WAR GAMES (1983)

When I was a boy, my family would visit my mother's parents every Sunday after attending church service. We lived in southwest Houston, which meant we took a thirty minute drive across town to see grandma and grandpa. Over the course of our weekly route, we would pass a few movie theaters. My parents would take various routes to Houston's 'Northside'. Some weeks we'd pass the Meyerland 3, or Gulfgate Mall. Sometimes Southway 6, mostly Meyerland 3 though. The marquee was planted next to the freeway and I would dutifully check to see what was playing no matter what marquee we passed.

     I was five years old when I saw The Empire Strikes Back and like the rest of the world, I was chomping at the bit to discover what fate awaited the scoundrel Solo. When finally Return of the Jedi was released, I would watch for weeks as we passed the Meyerland marquee making sure the film was still playing, hoping that one of those Sundays my father would pull into the theater and treat us to the dramatic conclusion of the Star Wars trilogy. I was raised to not pester my parents for what I wanted. I made it clear in other ways and they knew I could be incorrigible when it came to Star Wars above all else. So, I dared not ask my father to take us. I knew that he knew.
     My dad loved the Star Wars films as well. He and his older brother got me way in deep to sci-fi, his older brother especially. I wrote about these two and their influence a bit more in our entry on Burning Glacier about The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951). I could not conceive a why or how my father could not set aside what I perceived as a lesson in delayed gratification, dignity and self-control for being first in line. I dared not press the issue for fear that I would not be allowed to see it at all!
     Sundays came and went. Still no Jedi. Every kid in my peer group had seen the shit but me. I'm pressing friends to explain the story to me much to my dissatisfaction. But this entry is not about Return Of The Jedi. No, we were talking about War Games. So on that Sunday evening returning from grandma's house, we exit the Loop and good god almighty, pull into the theater parking lot.

     I was terrified of my father. I made no passive aggressive moves, not a hint of disappointment in my attitude. No sighing, no eye-rolling. No sass. I kept my mouth shut. This mother fucker had me on mind-lock. I should've pouted my way through those two hours, taken a bathroom break to sneak into Jedi for a few minutes.

     War Games smashed the competition being the ubiquitous Star Wars and delivered the goods with quality story, characters, music and images. There are many excellent examples of stories involving artificial intelligence. No one ever calls out War Games, it seems. A thoughtful twist on the Frankenstein myth, War Games relies on substance rather than effects to deliver its didactic axiom.

   

THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE (1986)

   My parents absolutely would not take me to see this film upon initial release. They took great care to shield me from as much low-brow trash as they could lest it fill my developing mind with rotting garbage which would then infect my immortal soul. Occasionally, they would let in a bit here and there like Space Raiders (1983) for example, but Transformers was off the list of acceptable viewing. 

   I'm sure they realized that the film was merely a shill for the toy manufacturer and did not want to feed that fire in me. I had to settle for the soundtrack. Often, this was my way of experiencing films I was not allowed to see. I'd stare at the cassette cover while listening along, drawing my own versions of the characters or props featured in the cover art. Comic books were still a year off for me, so soundtracks on cassette helped to fill the void. 

   My peers relayed tales of profanity and graphic violence unfolding on the screen. My interest in this film was high to say the least. I begged a friend to dub a copy onto VHS. I provided him with a blank cassette and he dubbed Top Gun (1986) and Transformers: The Movie onto it for me. He also dubbed for me a tape with Summer School (1987), Alien (1979) and Crocodile Dundee (1986). This friend had a shit-ton of movies his dad had dubbed from rentals, probably somewhere near a hundred cassettes each with two or three movies. 
   

 
   Anyway, like most, I found the film a bit tedious though punctuated by some excitng sequences, ideas and designs. After seeing the low-quality animation afforded by the television show budget, the feature-quality animation was glorious by comparison. The animation style and the overall design sense is greatly informed by what the Japanese market was doing with shows like Gundam and Macross. The American market had very little to offer from Japanese animation, but what we had seen from their giant robot shows (Robotech) looked amazing to Western eyes. So, Transformers: The Movie also served to feed a growing hunger for their product. 

   The film did deliver on violence and featured a couple of cuss words, which was super cool to me at the time. Major characters from the TV show were summarily and unceremoniously dispatched within the film's opening twenty minutes. Apparently done to introduce the upcoming line of figures, the show's creators did not anticipate the audience to react so strongly to the death of main character Optimus Prime in particular. So, they brought him back to life in the show. But it wasn't the same. Optimus, along with almost all of our other Autobot friends from the show (and a few Decepticon's) had been slaughtered. 

   Whatever, it is a corny show (read: movie), but it continues to dazzle me with its bold choices like killing nearly the entire cast of the TV show. There was nothing else like it in the American market besides Bakshi's stuff and Heavy Metal (1981). So, Transformers filled that gap as well for kids like me who had seen the commercial for the rated R cartoon, with no chance of ever seeing it. This film depicted genocide in its opening minutes. This wasn't the detached destruction of a planet of faceless Alderaanians. They took it a step further, putting a face on the monstrous act. All in all this movie is weird. It depicts a race of cybernetic organisms alien to Earth and their adventures in war across the universe. There are perhaps two or three humans in the story and most of the action takes place on alien worlds. I love it for that reason. It is far removed from the confines of humans and Earth-bound tales. It holds the same charm in this regard as The Dark Crystal (1982). It is truly otherworldly and that is a real treasure to me. It is not a good movie, but it is a thrill to look at its bizarre depictions. You know, like Tron (1982).

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)

Thought-provoking, interesting, fascinating, illuminating. These are words that come to mind in describing the appeal of science fiction. When these things are expertly combined with the emotional, science fiction becomes a friend. Star Wars, E.T., Close Encounters, all sci-fi films that touched my heart and soul as a child in a way that I hope to never lose touch with as an adult. Its my favorite ingredient to throw into the sci fi mix, but it must be used very carefully.

My father and his brother were into sci-fi and gently shepherded me along in their ways through my childhood. Seeing how profoundly these films affected me, Close Encounters in particular, it was with a bit of ceremony that my father played for me on the only store bought VHS we had, his Close Encounters 'The Day the Earth Stood Still', starring his Harrison Ford in Michael Rennie. However, it wasnt the story between Klaatu and the little boy that resonated with me. That boy was looking to Klaatu as a father figure.

No, the story that struck me was the one between brothers, between Klaatu's people and the Terrans. I identified with Klaatu. He, like his counterpart in George Clinton's Starchild recognizes 'proven ability' but warns against the unkept mind when paired with advanced technology. Klaatu says he can't abide stupidity that his people have learned to live without it. For the closeted intellectual, these words pointed to a brighter future of tolerance, acceptance. It is a clash between the brains and the brute. Post war America of the 50's must've been a truly frightening world to live in. Despite this moving plea, it would be another sixteen years before science fiction of this ilk made another mark.

PROMETHEUS (2012)

Every criticism under the sun was thrown at this film/story and none of it sticks. It may be within fairness to say that it was made for an audience that hasn't yet reached adulthood. I suppose, most of the 'criticism' that informed the general audience attitude is rooted in the laziness and impotence engendered by popular fashion. 

 

 The storytellers of Prometheus created a masterful work in providing the audience with fascinating pieces to form a greater whole. Instead of putting in the work to form that whole (read: plot), to link the connections, there was much complaining about thin characters, their poor logic and their motivations not being explicitly drawn out. Ambiguity allows the viewer to bring their own intelligence, their own soul, their own wisdom, their own experience to the story. This creates an exchange of ideas between the creators and the audience member which is crucial to fulfilling the 'genetic imperatives' of the medium . It seems individual thought is the antithesis of whatever it is that the American audience, largely informed by social media, cultivates in their use of the internet. 

Take the review in Forbes. It punishes Prometheus for lacking in original ideas, suggesting a purposeful characterization of the storytellers as plagiaristic. To what critical end? Certainly not for finding value in cinema. He refers to himself as a 'self-respecting fan of the genre' and perhaps therein lies the problem. The word 'fan' is thrown around so loosely today that its meaning has been lost. Unfortunately, that word only serves to discredit the user when applied to their self being that fanaticism is marked by an obsessive, blinding devotion which obscures critical-thought. 
This fan in his review, seems to hold Alien in high regard as he makes a damning comparison to its 2012 counterpart in his opening paragraph. Alien came under the very same criticism in its time of release. The author of Alien, Dan O'Bannon, responded by saying that he borrowed not from a single work of science fiction or even a handful of titles, but from many titles.  For the Forbes reviewer, this illustrates a blind spot in his understanding of storytelling and film history.

                   

The Forbes critic continues by claiming Prometheus has no characters worth our (or his) investment and furthermore has nothing to say about humans and humanity that is worth hearing. Therefore, no answer is forthcoming to this kind of criticism which the Forbes reviewer puts forth as such. It seems to me that he is not talking about Prometheus at all, but instead his inability to understand what he has been presented with by the storytellers. One cannot answer a fan and expect any further reasonable exchange, especially one posing as a critic. 

From the review: "what's responsible for the vacant barbarism of the aliens is merely the limited imaginations of their authors." Yet, science fiction is about today, who we are today and inviting the audience to ask that question of themselves. If we are to buy into the reviewers comment about vacant barbarism and limited imaginations, then it begs examining as a further example of the material being misunderstood and the misunderstanding stemming from the inability to employ critical thought as impaired by his self-proclaimed fanaticism.

It seems that the 'reason' for finding the message of Prometheus as unworthy for our hearing it is that it contradicts and threatens even, the comfortable lifestyle in which he and many other naysayers of this story blindly indulge. As it is we who are the Engineers. We are the ones who actuate vacant barbarism, and as the story illustrates, behind religious beliefs of all things. The story of Prometheus deals with something that most people are devoted to in a very personal way, their religious beliefs. Prometheus tackles religion as the source, if not the flashpoint, for intergalactic conflict. Then certainly it has created an alternate view through which one can relate to our own world, recontextualizing it to allow a Lucian perspective. Furthermore, the film's story points it's questions at an area of our lives, our existence, our psychology which makes so many people uncomfortable to question or even address, that being our morality.

The goal here is not to single out this particular reviewer in Forbes or even the review itself, but to cite as an example of the grave misunderstandings and misgivings which dominate popular taste and criticism toward science fiction. The point being not that Prometheus got bad reviews, but that the reviews themselves were bad. Bad criticism, and that is a far greater crime. Doubly so that it came from people who claim that their love of science fiction is so intense that it has become an obsession. 

                     

STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977)

This is 'that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back', as Dr. Thompson put it. One of the last science-fiction films to be released before Star Wars changed the world. It is a low-budget Canadian production meant to cash in on UFO and abduction lore as it read in the mid-70's.                  
                              
Coming before Whitley Streiber's Communion, absent is the lexicon established by that account. No anal probes, no black triangles, the tropes utilized here are of the 'Barney and Betty Hill' brand. Cheap though the production may be, there is an admirable economy to its sci-fi imagery. 

 There is an ambition present on screen in its scope both visually and story-wise. These guys did some homework and just threw it all in their movie hanging it all on the most preposterous plot. The look is cheap, but every dollar is on the screen. The ideas are there, but these guys lack the taste and talent to execute them cinematically. 

It all plays like a strange mix of slap-dash TV from Britain and the States. Clearly Canadian. It possesses a strange magic that grabbed me as a child seeing it on CBS' Saturday morning Science Fiction Theatre. It terrified me. I missed the title and it remained a mystery until I saw a trailer for it at the Alamo Drafthouse. I found it on VHS at I Luv Video. Needless to say it did not disappoint. It's cast boasts both Robert Vaughn and Christopher Lee...

ALIEN (1979)

This might be the most predictable entry into this series of exchanges, but sometimes the obvious start is also the most appropriate.  What can be said about this film that hasn't already been said by other viewers better equipped or more educated than myself?  I picked the most watched and honored SF film for this reason; it's obvious perfection presents as formidable a challenge to disseminate as it demands accolades.

I'll stick to personal reasons and observations.  Let's talk about what the film does not do.  It's a science fiction film without specialized artillery or action scenes; a monster film in which - after the creature's birth - gruesome death is implied but never shown;  a submarine movie in which the so-called 'German Spy' character is not vying for the destruction of the ship.  It does not portray space as an intergalactic playground teeming with colorful life and epic scenarios.  To the contrary, the lifelessness of space is credibly established during the film's much-lauded opening credits sequence, followed by the clicks and whirs of interior spaceship technology as we're introduced to the crew: a doomed bunch of corporate truckers who awaken, coughing and grimacing, in what is essentially their tomb.

Yet, when listing the movie's attributes - what it does accomplish- we uncover a cornucopia of adult cinematic delights.  We get a film that mixes both the aspirations of high art with the grimy trappings of modern genre fiction.  This integration is evident in every dramatic and comedic confrontation, as the higher-paid officers deal with the lower-paid maintenance crew, a shabby mix of Shakespearean theater stars and seasoned character actors, British and American; a genre exercise that exorcises typical gender role expectation while drowning in said same (few movies, genre or otherwise, allow us to observe a female junior officer's coming-of-age amidst a total breakdown of traditional male authority); cautionary subtext on the all-consuming nature of corporate culture (only children view the Alien as the actual antagonist of the film); MOTHER, Hollywood's only AI to rival HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey; and Hollywood's best interpretation of Chistie's Ten Little Indians-theme of 'and then there was one.'

For my money, though, all eyes should stay on the Sigourney Weaver/Yaphet Kotto exchanges, as the two actors expertly portray the Herculean task of maintaining an alliance under impossible levels of stress.  Weaver's "God dammit, Parker, shut up!" followed by her plain-spoken plan for survival: "Is that acceptable to you?... Obviously that means killing it!" rates as some of the most honestly funny lines delivered in a dramatic context.  Their readings strike a humorous chord due only to our own familiarity of dealing with impossible personalities in cut-throat situations.  And Kotto's performance throughout is sublime.  A noted figure in dozens of the decade's B-list and exploitation pictures, his inclusion in this perfect cast was no accident.  As he mumbles and insinuates during every scene, reminding the audience of both the insanity of the situation (he suggests freezing the facehugger between smacks of gum) and the latent, but ignored power of black men in society ("I want to talk about the bonus situation.").  His Parker's demise announces not only the end of blaxploitation's influence on mainstream fare, but the pre-Hip-Hop arrival of the strong black genre film character: audiences, white and black, not only identify with Parker's sly humor and cheated position, but support his moral outrage.  For the next ten years, we'll get worthy portrayals in genre flicks from Ernie Hudson, Keith David, Danny Glover and more.  But all of these brothers live in the house that Yaphet built. They swing in his playground.