I never blogged about that before? [adds to list]). So now my overall sense of "meh" is once again in danger of being overwhelmed by exciting tales set in this mad universe George Lucas created (but is no longer directly involved with). 

So, yeah, like I said: complicated.

And despite the fandom that encompasses a good part of my life, I never thought of myself in terms of what character I might be like. And yet, who hasn't wished for the cocky swagger of Han Solo, the assured serenity of Ben Kenobi, the feisty imperiousness of Princess Leia? As an exploration of myth and of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, we really do look to see ourselves reflected in these archetypal characters.

Except I never had.

I gave it a lot of thought (honestly, far more than it needed, being for a brief introduction) but was pretty happy with what I provided in response:

I really wish I saw more of Ben Kenobi in myself, but if I am being honest, I am probably most like Yoda. People sometimes find it difficult to understand what I'm saying, and I exist in a weird sort of space between ancient wisdom and comic relief.

Most of the group keeps their mics muted during our meeting, but I still heard some chuckles and saw some nodding of heads in agreement from those who know me (and had their cameras on.

When I told Fenya about it yesterday in the car, she hooted with laughter and said, "oh my gosh, it's so true!" 

At least there is a chance she is acknowledging some wisdom in there, I suppose.

Super-Empowered - Captain Marvel, Reviewed

So, lemme tell y'all the problem with Marvel movies:

• Too many of them are origin stories
• Origin stories are okay except when they are so similar
• They are all about white guys, (except one black guy and another fella who's green half the time)
• The villains tend to suck

Happily, Captain Marvel has precisely none of these problems and is a well-paced adventure film topped off with genuine emotional resonance to boot. (And that isn't even counting the two very sweet tributes to Stan Lee in there.)

Very few people outside of comics knew about either Captain Marvel or her alter ego Carol Danvers until Kevin Feige and co. greenlit this film a while back. Even within nerdy subcultures, I am sure there are plenty who think she appeared in the comics only six or seven years ago. Ms. Danvers' lineage actually dates back to the '60s, appearing as an unpowered USAF officer who encounters the secret identity of the original Captain Marvel. Later on, through an origin story that is ambiguous and contrived even by comics standards, she is imbued with alien powers and becomes Ms. Marvel.

She carries this role through a couple of frankly embarrassing and sexist costumes before having her powers stolen by Rogue (who eventually joins the X-Men), then getting new powers from Galactus and becoming his new herald, Binary. That power set eventually diminished and she became Ms. Marvel once again, but later adopted the name Warbird, before reverting to Ms. Marvel once again.

In 2012, writer Kelly Sue DeConnick took the character back to her air force roots and Kree-linked power set, taking the name Captain Marvel because, well, why not?

I mention all this just so you don't think that maybe this film was some sort of cookie cutter adaptation. The very first thing the writers did (and there were five of them, so I am amazed that the film is actually coherent, let alone good) was deconstruct the origin one more time, and wrap it up in a mystery. This time, the hero doesn't need to learn humility, they need to learn who they are and where they came from. Using the canonical origin for inspiration only allowed co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck to unravel the backstory in a satisfying manner that could still surprise those of us who had a pull file at a comics shop in our formative years.

Set in the mid-90s, much of Captain Marvel plays like a buddy-cop movie from the period. This movie would go nowhere without the considerable chemistry between Sam Jackson's Nick Fury and Brie Larson's titular Captain, known only as "Vers" (pronounced "Veers").

Vers believes herself to be a member of the Kree, one of Marvel's longest established alien empires, but they waste very little time on fish out of water humour. To a member of an elite military unit called Star Force, Earth - sorry, planet C-53 - is not exotic or offputting so much as a boring backwater, or as one of her comrades calls it, "a real shithole." Brie Larson plays the character pitch perfect - unwaveringly confident in her missions to defeat the shapeshifting Skrulls, even as she deals with the dreams that hint about her true identity.

Samuel L. Jackson, on the other hand, turns in a brilliant performance as a younger version of a character he's played since the end credits scene in the very first Iron Man movie. Yes, the VFX that so seamlessly depict him as nearly a quarter-century younger version of himself are impressive, but conveying a slightly less cynical, less jaded version of the MCU's lynchpin? That is all Samuel L. my friends.

On the villain front, Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One) lets us hear his natural Australian accent for once as the Skrull leader Talos, which I found delightful. He is a cunning and brutal opponent, but not necessarily completely ruthless, and unlike so many MCU villains, his motivations are actually relatable. He is also funny, which is a characteristic I appreciate in my bad guys.

I suppose Captain Marvel is a lot like most of the other Marvel movies in some ways: it keeps things moving at a brisk pace and the action set pieces are creative, thrilling and well executed.  Most importantly, it balances off the emotional pathos of scenes like Carol Danvers meeting her best friend six years after being presumed dead with liberal amounts of jokes and subverted expectations. The best of these is watching Nick Fury making cutesy baby-talk towards a cat through a number of scenes, but there are others, to be sure. An not once does it require a stupid person to advance the plot, which is good, because I was looking for them and never saw a one of them.

And the fan service! The (eventual costume) is pitch perfect. They bring back Ronan the Accuser and Korath the Pursuer from the first Guardians of the Galaxy film. They find a way to depict the Kree Supreme Intelligence that vastly improves upon the original blobby wirehead from the comics, giving it almost spiritual gravitas at the same time. They reference a quadjet, an obvious precursor to the S.H.I.E.L.D. quinjet introduced in The Avengers. And we get to see a young Phil Coulson, the "new guy." Building a history and backstory for the MCU is a great added feature of this movie.

Because it features a woman in a role and space that in cinema has normally been exclusively male up until recently, it is inevitable that Captain Marvel will be characterized as a feminist movie. And you know what, that's okay because I think they do it right. I was so wrapped up in the story, I didn't take any particular note of just when they passed the Bechdel Test, and the movie isn't festooned with dudes talking down to Vers because of her gender. As an ersatz alien, she doesn't realize the obstacles placed before her (or the fact that she should apparently smile more for males), so Brie Larson can focus on making her the troubled ass-kicker she was meant to be. And this may have the added effect of making the girls who see it feel not only a bit more represented but even inspired, and that is nothing but a good thing.

But for those of us who had already figured out that there is no earthly (or unearthly, I suppose) reason for women not to be at the center of a big-budget, sci-fi-action movie comic book adaptation? There's no polemic here, just a vastly entertaining movie.

Which is good, because with two daughters in tow, I felt obliged to buy a couple of the deluxe metal popcorn buckets before we even sat down.