Pacific Rim

One simple thing is all I ask of even the most cheesy of movies, please keep me in the world of the movie.  Once I am jerked out of the movie's world then my perception and judgement of the movie becomes more critical.

With del Toro's new movie Pacific Rim I was jerked out from the onset.  When in the opening a kaiju is simply defined as a giant beast.  Under this loose interpretation King Kong and the dinosaur from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms are kaiju not just Gojira, Rodan, Gamera, and King Ghidorrah to name a few.

Another problem is making connections of scenes from this movie to other movies.  Riley and Mori remind me of Kodai and Yoko from Space Battleship Yamato.  The brash Australian Jaeger pilot reminds me of Iceman from Top Gun.  The Level Four kaiju dragging Gipsy Danger on the ground and carrying it into the air, too many skirmishes between Gojira and Rodan or King Ghiddorah.  When Gipsy Danger deploys it's sword, it will be hard not to think of Ivy from Soul Caliber and her sword.  The sub-sea rift is either inspired by X The Unknown or since we are talking an inter-dimensional rift then perhaps Battle Fairy Yukikaze.  The transport of the Jaegers by airlift and how the pilots synchronize reminds me of Neon Genesis Evangelion.  Once you see the ending you will go that's almost Independence Day.

The reduced science team is the most annoying thing in the movie.  Which is saying something since Ron Perlman is playing the guy who runs a black market selling kaiju parts.  One part of the team is this cliched crippled stiff upper lift British boffin, all he was missing was a pipe.  The other one the boffin called a 'kaiju groupie.'  Think of Rick Moranis' character in Ghostbusters but loves playing with the guts of alien creatures and getting tattoos of them put on his body.  At one point the boffin is madly playing with his chalkboards before the Jaeger commander while the groupie was sitting just a  few feet away without any protective gear tossing kaiju entrails on the floor.  At a guess they are supposed to be a bit of comic relief, but they are also the science team.  They might be a split version of Brent Spiner's scientist character from Independence Day. The British one is a far cry from Dean Jagger's Dr. Royston from X The Unknown or Prof. Quatermass from The Creeping Unknown.

Which brings me to another problem with this movie.  Earth has tried to seal the undersea rift before and has failed.  And until the science team rushes to Shatterdome to give the Jaegers the critical information they need to travel the rift, it seems they were just going to do the same thing they have tried before and failed.  That sounds too much like insanity and suicide all rolled into one though it could also be called a plan of desperation - a kamikaze move.

I will mention one other thing that bugged me in this movie and give it a rest.  Gipsy Danger is fighting a kaiju in Hong Kong that spits acid.  Audience goers have seen this acid partially dissolve another Jaeger and instantly dissolve the facade of a skyscraper.  So when Gipsy Danger grapples with the kaiju and Riley reaches into the mouth and rips its tongue out without dissolving Gipsy Danger's hand, it is another moment of being jerked out of the movie by a lack of internal consistency. 

Overall I would grade it as a B movie.

Armoured Women

Back in 1934 Robert E. Howard help create a whole new genre of sword fantasy, the fearsome woman warrior.  Her name was Red Sonya and the story was The Shadow of the Vulture.  This inspired the later comic hero Red Sonja and then a movie was made which put Red Sonja into the Age of Conan.  So the ring linking two Robert E. Howard characters was forged.

Red Sonya/Red Sonja had another impact in the world of fiction.  More than a new genre was created, a new term was also birthed.  From thence onwards any story that featured a woman warrior in skimpy armor was called a 'Chick in Chainmail' story.  Esther Friesner and Baen Publishing then proceeded to turn the concept on its head with the publication of Chicks in Chainmail, a collection of short stories featuring woman warriors who proceed to prove who's really the baddest warriors.

So where is this going this post?  Is it supposed to be just on fiction and fantasy?  Not really.  Like the authors in Esther Friesner's book, the United States Army has come to a realization of a different sort, body armor designed for men really does not properly fit all the women in the military.  So they have gone back to the design board to address this uncomfortable matter.  I just have a problem with the Army invoking another fictional female warrior in their attempt to sell the new designs - Xena.  One thing I can say is, if the new armor is based on the Xena armor then the US military won't see any chicks in high-tech chainmail.  I am reserving judgement on the whole idea after the Army finally realized that the $5 billion ACU program was a dangerous bust.

Looking forward in time, if the Army is successful in creating more female friendly body armor, will the Knight Sabre HardSuits be far behind?

Prometheus - Spoilers Ahead

Do not read what follows if you have not seen this movie. 

First off, this movie was pretty decent.  Knowledge of Alien and Aliens robs some of the thrill while giving birth to wondering when a chest will burst.

Opening of movie will leave you puzzled.  Pale gray humanoid with muscles on top of muscles and no hair eats what seems is a bio-weapon that dissolves his body as it tumbles off a raging falls.  Meanwhile this classic giant saucer departs the planet.

The planet that humans think is referenced in these multiple ancient drawings or steles leads them to a planet orbiting a ringed gas giant, this planet is labeled LV-223.  Nostromo follows a radio signal to LV-426.

The Weyland survey vessel Prometheus lacks any drones to survey the planet.  So the whole ship goes into the atmosphere to find things.  And they quickly do.

They enter a giant stupa with a ring wall.  In the movie they are constantly calling it a pyramid.

The android David, whom Weyland calls his son except for lacking a soul, has been studying during transit such things as Hindi, the implication being he is trying to learn from the Indo-European languages the mother tongue that gave birth to this linguistic family. - One must also note, David becomes enamored with Peter O'Toole's portrayal of Lawrence of Arabia and tries to imitate him. - So when David sees inscriptions on the wall, he start pushing buttons because it seems he recognizes what they mean.

Almost as soon as they enter the stupa and detect the atmosphere is breathable, everyone starts taking off their helmets.  No one is worrying it seems about airborne pathogens in the stupa.

David activates a hologram recorder and they follow the aliens running to find their first body.  Missing it's head.  David opens the hatch before anyone can stop him.  They find the severed head plus all these odd containers arrayed around a giant humanoid bust.  I am reminded in some way of the bust of Hel from Metropolis.

They run a carbon scan on the dead alien and get a reading of 2,000 years.  Wait a minute.  How do they know with any certainty what their instrument is calibrated to read C-14 decay matches this planet?

Then suddenly this killer dust storm loaded with silica just happens to blow up with the survey crew in the stupa.  So we get drama of the doctor, toting severed alien head, getting bumped around before being rescued by David.

They drag the head to Medical. Run scans saying its clean.  Ross and the doctor are merely wearing normal surgery garb and masks.  Then they decide to feed electricity to the head to trick it into thinking it's alive.  Shades of The Modern Prometheus?  And naturally the alien is infected with something and they slap the head back into containment before it goes splatter.

Ross and the doctor don analysis of the alien DNA and compare it to humans.  100% match.  Even though the alien is taller, stronger, hairless, pallid in color, and eye structure is different.

While all this is happening aboard ship, including David infecting Holloway with the alien bug, back in the stupa two guys are still in there.  They had told Ross they were leaving because aliens was freaking them out.  And they manage to get lost in the stupa.  Meanwhile the smart balls are busily mapping the stupa and it seems no one thought of getting directions.  And when they stumble into the chamber where the giant head is, suddenly they are nonchalant as these alien serpents start approaching them.  You can imagine what happens next.


I am going to skip ahead to where speculation runs rampant, the end and what it leaves unanswered.  We get to see one Alien burst out in almost the form we see in Alien.  Ross and David manage to leave LV-223 in one of the alien ships. Ross wants to ask the Engineers why did they change their mind and set out to create the means of wiping out humanity.  The alien might have also found the same Engineer's ship.  Or Ross was still infected, though she had surgically removed the half-alien fetus in her womb that which later turned into a tentacled elder god out of Lovecraft.  Nostromo responds to what they think is an SOS on LV-486 and find an alien corpse, well one of the Engineer's spacesuits with chest blown open, in the chair.  Who is to say that is not Ross in one of their spacesuits?

Update - I guess I should not blog at 3:30am ever again.  Character's name is not Ross but Elizabeth Shaw.  I do not know where I got that name.

Science Fiction

Governor Luis Raoul Panablanco sat at his desk in the governor's mansion, the flags of Texas and the North American Union at his back to frame the picture, the Great Seal of the State of Texas above his head on the wall behind him.

...

At nine minutes, thirty-two seconds into his scheduled half-hour speech, he was saying:

"... as the proof that God is on my side is that on the very morning that I banished the Alamo mutineers into orbit, a sunspot appeared! The first sunspot in more than three years appeared in my hour of need! God has stretched out his hand to me!"

At eight minutes, fifty-five seconds into its scheduled flight, a cruise missile, stolen from the NAU Air Force, whistled down the street, bobbed over the fence surrounding the governor's mansion, rolled to miss a large oak tree, and crashed through the window and drawn drapes of the governor's office at 650 klicks per hour to explode a metric ton of high explosives where the governor's desk would have stood if it hadn't been moved to the other side of the room to accommodate the television crews.

In the event, the fact that the governor had moved his desk did him no more good than the fact he was wearing the best bulletproof vest on the market. The place of honor at his funeral was occupied by a hamburger patty of governor, bodyguards, and television crew.

-------------------------------------------------------
  pg 24-25. The Revolution from Rosinante. Alexis A. Gilliland. Del Rey. 1981

Meanwhile President Obama and his administration are going forward with drones over US air space.  For example the EPA is using drones to spy on livestock in states like Nebraska.