3-2-1: Alien: Earth

2025, 8 episodes - Disney+/FX
created by Noah Hawley

The What 100: A deep-space research vessel owned by Weyland-Yutani crash lands in the Prodigy Corporation-controlled territory of New Siam. Prodigy founder Boy Kavalier sends his precious hybrids (completely synthetic bodies housing the minds of sick children who volunteered to have their consciousnesses transferred) to recover whatever is most precious that it may house. And those, of course, are a variety of alien specimens. But one surviving crew member, a Weyland-Yutani loyalist, is not going to just let Prodigy keep what they find. What's the most dangerous thing on Earth: invasive species, a new breed of being, desperate men, or greedy corporations?

3 Great: (1) World building. For the longest time I've never wanted to see "Aliens, but on Earth" because it seemed like the easiest and most obvious answer would be a plague that runs rampant, out of control too fast and too deadly for anyone to stop it. I had no interest in that story, whether in the end it was stopped or not stopped, either way it just seemed ... banal. Creator Noah Hawley's idea, which is to expand the reality of what is actually happening on Earth (it's run by essentially 5 corporations, rather than any sort of governmental structure now), and then carving out its own little pocket of this reality to operate in is the masterstroke of inspiration. In setting up the previously unheard of Prodigy Corporation, as well as establishing not just the Hybrids (as described above) but also Cyborgs (cybernetically enhanced humans) on top of the Weyland-Yutani-created Synths (who we've seen plenty of in the Alien franchise...Ash, Bishop, Michael), it's just opens up the world. For me the most stimulating parts of this reality are the glimpses into the corporate structures and rivalries (but they're not front and center to the show).

(2) The Hybrids, Boy K, and the Peter Pan connection. Centering a show or movie around kids can be a dicey affair, primarily because kid actors tend to always be a mixed bag. Even if they're really good, they're also going to age and that can make for complex storytelling. But Hybrids put the mind of children in adult bodies, and the show has a host of exceptionally capable actors playing the Hybrids who very effectively convey their youthfulness and naivety, both when interacting with adults and with each other. Where the show could have wallowed in boring "exploring their new bodies" stories like many a superhero show of the 2000s, instead it decides to wrestle with the ideas of whether these beings are even human anymore, and also delving into the trauma of severing your identity with your body.  Boy K (Samuel Blenkin, Black Mirror), an early 20-something genius in technology and business, sees himself as the "Peter Pan" of his new crew of post-human beings, and so he names all of them after the Lost Boys, except for Wendy (Sydney Chandler, Sugar), the first of his creations, who is his favourite. Having just watched a whole bunch of Pan movies recently, I loved how it toyed with its metaphorical connections, and, in the season 1 endgame, how it all was revealed to be bullshit, not connecting to the material at all. Boy K doesn't see himself as a parent to the Hybrids, but their cool rebel leader who they should inherently love. Instead the role of parents go to Arthur (David Rysdahl, Fargo Season 5) and Dame Sylvia (Essie Davis, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries) who are the technological and psychiatric experts on the whole Hybrid endeavour (as much as anyone can be an expert on a purely experimental process). Their different approaches to parenting create a pivotal inflection point in the series, and it's so interesting to see how people in this reality deal with their multi-trillionaire overlords who think themselves beyond human. 

(3) The new Aliens. Introduced on the vessel Maginot at the start of episode 1, the research ship has been fruitful in finding new species out in its 60 years travelling the galaxy, and it's ready to bring them home. But they're unprepared for the intelligence of the creatures they have brought with them, and things start to really go sideways. Once on Earth and in the hands of the Prodigy Corporation, things really aren't much better. The hubris of humanity is to think that all creatures are unintelligent, incapable of observing or learning, and that whatever systems we put in place to contain them are beyond their capacity to figure a way out of. Of course we're wrong, and the show is at its most upsetting when it's proving how wrong we are...including thinking that the Hybrids have found a way to escape death Among the creatures is a very large kind of fly-trap like animal (as opposed to vegetable), and there are creatures called "flies" that themselves eat non-organic material. Of course, there's also the Xenomorphs in all their various stages (and because this is a TV show, it has time to explore those various stages in much more depth than ever before...including what a facehugger is implanting within its hosts. But the greatest addition, the greatest creation of the series, even more than Prodigy or the Hybrids or the Cyborgs or any individual character among a host of great characters, is a Trypanohyncha Ocellus, a multi-tenticled eyeball creature whose iris can segment into many irises around its ocular body. It is looking for an ideal host, and when it finds one it brutally and aggressively burrows into its eye socket and replaces the being's eye with itself, and presumably its tentacles are penetrating the brain of the creature in a manner that allows it to control the being. Nicknamed Iris by some in the fan community, it is a very clever, intelligent creature, that much is shown, but we don't know how smart it actually is, or if it's able to communicate with language. It's unknown when it takes a hose whether it's in full control or if there's some form of symbiosis. There so much to explore with Iris, I love it tremendously and it creeps me the fuck out.

2 Bad: (1) The Xenomorphs. Everything around the xenomorphs, from the egg pods to the facehuggers to the infancy stages that are puppets or whatnot are all great and I loved every aspect of them in the show and on screen. The full grown Xenomorphs is where I felt the show didn't work. I appreciate the fact that the Xenomorphs were pretty much always practical, man-in-suit, but I really, really, really disliked the physicality of the creatures on screen. I know the stunt performers spent a lot of time studying the history of Xenomorphs on screen and they tried to adhere as faithfully as they could to history, but something in the way these particular ones were constructed, they didn't ever look right, and the movements were too exposed. The Xenomorphs are seen broad daylight, rarely in the shadows, and it exposes them too much. You need the shadows against the darkness of the body and the details to all be somewhat hidden, to really be more difficult to see, otherwise it...well, looks like a guy in a suit.  It's weird for me to feel that this show that is built on the Alien franchise, a franchise that centers around that classic Geiger design, only truly fails at the one thing that has been done so right so often, and yet succeed at pretty much every single other thing....

(2) ...except the finale. The show was PERFECTLY set up for a Grand Guignal of a finale, to really have the aliens (all of them) run ham on the entire Prodigy compound and just be a bevvy of carnage and chaos for our protagonists (some of them) to survive. Part of what I loved about the world building I described above was how the series so obviously constructed a corner for itself to play in such that when it all came crashing down it wouldn't affect anything else in the franchise. The expectation was there would be an implosion at the hands of the creatures, and there was not. I do not fully dislike the finale, but it fundamentally fails to deliver what any Alien film or story needs to close out with, just an orgy of alien violence.  Instead it pitches focus back to its central characters, and largely has the Hybrids level up. They're the ones that run ham on the Prodigy compound. Wendy/Marcy has learned to communicate and effectively command an adult Xenomorph (one which was borne out of her brother's lung, almost as if it's weirdly family) which neuters a bit of the chaotic element, but adds its own interesting wrinkles.  Where the show ends up, with the Hybrids in control, but Weyland-Yutani descending on the compound and all the adult players who have irked the Hybrids under their thumb could still have been the end result with a big scratch-fest (though sacrifices should have been made).  It's absolutely clear (and confirmed by Hawley on the excellent companion podcast) that the decision was made to not close these out in any real fashion because they're making a  TV series, and didn't want there to be any type of closure that might give Disney/FX the opportunity to say "nah, that's alright, we don't really need more".  It's tactical rather than satisfying.

1 Good: So much good (Timothy Olyphant as a Synth!? Come on! Incredible) but episode 5, which flashes back to the full story of what happened in those final hours on the Maginot is an incredible mini-movie in the midst of the series that also acts as a massive recontextualzation of cyborg Morrow (the magnificent Babou Ceesay, Free Fire) who in the previous episodes was nothing but reprehensible and vile, and he comes out of this flashback being, almost an anti-hero.  But the episode replicates in a way the Nostramo from Ridley Scott's classic original (the idea being that many of these big barges would have been made at the same time, on a sort of assembly line basis, so they're very similar if not exactly the same), allows us to spend more time on one of these ships with a different crew, and for things to go tits up in a very different way for very different reasons. It's an absolute blast.

META: As I mentioned above, I went into Alien: Earth with expectations that it would play to the easiest possible story, and not only was I pleasantly surprised by what it actually about, I really began to love every character and their role to play in the story by episode two (the only character I don't love is Nibs, because she's too much of a wild card...venturing into psychopath territory... I think there will be interesting things around her lack of stability in the next season, but boy is her style of cuckoo-bananas hard to empathize with).

The series had me eating out of its hand pretty much from moment one. It looks incredible (man-in-suit Xenomorph excepting) and it's stories and characters are so laden with complexities, there's a tremendous amount to explore.  This isn't a mystery box show in the slightest. It's not asking questions and depriving the audience of answers, it's just got so much depth to its characters, sci-fi scenarios and psychological ideas that it's got multiple seasons worth of mining to do. But at the same time, it's part of the Alien franchise so it *must* retain the surprise and horror of its most alien aspects. Hawley and company rightly understand that the Xenomorph has been used to death and really isn't surprising anymore (it's still pretty scary), so the introduction of new species with so much to learn about them still, leaves the show with many more scares and gross-outs in its pocket.

It's going to be years before we get a season 2. Again, I wish the finale had performed better as a denouement, just to be more satisfying while we wait, but I'm definitely going to rewatch, probably multiple times, in the meantime. 

Go-Go-Godzilla #28: Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.

Director: Masaaki Tezuka 
Year: 2003
Length: 91 minutes

The Gist: 
Two years following the events of Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, there's been no sign of the wounded king of monsters, and Mecha G has been out of commission, with repairs proving difficult. The absolute zero freeze gun cannot be replaced without a very expensive massive diamond.

Meanwhile, Mothra is spied in the skies off the shores of Japan. She hasn't been seen since she attacked and destroyed Tokyo in the 60's.  Dr. Shinichi Chujo (from the original Mothra) is paid a visit from the faerie of Infant Island, Mothra's heralds, the Shobijin. They warn that humans have once again disrupted the souls of the dead, by taking Godzilla's bones from their resting place and turning them into Mecha G. They say the bones must be returned to the sea, at which point Mothra will defend humanity from Godzilla...but if they don't Mothra will declare war on humanity. Harsh, bug, harsh.

Dr. Chujo's son, Yoshito, has been a technician working on Mecha G for over 4 years. He has a connection to it he doesn't really understand, but the last thing he wants is to lose his labour of love, and for his whole organization to be shut down. So when his dad, armed with his Mothra history and knowledge, tries to raise a stink and have the Mecha G project shut down, Yoshito doesn't back him up. As such, Dr. Chujo tells Yoshito how things play out rests on his shoulders.

Godzilla re-emerges, taking down a US nuclear sub. It comes towards land, apparently sensing Mecha G's reemergence. Yoshito's nephew, with Dr. Chujo's help, summons Mothra who battles Godzilla and loses. Mecha G, armed with the ultra-maser, is sent out to help Mothra in battle. Mothra is gravely wounded, but in her anguish her eggs hatch and twin larvae come to join the melee. She ultimately sacrifices herself to protect them, but it's really Mecha G's battle to lose.

The fight is fraught, with many reversals. Eventually Mecha G is knocked out of commission and Yoshito, with the help of the Shobijin, races to it to get it back up an running again. He gets trapped inside the beast as it puts its enemy on his heels. One jarring blow knocks Yoshito unconscious, and when he comes to, the beast has taken control of Mecha G once more...but Yoshito gets a vision of all this original Godzilla's been through and he warns his people away. Mecha G will take care of things, with the larvae cocooning a wounded Godzilla, and Mecha G carries himself and Godzilla to the bottom of a trench 4000+ feet deep.

Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
Neo-Godzilla: enemy. Original Godzilla, in the guise of Mecha G: friend

The Samesies:
The Showa era ran with a loose continuity. The Heisei era ran with a much tighter continuity. The Millennium Era is basically a series of sequels to Gojira, except this one, which is a sequel to it's immediate predecessor. As well, it's a sequel to the original Mothra and ties in other hints at other non-Godzilla-based Toho kaiju films.  It's sort of the best of each Era before it.

The Mothra mythology that was used in previous appearances holds pretty fast here. Mothra is a protector of Earth but will not tolerate man's transgressions against it. But it takes a lot to get Mothra into action. The Shobijin are one of my favourite aspects of the Mothra mythos and one of my favourite parts of all Toho kaiju-verse. Always happy to see them, even though their actual impact on plot is usually pretty thin. I like the reworking of the Mothra chant here. There's really no new beats here with regards to Mothra, and yet that familiarity also means a likeable, dependable consistency. They're not fucking around with the moth lady here.

The Differences:
Compared to last film it's all little differences that make this far superior and far more entertaining, especially in the fight sequences. They look incredible and the effects, pyrotechnics and suit/puppetry movements are all on point.  

Flying adversaries usually make for terrible fights with Godzilla, and there's not a lot here to counter that argument. But the team nails down Mothra's wing flap, they do not overuse CGI to move her around (not like Kiryu last film), and unlike the Heisei era Mothra, her legs move. In fact, during the fight, Godzilla bites off one of her legs.  One of the many great little moments of this film is Mothra's sacrifice, flapping in front of Godzilla's atomic breath to save her larvae, setting on fire (looking kind of phoenix-like) then exploding. Incredible.  

Mecha G's fighting in Tokyo S.O.S. is so much better than in the previous entry. There CGI was used to move Kiryu (and sometimes Godzilla) in a fashion as to make it appear that they can manoeuvre quickly. It's a shitty effect almost entirely missing here. The production team here took great pains to better show how Mecha G fights, using his various thrusters and boosters to help move him faster on the battlefield.  I really really liked one moment where a side thruster fired to push Mecha G aside to dodge Godzilla's atomic attack.  Likewise, there was a lot of little technical details to show just how everything worked on Mecha G, little moments that breathe a sort of life or reality into the metal beast.

The human story here is also so much better than in the last film. Yoshito, the Prime Minister, some of the other characters, all have the same doubts, both about proceeding with the Mechagodzilla project and ignoring the Shobijin's warnings, and with actually protecting their country with the only weapon they know has proven effective. It's a seemingly damned if you do/damned if you don't situation that doesn't rest comfortably for anyone on screen. It's pretty compelling.

The film also catches us up on where things are at since last film, in terms of the damage done and we have a scene or two with Akane and the crew from the last movie who are all off to America to receive some elite combat training. It's too bad that Akane isn't a focal character this film, but even two years later she's still glowering, and I don't think I could handle another 90 minutes of that sourpuss.

Anyone worth caring about?
Yes, Yoshito, his father, his nephew...they're all at different levels of importance to the overall story, but they are given a pretty solid family bond and they are all given moments to show how much they care about each other. Even the prime minister, who is so often such an expository character to show what the government's doing in any movie, here is given a very specific crisis of confidence in his decision making (I mean, he had a similar one last film, but there was no focus there, but here it's given weight in the framing and score).  Yoshito, much like Akane in the prior film, has a rival on the team that they butt heads with but need to overcome their differences on the battlefield, and, of course, a love interest (though Mecha G is Yoshito's first love that he needs to learn to let go of). I really liked it, and it gave us someone to follow around during the battle, someone that can actually have an impact on the events.

The Message:
Let the dead rest.
Learn from your mistakes of the past, and do everything you can not to repeat them.

Rating (out of 5 Zs): 
ZZZz
I would rank this higher, but because it sort of needs to be tied to the inferior ...Against Mechagodzilla, it knocks it down a half notch. I enjoyed it immensely. It's one of the best looking Godzilla films to this point plus I have a soft spot for Mothra, and they do well by her here.

Sleepytime Factor: 
I was pretty fully into it throughout. This is paced very well, and the final 40 minutes is all-action and it's pretty incredible how it both escalates in intensity and emotion. 

Go-Go-Godzilla #27: Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

Director: Masaaki Tezuka
Year: 2002
Length: 90 minutes

The Gist:
It's 1999 all over again, Godzilla is attacking Japan for the first time in 45 years. Lieutenant Akane Yashiro is an elite pilot of a maser-cannon. But when the military response is utterly ineffective, the only sane thing to do is retreat. In attempting to turn the maser-tank around, Akane accidentally knocks her comrades' jeep over the cliff side where it is crushed under Godzilla's heel. Akane is spiritually crushed, and accepts a demotion.

Meanwhile bio-robotics expert Tokumitsu Yuhara is recruited by the military for a special project, along with the nation's biggest brains... to create the ultimate anti-Godzilla weapon...out of the skeleton of the original Godzilla! Tokumitsu agrees to sign onto the project when his daughter, Sara is allowed to live on base with him.

Akane is recruited to be part of the Mechagodzilla (code name: Kiryu) piloting force, and she trains her ass off, while facing discrimination and harassment from the brother of a soldier she inadvertently knocked off the side of a cliff.

Just when the project is ready to revealed to the world, along with it's ultimate anti-Godzilla-weapon, a sub-zero chest ray, Godzilla attacks. Kiryu is sent out into the field for its first test run, and not only does it go badly, but less than two minutes into the fight, Godzilla roars at the metal beast, and it unlocks something in its regenerated DNA. The reconstituted "original" Godzilla inside the metal suit takes control and goes on a rampage. The Kiryu team is helpless to stop it, instead just having to wait for it to exhaust its power supply. Godzilla just walks away. It's pretty hilarious.

Tokumitsu hits on Akane a bunch, but Akane instead bonds with Sara over their dead moms. It's very Hallmark.

Kiryu is repaired, it's operating system upgraded to resist any sort of sentient takeover, and just in time for a rematch when Godzilla returns (the speculation is that Godzilla's actually coming ashore because Kiryu is built out of reconstituted Godzilla DNA). Kiryu is built to fly, which, as we know with Godzilla movies, means it looks awful when it does, and it manages to knock Godzilla around quite a bit. It even manages to fire off the absolute zero freeze ray gun but it misses, and the attempt drains Kiryu's energy. After Anane gets inside the metal beast, and the team taps the entire Tokyo power grid, Akane pilots Kiryo to fly it and Godzilla out to sea where she blasts him point blank with the absolute zero gun.

Both creature and mech survive, heavily, heavily damaged. Akane watches on as Godzilla retreats into the ocean. It's a draw.

In a post credit scene, Akane agrees to go out for a meal with Tokumitsu.

Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
He's a baddie, although, it seems his impetus for wrecking Japan is largely as a result of Japan building a mech out of dead Godzilla bones.

The Samesies:
Much of ...Against Mechagodzilla feels borrowed. It feels very samey.

The set-up of this feels largely regurgitated from Godzilla vs Megaguirus. A female military personnel feels guilty over the death of colleagues and seeks to redeem herself by killing Godzilla. The soldier having no time for love also carries over.

Like all of the Millennium Era Godzillas so far, ...Against Mechagodzilla acts as a sequel to the original Gojira, where they haven't seen a Godzilla since 1954. Only in this they acknowledge that other monsters, such as Mothra and Gaira (the green giant Frankenstein from War of the Gargantuas), have attacked in the intervening years. The ending of the original Gojira is modified as well for their purposes here. Where the oxygen destroyer completely obliterated every trace of the original Godzilla, here it is said it only stripped its bones clean, leaving the skeleton behind.

Michiru Oshima returns to score her second Godzilla feature (after ...vs Megaguirus) and brings back her thumping Godzilla theme. She hits the rest of the film with a heavy orchestral score that kind of bleeds into one bombastic sound instead of distinct compositions. It stands out at first but ultimately just becomes texture.

Mechagodzilla doesn't look dramatically different than his Showa and Reiwa Era counterparts despite modified weapon bits, and its hangar bay feels very Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II.

Once again Toho decided that they needed to aim for younger audiences, that Godzilla was getting too scary, so the horror or gory elements are quite toned down compared to prior Millennium era entries, to its detriment. In the final battle, Godzilla has his chest blown wide open, but we barely even notice it. Plus the injection of Sara into the film is clearly kid-pandering but ultimately yields little in terms of rewards. She's mostly just there.

The Differences:
What I enjoyed a lot early in the film is how it strove for a more ground-level-eye-view of the monsters more often than not, up until it has Godzilla and Kiryu face off. Unfortunately each time that happens we get a very level side view and occasional overhead views,  and it all feels like fairly bog standard Godzilla fighting, only with more CGI accompaniment to move the creatures faster or into the air.  It really doesn't look great at all.  The idea of presenting the scale of Godzilla is something the Millennium Era films have improved greatly upon, but the directors seem to revert to standard filming techniques for fight sequences in most cases.

Anyone worth caring about?

I've been nagging and nagging on and on about how these films seem so utterly resistant to telling a story about human characters with Godzilla attacks or monster battles as the backdrop. Well, finally we get one that is so fully about Akane's redemption arc and feeling worthy of Tokumitsu and Sara's affections that I should finally be happy right? 

Alas, no. It's such an utterly cliched story as to be pretty direly boring. It doesn't find any new beats and is often very confused about the beats it's trying to hit, particularly when it comes to her relationship with Sara. There's a very awkward scene where Akane is trying to tell Sara she will need to let go of her mother's death at some point, when Sara hits her back with her own bit of advice that rocks Akane to her core. But it's not really clear to me what was said that was so affecting.

That the post credits scene is just about Akane accepting a date from Tokumitsu is an incredible miscalculation of the use of a post-credit's scene. It does show a fully repaired Kiryu though.

The Message:
All life is precious. That's the message director Tezuka wants out of all his films. But despite a character (Sara) preaching it, and crying over it, the film itself doesn't fully respect this idea. At one point Sara notes how Godzilla and Kiryu are the same species and should be friends, not enemies, and tries to get the team to understand the Kiryu is a living being, but all of that concept goes out the window once rubber suits need to bash into one another trying to kill each other, and having the audience root for it to happen.

That it comes to a draw seems to be the satisfactory outcome for all.

Rating (out of 5 Zs): ZZ
I really wanted to like this one. It does so much that seems to be what I've been asking after, and yet it all feels muted, hollow and unexciting. The best moment was the awakening of Godzilla inside the Kiryu armor, a real highlight moment in all of Godzilla film, actually. But where prior Mechagodzilla films had a definite "fun" element to them, this one doesn't seem to know how to have fun. And when it does goofy things with CGI, the fact that it's not otherwise a "fun" movie just makes goofy CGI things feel out-of-place amidst the film's tepid melodrama.

Sleepytime Factor:
I only almost nodded off once, as usual it was during a "Godzilla fights tanks and planes" battle. Boy have those ever gotten so tiresome after 27 movies.  That there is a character story to focus on make it a more watchable film, just not a very good one.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Terminator: Dark Fate

2019, Tim Miller (Deadpool) -- download

I could literally transplant the first paragraph of my writeup for Terminator: Genisys as the opening paragraph for this movie. Both had a brief period of hype, a claim to resurrect the franchise with something entirely new, a failed opening at the box office and then a quiet fade into On Demand and Streaming. Sorry guys, I guess few people care any longer.

And yet, much like I enjoyed the last one, I rather enjoyed this one. It's not perfect, but what is these days. Well, actually there are many many Very Good movies, but with genre we often accept what we get. That's another post. ANYWAYZ, this is a Trump-era movie, made by Miller to piss off the Red Hat Legion, set in Mexico and (re)placing the focus from Sara Connor to a new, young Mexican woman. She will not bear the leader of the rebellion against the machines, she will be the leader of the rebellion. I like that; fuck you, neckbeard fan boys.

This movie also washes away, much like the last did, all the movies after the 2nd. This is still the world where Arny came for Sara Connor, where Kyle Reese saved her, where her own son rescued her from the hospital, but not long after, while they were on the run, another Terminator appeared and killed John. Even with John dead, 1997 comes and goes with no apocalypse, but that doesn't mean she lets her guard down. Come 2019, Sara Connor is old, grizzled and very very angry. Thus Grace (MacKenzie Davis, Halt & Catch Fire) appears, a Terminator-adjacent warrior from another future where we are again fighting the machines. She's human, but augmented. And just behind her comes an Uber-T1000 (Gabriel Luna, Agents of SHIELD), all liquid metal with an internal, independent skeletal chassis; alas no flaming skull. Grace shows up to find & protect Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes, Cumbia Ninja) but other than that, they have no goal in mind, beyond stay alive. Old Sara saves their ass, leading them to the source of her unlikely coincidental appearance, someone who has been feeding her the time & locations of other Terminator incursions for the last 30 years. Its the old Arny model, the one that killed John. Old in much of the sense of the word, in that his human skin has aged, but also his expanding his sentience, settled into a life protecting a woman & her son. Sara hates him, but acknowledges he can help. And thus, they combine forces to protect Dani.

There's a lot there, enough already for the three (not short) paragraphs. But what I liked about his movie was more than the small movie appeal, the less-than-blockbuster nature that the first also was, but that it played a tune on many notes. For one, it felt a lot like Logan, visually and tonally, with a weight and fatigue, yes for the franchise as well as the seemingly unending battle for the future. The future is very Who-vian, in that there seems to be fixed events. You can change the future, delay things, but these events always eventually happen, in some form or another. This is not the Skynet future we know, just another rising of the machines, another death of humanity and another appearance of a warrior to lead the survivors. And again, the paradox of she who is sent back to protect the warrior actually begins the cycle.

Note: If I can say one bad thing about this movie is that Miller majorly skimped on the special effects budget. This was so below even current TV capabilities and quality, it was extremely distracting. Everytime Liquid Terminator appeared, he was rubbery and off-colour, looking like a test-pattern instead of the final work. Not sure why this happened.

[We Disagree] Alita: Battle Angel

2018, d. Robert Rodriguez - Crave

Remember the first trailer for Alita: Battle Angel?  The one where Alita's eyes are so huge they're legitimately upsetting...the kind of unnatural visual that gets the villagers rallying with their torches and storming the castle ready to kill the beasts.  In case you forgot:




Looking into those huge CGEyes, the trailer is a horrifying and unsettling journey beyond the uncanny valley.  But once you actually start watching the you can possibly look past the eyes and instead be tangibly upset with the tangibly unreality of Alita's entire computer animated face that is on screen throughout over 80% of the film.  You'll never ease into it's not-human nature...the way the mouth moves primarily, especially when it contorts into a pinched, fangy smile.  *Shudder*

In the year-ish since Alita's debut and unsuccessful domestic box office venture (though it did make considerable bank globally), the film has garnered a rather cult-like collection of supporters (*cough*Toast*cough*).  I won't ever deny anyone something they enjoy, but dear god this is a terrible, terrible movie.

I don't know the source material since I'm not an anime fan.  There's something structurally about most anime that I find grating, so I just avoid most of it (which isn't to say I dislike all Japanese animation, like Studio Ghibli and non-genre anime tend to be ok, but I just can't summon the energy to wade through it all to find the ones I could tolerate).  What bothers me about this westernized "live action" re-envisioning of the anime isn't the aspects that feel anime.  No, it's the godawful dialogue, character dynamics, story progression and, grrr, futuresport.  I hate futuresports.


The relationships between the characters only exist in cliche.  There's not a single dynamic here that feels unique, and every  one of those relationships progress in the film in completely predictable fashion.  Like memory-less Alita, the waif-ish ingenue, immediately falls in love with Hugo, and accepts Dr. Dyson as her father figure, and makes "the big speech" to try to rally the antagonistic hunter-warriors to her aide against the bad guys.

As a result, the dialogue in this film is clunky as hell.  The characters only ever speak like they're reading lines in preparation for a series of very bad plays.  I can't think of a single moment where it felt like two characters shared anything real between them.  All dialogue here seems to have intent, whether it's overt exposition or pensive pondering or brutal, Hallmark-ian romantic exchanges. 

The film's visuals are very unique, and the world is rather distinct (it's a far future society that has all but collapsed, where there exists only one remaining city, "Iron City", surrounded by trash, and above it a hovering golden city Zalem, the dream of every lowly person to achieve status to go up there.  But rather than this acting as any sort of tangible class metaphor, the story ignores it for a cliched adventure about a cyborg girl and her missing memories and a lot of stupid futuresport.

The source material was originally serialized manga, and even the original anime was multi-part.  The film reflects this with it's many, many, too many plot threads, like the murder mystery plot, or Hugo's dreams of being a Motorball star and going to Zalem, or Alita's missing memories, or Dr. Dyson's tension with his estranged ex wife over the use of their dead daughter's body (and name) for this amnesiac cyborg... the "hunter warriors" league, the influence of Nova from high up above, the curious case of the missing limbs, etc etc.  This film has so much going on, and almost all of it is exhaustingly cliche.
 The reality of Alita revolves around its futuresport, called "Motorball".  The biggest champion of Motorball has the potential to elevate to Zalem, so everyone is obsessed with it.  People body mod with cybernetics to give them an advantage in Motorball, and it's an "anything goes" sport.  It's people wearing rollerblades with rockets on them racing after a ball in a circular track, trying to slam the ball into a repository.  It's just cyborg Rollerball.  God I hate futuresports.  Films can get too mired in explaining futuresports rules, or they can forget to really explain the futuresport and just let it happen, and in either case it's annoying...does anyone *really* care about the result of any futuresports game ever?  It's never playing out in real-time so the drama of a sports match can never capture the feeling of watch a real sport, so what's the point?  (Yes, Quiddich is a futuresport and I hate the amount of space it takes up in those books and movies too).

Most of Robert Rodriguez's films are enjoyable, even if they're not great films .  There's a consistent style shared among most of his films from the Desperado trilogy through to the various grindhouse-inspired work and his kids movies.  The outsiders are Sin City and Predators, where the director is working on an established property that isn't his own and seems to create a tighter, more careful production.  This is definitely in that outsider territory, to the point that I didn't remember he was the director until the end credits.

Likewise I forgot that James Cameron was involved with this.  It was seeing Cameron's script credit (with Laeta Kalogridis) that it all made sense.  Cameron trades almost exclusively in big showy productions filled with boring stock characters who never remotely feel or act like real people.  I can accept those types of characters in a cheap, intentionally stupid Hallmark movie, but in a film costing over a hundred million dollars, I want characters that believe their reality.   

I hated this movie.

Alita: Battle Angel

2019, Robert Rodriguez (Machete) -- download

I have said it before but there is a certain type of genre movie that seems to be made for me. Think big, expansive worlds like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets or over the top scifi worlds like in Mortal Engines & Jupiter Ascending. I like big, cinematic and imaginative. That is one of the reasons I was always attracted to anime, for nothing gets its vast on like the melodrama in anime. The Japanese are not afraid to make their worlds too big, just like the eyes and just like the cries out loud. And the melodrama.

Alita: Battle Angel came originally as a Manga and then as a popular 90s anime movie. Rodriguez comes along, after James Cameron gives up to focus on his blue elves, with a grand film that is faithful in many ways my memory says it was. It's been years since I either read the comic or saw the movie, but the world, the characters and the sheer audacity of its far future human cyborg relations is faithful.

In case you haven't guessed, I rather liked it, and I will have to either see it (if possible) in the cinema or at least get a blu-ray, as my wont of downloading decent rips doesn't always translate well with movies as CGI illuminated as this one, with digital breakup taking over many scenes.

In this world Zalem, the last remaining floating city (the rest taken down by war hundreds of years prior), hangs above Iron City. The rich are above, the poor are below but everyone is mixed up in trans-humanity, some going so far as to only have their brains remain, the rest of their bodies converted into fantastic creatures, many so far as to become monsters. Ido (Christoph Waltz), the local free-clinic doctor, finds the upper torso of Alita in the trash (all that falls from Zalem can have a new life in Iron City) and reconstructs her, including the lower body of his lost daughter. Her memory is absent so he tries to instill in her a wonder for Iron City while ignoring the fact she has a legendary warrior buried somewhere inside her.

Migawd this movie looked lovely! Iron City is just lovingly created, drawing upon the source material but also using imagery that made me think of Mexico City. Of course, the parallels of the current US / Mexico situation, with the glorious, rich city in The Sky (behind The Wall) compared to people who are just doing their best to gain enough prestige to move there. That's not to say Iron City isn't a lovely place to live, as despite the obvious separation of lifestyles, you can still be happy & healthy in Iron City. As long as the monsters don't get you.

While the overall plot of a young girl finding herself and her empowered place in the world doesn't entirely work, the classic anime of What Is Human does. I always translated that to What Is Sentient, because who are we to decide what gets to be A Person? Humanity is likely not the only intelligent life in the universe, so its not so much as whether you are Human or not, as whether you are a living creature of intelligent & emotion. Ghost in the Shell took that premise and decided that the presence of a Ghost, a migrated otherness (soul?) that was housed in an entirely artificial shell, was enough to be Human. They don't go as far here, for as long as there is a brain that generates humanity, the metal people of Iron City are human. Or so the story wants us to believe. Meanwhile, we question the humanity of the man who while entirely biological, seems to act as the shell for another man.

This one will definitely bear another watching or two, and likely join The Shelf. That said, I am thinking its maybe the time to get a proper 4K blu-ray player.