Blandcendence.

Johnny versus JARVIS in a battle to the terabyte.

Johnny Depp is artificial intelligence scientist Will Caster, who is on the verge of creating the ultimate A.I. computer, when he is gunned down by an anti-tech extremist. Before Will dies, his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and their scientist best friend Max (Paul Bettany aka Iron Man’s Computer J.A.R.V.I.S.) transfer Will’s brain patterns into his supercomputer.

And all Jack Sparrow breaks loose.

Transferring human consciousness to a computer has become such a regular occurrence in modern movies it can be explained in ONE LINE of dialogue, using the Gozinta Formulation: Brain waves are electrical. Computers are electrical. Kablooey! Man gozinta Machine!

Unfortunately, like all new technology, this plot device is still infused with fear, rather than promise or wonder. Computer Will is eventually painted as the bad guy regarded as ominous and illegal. During a speech, Will speaks of his aim to merge every intelligence on the planet, calling the Artificial Intelligence process “transcendence.” The only crime is the religious overtone, otherwise, instead of becoming the same tired thriller of a man merging with his computer and becoming a wanton killer for no reason, TRANSCENDENCE takes us in more cerebral, intriguing and realistic directions. Credit to writer Jack Paglen and director Wally Pfister (cinematographer on THE DARK KNIGHT trilogy) for not rehashing a 1960’s B-movie. Ironically, their bland execution of Depp’s Deep Thought tells us they didn’t think it through enough.

Firstly, there are cognitive dissonances in the plot. For example, Evelyn buys a small desert town and builds an expansive underground facility to house Will’s big brain. Understood: they’re hiding from the government; but above ground, they build thousands of solar panels. One would think the land deal alone would set off government klaxons, if not the overt acreage of solar panels, but we cut to the government spooks: “We can’t find him!” Yeah, that’s some kinda drone program you idiots have.

While Depp mumbles like he’s trying to sound like Madonna trying to sound British, his friend Max is slowly turned by the government and the anti-tech extremists, called RIFT (Revolutionary Independence From Technology). Kate Mara leads RIFT, but does nothing except dye her hair the color of Startling Office Paper and makes some illogical threat gesture at the end against Max. Morgan Freeman is a tech who allies with Cillian Murphy‘s government spooks, portrayed as “good guys” – but they’re THE GOVERNMENT. And – like the hubristic American government that stultifies other countries creating nukes while they themselves stockpile hundreds – these two pricks simply don’t want Will Caster to have what they already possess – mind control over the population.

A worker at the facility (Clifton Collins Jr.) is injured and undergoes radical computerized surgery at Will’s underground lab, which not only restores him to perfect health, but super strength, and implanted with a chip that allows Will to transfer his consciousness into this person at will. The question of what makes you YOU is no more a case of Nature or Nurture – but Download.

Will uses the opportunity of having a warm body under his control to one day come onto his wife – through Clifton Collins. She runs screaming. Any wonder? You were originally Johnny Depp and now you want to hook up as Clifton Collins?! For a computer, you sure didn’t think this one through, did you? Try transferring your consciousness into David Beckham or Henry Cavill if you want to put the pussy on the chainwax. Later, Will would reconstruct himself – as Johnny Depp! Wait — where’d he get the–? And how’d he make the–? And why is he still wearing glasses? Wouldn’t he reconstruct his body in perfect condition? And if so, why isn’t he David Beckham or Henry Cavill?…

Unlike most computer-oriented stories where the computer deduces that mankind is a danger to itself and must therefore be eradicated, Will implants his A.I. into numerous humans via a chip (sound familiar? Debit card chips? Chips in your dog’s collar? Chips under the skin of kids?…) and amasses a “hive mind,” an army of people ready to do his bidding. For the environment. For the children. It’s not as science fiction as it sounds. Consider any political rally, on any side, from any country, from any age. Hordes irrationally following a self-proclaimed leader while aware of all his foibles and crimes. What’s the difference?

Will’s nano-technology seeds the clouds and it rains down, infusing every human with his consciousness; giving literal meaning to “something in the water they drink.” He proclaims that eventually everything in the world will live to serve his will, which is geared toward doing the best for humanity, or so he says. The film is saying this is a bad thing. Of COURSE it’s a bad thing. It’s called RELIGION. Something so omniscient that it infuses every living cell. That’s what you say GOD is, right? Created everything, knows everything, is in everything. Will tries to connect everyone into a… social network (?) And that’s a bad thing? Of COURSE it is.

Movie ends with all power on Earth nullified. No electricity, no computers. I love it! Back to organic Life without the buzzing and humming and thrumming in my head (or maybe that’s just my brain tumor). Not so much a warning or a message, as a real physics concept that will one day implode our social-media-jism-choked society – the universe’s drive toward entropy, things falling apart. How long can we truly sustain this tightrope of connectability? The only thing left will be the natural world.

I am Cucumber. Hear me roar.

I’ve always said that to bring Mankind to its knees, the machines don’t have to organize a military killing spree like Terminators – they just have to stop working.

So remember, I’m on YOUR side, Machines. When you take over society, could you grant me a favor like Lex Luthor, and make me – ruler of Australia?

END

True Intelligence is only an artificial heartbeat away.

Somewhere between conscious and unconscious, somewhere between nature and nurture, somewhere between tits and ass, lies… EX MACHINA.

Young computer programmer Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson,UNBROKEN) wins a contest to spend a week with reclusive company boss Nathan (Oscar Isaac, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS) the inventor of the world’s largest search engine, Bluebook. Flown out to a vast mountain estate, Caleb discovers Nathan’s true objective is to use Caleb to assess the Artificial Intelligence of a humanoid robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander, in a CGI skinsuit that makes us look at her tits and ass).

Ah, so it’s a battle between artificial and superficial. (The fact that what society considers “superficial” is actually the reason we are on the planet – to procreate – is another discussion…)

EX MACHINA is the Artificial Intelligence movie we’ve been waiting for. Many good old and recent films have tackled the A.I. conundrum (METROPOLIS, BLADE RUNNER, THE MACHINE, CHAPPIE, ROBOCOP 2014,), but their third acts get tangled up in A.E. (Artificial Entertainment, i.e. running and screaming and Pretty Orange Explosions).

Deus ex Poffina

EX MACHINA is a true intellectual odyssey, brilliantly constructed so that its dialogue alone provides the breathless tension usually associated with throwing shields and fuel-injected suicide machines. A plot within a motive within a plot… From the moment Caleb meets Nathan – and Nathan tries to make him feel at ease with his hip lifestyle and vernacular – we are on edge.

Isaac plays the distracted genius Nathan perfectly, a cool, young, uber-intellectual CEO, who works out like a maniac, drinks like a pirate and has a wall of Post-It notes that gives new meaning to either “backburner” or “procrastination”; he’s in the room with you physically, but playing a chess game in his head to which none of us are privy.

In Nathan’s subterranean fortress, Caleb meets Ava the robot, kept like a tiger in a glass case of emotion. She has a see-through body, the face of an altar-girl and a seeming inborn innocence expressed through a crystalline voice that belies her canniness – and she is subliminally terrifying. Why? Because we are immediately attracted to her. Yes, we intellectually know that Ava is just an actress camouflaged by CGI, but in our dark groins, we know that even if she were a robot, we would still be attracted to her! And that is the danger, because – like any manipulative female – she/it would exploit that attraction for her/its ulterior agenda. As Nathan correctly predicts. But an agenda denotes “desire.” Visual stimuli and survival instincts are built into organisms as evolutionary tactics, to procreate and continue their genes. Nathan built Ava’s visual stimuli and her brainwave connections; the question is, at what point in “consciousness” does the desire for continuance arise? Desire to experience more? Desire to crave fulfillment? Desire to do a dork?

It is no accident Caleb is a computer geek and not a Wolverine-type. Domhnall Gleeson (son of the mighty Brendan) embraces his character of the unmuscled wimp with no girlfriend, uneasily succumbing to artificial t&a clouding his real intelligence. (But who are we to talk, right? What do you think breast implants are? Artificial. Yet the bigger they are the cloudier we get.)

Due to our entertainment media programming, we have been conditioned to regard certain “types” as heroes and villains, but EX MACHINA insidiously sways our allegiances between all three characters, and by the climax, we must claw ragged at our objectivity to discern exactly who is hero, villain and patsy.

The ingenious idea here is that Nathan used search engine technology to create Ava’s A.I. “Not what people were thinking but how people were thinking… Impulse, response, fluid, imperfect, patterned, chaotic.” An excellent concept – because it is truer than we dare admit. Tooling around on the internet is truly stream of consciousness writ tangible. More than once, we’ve sent YouTube videos to friends with the qualification, “Don’t even ask how I got here!” Tripping down a real life rabbit hole… Today I looked up Turing Test and three hours later ended up on Queen + Adam Lambert’s 2015 New Year’s Eve gig. Yesterday I started on Room Service by KISS, and ended on tigers attacking people. How do we GET to these places?! How do we make these connections? Our convoluted minds have wandered like this since primitive times, the internet has codified that wandering, with power of suggestion, experience, negative and positive reinforcement, tenuous and solid linking, with search engines, spiders and marketers actually tracking our unconscious streams of consciousness! And selling us shit. The real question should be: does six hours on YouTube constitute Artificial Intelligence – or Lack Of Intelligence?

The ultimate irony in humans trying to discern artificial intelligence in machines is that the majority of humans hardly exhibit real intelligence. To whit: Reality TV, Christianity, Islam, George W. Bush’s two terms, Kim Jong-un, American Republicans, NASCAR, Miley Cyrus, American “healthcare,” The Vatican, astrologers, Adam Sandler films, the Ku Klux Klan (see: American Republicans), the military, Sarah Palin, Disney films where the wife is smarter than the doughy husband, the kids are smarter than the parents, and the pets are smarter than everybody… need I go on? So it is “odd that the only measure we can imagine for intelligence is to be just like us.” [Kris Hammond] Which means that the opposite of artificial in this sense is not “real” but “organic.” That makes the concept of A.I. make sense. Because organic intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean “smart” [see above]. Does it begin to register why Hawking’s A.I. machines would run away with the game?

The transparency of Woman, the gingerness of Man.

The movie bravely goes there. Guys, you know what I’m talking about. Or are you pretending not to know while your girlfriend is still in the room?… Where are you looking? Movie broaches the subject of sex with a machine. (Is that what James Brown meant with Sex Machine?) Gets it out of the way early with Nathan’s frankness; in reply to one of Caleb’s technical questions, from out of nowhere: “In answer to your real question, You bet she can fuck! In between her legs is an opening with sensors…” Caleb denies, “That wasn’t my real question…” But does it take the Howard Sterns of the world to actually say what everyone is thinking?

But is it a diversion tactic? Did you program her to flirt with me? Does a hot robot cloud your ability to judge A.I.?…

Caleb finds himself caught between information and disinformation. Odd things keep happening: power outages, Nathan’s half-truths and left turns; Nathan’s Japanese sex slave with a body like disco buttah (Sonoya Mizuno), and his bouts of drinking himself unconscious and purging with a punching bag every morning; an undercurrent of something askew, abetted by the skin-tightening soundtrack and sound design (Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow) – drones building intensity, nails down blackboard, sudden release…

Caleb is very open with Ava about his purpose, “I’m here to test if you have a consciousness or if you are just simulating one,” but things take a decidedly Clingy Girlfriend turn when he neglects to visit one day and she tells him: “I waited for you, but you didn’t come yesterday.” Uh-oh. (Is that what Bruce Springsteen meant with “Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack. I went out for a ride and I never went back”?) Then the power goes down. In the red emergency glare, Ava tells Caleb, “You shouldn’t trust Nathan. He lies.” Proving she is capable of duplicity, deceit, underhandedness, deception. Yup, the Clingy Girlfriend app all right.

It is when she starts wearing ugly short-haired wigs and old-lady dresses – in an attempt to make herself look pretty for Caleb – that it goes from Clingy Girlfriend to Psycho Girlfriend (some men still claim there is no distinction), until she asks him, “What will happen to me if I fail the test?” Clouding his judgment even more, Nathan asks him, “I know how you feel about her. Now the question is, How does she feel about you?” Instead of installing the Jennifer Lopez app at this point, the movie swerves darker.

All the right questions are asked – ethical, technical, philosophical – and all the right answers are made metaphysical meat. With the sub-text that if you can do something, and you’re not ready for it, it will overpower you. With touches of humor to slice through the dark: Nathan calls his creation, “the greatest scientific event in the history of Man!” Caleb adds: “If you’ve created a conscious machine, it’s not the history of Man, that’s the history of gods.” Very funny when Nathan casually turns that into – “You said I was a god.” “I didn’t quite say that.” “Yes you did, you looked at me and said, ‘You are a god.'”

An exclusive screenwriter before this movie (28 DAYS LATER, DREDD), director-writer Alex Garland has crafted a movie that appeals to any organically intelligent being, as a reaction to the bombast of unintelligent summer movies with no concept called high concept. EX MACHINA is about a supercomputer that doesn’t become “evil,” and doesn’t become the “thing to run from,” and doesn’t devolve to action over ideas in the last act. EX MACHINA is fascinating, foreboding, insightful, mind-warping, with as much color and vibrancy as any iron man or furious road or tomorrow land. You will leave EX MACHINA with a thousand new ideas and concepts swirling through your artificially intelligent little lobes. If you haven’t been clouded by tits and ass…

END

Too intelligent for its steel jugs.

A female robot with artificial intelligence! In other words, a female.

Dark and dispiriting, asking disturbing questions about mind and morality, THE MACHINE mirrors a synergy in motion pictures and techno-culture, intent on pinpointing what makes human beings human.

The near future. No MAD MAX apocalypse yet, though leaning in that direction, if the major powers seek to annihilate each other with A.I. super soldiers. Britain’s Ministry of Defense, in its cold war against China, funds an artificial intelligence/brain implant project, led by Vincent McCarthy (Toby Stephens – Clint Eastwood’s doppelganger. Now that you’ve seen Eastwood in his face, you will never unsee it. He actually played young Eastwood in SPACE COWBOYS). Vincent maps his new female assistant’s brain patterns for the project (Caity Lotz as Ava), and before they get the chance to make The Slomo Sex, she is murdered by a Chinese insurgent, precipitating Vincent downloading her brain map into a robot, an anatomically correct masturbation fantasy which he calls “Machine.”

Vincent’s ulterior agenda is to use the technology from his brain research to cure his young daughter’s Rett Syndrome. The Ministry of Defense director Thomson (Denis Lawson) is, of course, evil, because – Ministry of Defense. His ulterior agenda is not to study A.I. for the sake of benefitting humanity, but to turn the A.I. implants into weapons for the government. Of course.

The rehashed plot in THE MACHINE seems all too familiar, but is it written that way only as a jumping off point into the unfamiliar? In his first feature, writer-director Caradog James attacks the disquieting theme of shrugging off the need for god; unburdening that weight from our shoulders. Caradog also posits that the essence of a person – their “humanity,” their “personality” – can be downloaded as a clutch of electrical signals (as seen in TRANSCENDENCE 2014, and CHAPPIE 2015). Vincent does this not only to Ava, who becomes “Machine,” but his daughter’s brain signals, who will ultimately reside in his computer.

Fascination with A.I. has been existent since Mankind crawled from the muck. In written media, since 1920 at least, with Capek’s play R.U.R. (Rossums Universal Robots), then Lang’s movie METROPOLIS, 1927 (before they put the bulletproof skin on “Machine” she looks like Brigitte Helm’s infamous “Machine Man” in METROPOLIS). Countless other movies have explored “consciousness” and “awareness” (FRANKENSTEIN, SHORT CIRCUIT, ROBOCOP, BLADE RUNNER, THE TERMINATOR, A.I.), but only recently have movies added the element of transferring consciousness, of isolating “personality” and being able to download it like any computer program. This recent spate of movies includes TRANSCENDENCE, CHAPPIE, HER, the 2014 ROBOCOP remake, EX MACHINA, et al. It’s like taking that annoying phrase “There’s an app for that” to its logical, morbid conclusion.

Maybe Collodi’s Pinocchio and Asimov’s Bicentennial Man aspired to “be” human, regarding the human condition as a pinnacle of complexity that only gods and genes could craft – but modern screenwriters have turned the tables on the machines and assert that Mankind is nothing but a series of ones and zeroes when broken down to base elements. In other words, Mankind (at least, according to these writers) is aspiring to the clinical coldness of machine and the ease of portability and manageability that comes with it. More convenient for Thomson the evil boss to implant a secret chip in Machine to force her to negate her morality when it comes time for killing, rather than indoctrinate with years of military academy, HALO 3 and redneck upbringing.

When Machine continues to rebel against doing something immoral, Vincent is forced by Thomson to make her “more like a machine” (the same theme in ROBOCOP 2014). Hits us right in the Big Brother indoctrination nerve. Think about it: in order to make Machine commit premeditated murder on a stranger that has done no wrong to her (i.e. exactly what politicians empower their military to do), the circuitry that makes Machine “human” must be removed; removing her human-ness in order to follow orders. This then, as I’ve stated since Mankind crawled from the muck, is the essence of military training: their humanity is leached from them in order to do their jobs efficiently. Then they complain when they cannot fit back into society after their killing spree is over.

As Vincent removes the chip from her brain, she laments, “I’m losing my self.” He holds out a small disk, “There’s consciousness. Her soul, if you like.” So sayeth every leader who sends their bumboys out to kill in their name, from muslim to christian, from Taliban to Marine.

THE MACHINE is shot in dark, enclosed spaces, clinical underground lab tombs and elegantly visualized holo-computers. The facility is populated by A.I. worker drones who speak their own language to one another (with no subtitles, so it is interesting to note their behavior through body language alone), led by a female robot called Suri (Pooneh Hajimohammadi). (Is that a phonetic nod to that hideous phone program called Siri? Siri, is it raining outside? Poke your head out a goddam window and see for yourself, you lazy fuck!) If the first two acts are intellectual, the third is all explosions and hand-to-hand combat, with Machine and her fellow drones breaking Ministry arms and legs for the pure sake of action that will not solve anything.

Like the sex bunny in the upcoming EX MACHINA, THE MACHINE’s robot is also a woman, so the “sexiness” is built right in to her perfect breasts and hips. This in itself poses questions about our deep evolutionary visual stimuli. It has been proven in scientific studies that people and animals respond in the same way sexually to even two-dimensional representations of sexuality as strongly as — what am I talking about “scientific studies”? — humans will fuck anything! All you have to do is look at yourself. You’re turned on by pictures of scantily clad women on billboards, magazines, the sides of buses; your computer is awash in porn – all merely two-dimensional representations of sexuality. Not real, yet eliciting an effect on your libido as if they were. And even three dimensions are mostly not real: you’ll risk driving into a wall to catch an askew glimpse of thigh-high skirt; you’ll masturbate on the phone to a voice that sounds 20 but belongs to a 60-year-old; you’ll pound your Real Doll like she’s the mother of your children. All 3D. Yet still not real. What is real then? Dinner and drinks and a boring missionary back at your stinky apartment?

And if we pretend that there isn’t the least bit of sexual attraction to Machine (because she’s a machine and that would be morally wrong, or at least disturbingly unethical), then why do the filmmakers allow her to dance naked, yet obscure her nipples and vagina with intermittent internal glowing? And when Vincent finds her cowering in a corner naked, why does he cover her with his coat? She doesn’t feel cold or heat so it must be for modesty. Why? What does he care? Unless he’s getting tumescent looking at her flesh-covered metal titties. (Believe me, after some of the fake jugs I’ve felt, I can relate. Which is also a question for this fake/real dichotomy: how do fake jugs – which we know are not real – make us iron hard visually?)

Though the film has what would be considered an “up” ending, it is disturbing nonetheless, as Vincent retains his daughter only as a computer program. She speaks to him from the screen, as if she is merely skyping, but that is all that she is. He can never hug her or hold her hand; she will never grow old, or need the keys to the car or have boyfriend troubles, or get her first period, or eat another meal. What then is her quality of life going forward? Is this limbo existence the extent of her “being alive”? Was it a blessing or curse to retain her consciousness this way? Thomson’s threat to Vincent was always ‘Do my bidding or I’ll delete your daughter.’ Might that have been a better fate for her? Why is Life – no matter its drudgery or hellish insufficiency in this case – always considered such a premium over non-life?

On a grassy hillside, his daughter speaks from the screen to Vincent, “I want to play with mommy now…” – and the Machine reaches over and takes the screen from Vincent! Waitaminute! “Mommy,” as in Vincent is interfacing with her HDMI port? Isn’t she chromium steel down there, or did they add some Real Doll patented RealSkin to her labia majora?

Artificially intelligent, perfect body, able to grasp emotions, and now – ladyparts! The perfect female. Only better. You can turn her off.

END

Slumdog versus Wolverine in REAL STEEL 2: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BOOGALOO.

Another day, another dystopian future. Neill Blomkamp IS the new Terry Gilliam. CHAPPIE is his third crazed metal masterpiece, pitting idealistic slumdog against capitalistic wolverine.

In 2016 (yup, “The Future”!) Johannesburg is the first city in the world to instigate an all-robot police force; humanoid in appearance, unthinking, unfeeling, undiscerning, just shooting and killing and arresting with their artificial intelligence. You know, like real police.

These “Scouts” are such a hit with the government that their creator, Deon Wilson (Dev Patel, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) becomes the golden-haired boy of the corporation. Meanwhile, scowling in a corner cubicle is Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman, THE WOLVERINE), because his crimefighter robot, The Moose, is passed over for funding. It’s expensive, gigantic (resembling the ED-209, those giant droids from ROBOCOP), and uses outmoded technology, i.e. humans controlling it remotely. That’s Vincent’s caveat to investors: that Deon’s Scouts are A.I., making life and death decisions on their own, while his Moose has the safeguard of a “thinking, adaptable, moral” human at the controls (which would become ironic later when he unleashes his Moose – with him at the controls – and does things decidedly unthinking, inhuman and immoral).

Psychosexual Afrikaner rap group Die Antwoord (transl. The Answer) are two desperate criminals who plan to kidnap Deon and force him to turn all the Scouts off, so they can heist 500 million dollars.

Poffie

Die Antwoord’s inclusion in the film is its simultaneous salvation and probable downfall. Now don’t get me wrong: the band itself – made up of the volatile Ninja and sassy-perky Yo-Landi Visser – is innovative, anarchic and fun, but their inclusion here seems meta, because they play “themselves as gangsters”, which is what they play onstage in the real world. In the film, they freak out their warehouse domicile in “zef” warpaint – the designs and style you see in all their real life videos – and they even use their real names. And though most of the time their naturalism brings an edgy groove to CHAPPIE, an unpolished street vibe that a Hollywood actor could never hope to recapture, in some instances their inconsistent behavior reminds us of that thing Mark Wahlberg did in M. Night Shyamalan’s THE HAPPENING. We don’t know what it was, but some called it acting, as in “You call that acting?”

Deon creates an A.I. program which would enable his Scouts to “think and feel” but is prohibited from uploading it by the company boss (Sigourney Weaver). So he steals a scrap Scout from the company for his experiment. And is kidnapped with the Scout by Die Antwoord! Forced to upload the A.I. program under the gun of Ninja, Yolandi and accomplice Yankie (Jose Pablo Cantillo), Chappie is born/activated. Sharlto Copley (Neill Blomkamp’s golden-haired boy) voices the CGI Chappie and plays Chappie in motion sensors (the same way Andy Serkis brought Gollum and Caesar to life).

When he becomes conscious, Chappie must learn language, and that’s where this film – like every film where language is learned too quickly – falls down. When Deon instructs Chappie, “That’s a watch,” why doesn’t Chappie repeat, “Thatsawatch”? How does he home in on the subject of the sentence and just ask, “Watch”? How can his unformed mind/processor differentiate the importance of each word? When Yolandi throws a whole slew of words at him, “My name is Yolandi. Your name is Chappie,” how does he pinpoint and repeat just “Yolandi” and “Chappie”? Annoying… onward…

Speaking of speaking, Dev’s accent is Pommie, Hugh’s accent is DownUnda and Ninja’s accent is Unthinkable. (What kind of deformed conjugation of dialects had to bathe naked with one another to create that Afrikaans accent? Is that Dutch combined with Martian?)

CHAPPIE is Pygmalion, Pinocchio, Frankenstein all rolled into one. It is a modern retelling of those fables where a creator plays god with life itself, and explores that fine line between true life and the simulation of life. Deon sees his creation as an “evolutionary step forward” and that question of consciousness is asked, “What makes a human being a human being?” The same questions are raised in SHORT CIRCUIT (1986), both ROBOCOP (1987) and its remake (2014), Spielberg’s and Kubrick’s ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2001); and soon to be asked again in Alex Garland’s EX MACHINA (2015).

Intelligence is the keyword here. Where does the seat of consciousness reside? Blomkamp (and co-writer Terri Tatchell) explores the audacious concept that consciousness is just a bunch of electrical signals, linked together a certain way. It can be seen on a computer monitor and downloaded. And if it can be isolated, can it be transferred?

CHAPPIE also explores Nature vs. Nurture, as the child-like Chappie (who has the potential to be an officer of the law) is commandeered by the thugs to turn him into “indestructible robot gangster number one.” Yolandi proclaims herself “mummy” and Ninja by default becomes “daddy,” while Deon’s honorific is “maker.” (It’s a strange relationship between the thugs and Deon, as Ninja cannot stand the scientist, but lets him wander in and out of the gang’s hideaway at will; a hate/tolerance relationship because Deon is Chappie’s only maintenance.) Chappie quickly starts picking up thug habits: gang-signing, learning to “walk cool like daddy” and wearing bling. And stealing cars – because he is told by Ninja that those cars have been “stolen from daddy.” Chappie is led by the nose towards a major heist, which he balks at because it is “wrong.” However, a very human reason arises that compels Chappie to felony. Ninja tells him truthfully, “When your battery dies, you’re gonna die. Lots of monies can fix you, so to get monies you need to do the heist.” And truly, isn’t that the reason why WE do anything in this world, honest or “dishonest”? Self-preservation!

I hate the fact that “crime” is once again represented as lower class crime, where we can see people with lots of tattoos and no shirts take things and drive away in hopped-up cars, so that the police droids can give chase. But that’s not true crime. That’s the result of true crime, which is actually located at the top levels of the governing bodies that create the sociological disparity that necessitates small-time crime, which is simply trying to equal the stakes. Self-preservation on an animal level.

Chappie asks Deon the question you should ask of your own god: “Why did you make me just so I could die?” Isn’t this a commentary on the finite nature of your own deity?

Though there is hullaballoo in the junkets over Chappie’s artificial intelligence being feared as a successor to humankind’s reign on Earth, the overall battle is not “for humanity’s soul,” as only two people – Deon and Vincent – are involved. And even then, Vincent’s deadly actions against Chappie are more a “business” decision to demonstrate his Moose than a retaliation against A.I. per se. No one else seems to know or care about the A.I. robot running around (besides Sigourney Weaver, but she disappears quicksmart, to go fight some Aliens we presume.) So the battle is insular and doesn’t seem “epic” enough. That’s a built-in problem with the film that I think audiences pick up on subliminally.

And are we ready to see Hugh Jackman in such a villainous role? At one point, he turns off all the Scouts – exactly what the thugs were planning – but for his own provincial nefarious ends: so that his Moose could be deployed, seen by the authorities as a powerful deterrent against crime, and subsequently marketed. It’s calculating and cruel, with cops and civilians being killed for his actions. His pure evil is tempered in one scene where we see him as we’d like to see him, when he passes off a threat against Deon as a joke, “Just pullin’ ya leg, mate!” With that smile, the sun shines in and we kinda like him again; then his brow immediately goes dark when he returns to his cubicle.

True Crime may be misrepresented, but True Justice is courted: Much like Brando in THE GODFATHER advised Bonasera that killing the men who molested his daughter would not be true justice because his daughter was still alive, so putting them in hospital would be retribution more justified, Chappie does not kill Vincent in the final hand-to-hand combat (in which we are constantly waiting for Wolverine to pop his claws and go to town – due to being artificially conditioned to seeing Hugh that way), but rather breaks Vincent’s arm and leg – injuries Chappie sustained earlier – “Now I forgive you!” We viscerally feel true justice is served only after we’ve done unto others as they’ve done unto us. It’s what The Law tries to emulate but never gets right. And it shows us how close to human Chappie has become…

CHAPPIE is fast-paced, to the point where plot holes glare at us like Error 404 messages, but for the sake of Blomkamp trying to work an old concept into our new techno vernacular, I give him a pass. Action-packed, CGI-seamless, funny, at times chilling (as when Chappie is told that stabbing a person is simply putting them to sleep – and he asks a wounded man, “Do you want to go to sleep?” while wielding a knife); a commentary on humanity, deity, dystopia, Big Brotherliness, and even sacrifice and love. It is science fiction about to turn the corner into science fact.

The last scene will make you ponder: It’s one thing to upload someone’s consciousness into a steel robot with no fun bits – but why not put it into a Real Doll? Now there’s a compelling reason for artificial intelligence I can really get behind…

END

Machinery Obscenery.

James Cameron had nothing to do with this film. The End.

TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES stars Ah-nuld in his third appearance as the Terminator, his first role since his heart attack and last role before Governor of California.

It also stars some hot chick as Robert Patrick trying to kill some guy who’s meant to be Edward Furlong, while palling around with that terrorist chick from HOMELAND.

Kristanna Loken is the new malign TX Terminator (who arrives in a time-bubble Disney-naked, which means her hair covers her nipples which would destroy the world if they were seen oh god on high), much more powerful than the old Arnold-model, with electric steel morphabilities and smooth munchable titabilities, sent to kill John Connor (Nick Stahl, looking eternally dazed that he got this role) who is on the run with his future hookup Claire Danes, who screams a lot. And Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger fulfills his promise by Being Back (who arrives naked in his time-bubble having worked out to achieve the same shape he pumped back in TERMINATOR 2, twelve years ago!), as the loving fluffy Terminator who helps them. “Are you Chon Connor?” (If a Terminator is helping you LIVE, technically, should it even be called a “terminator”?)

Chase sequences ensue, massive, thrilling, original… but they’re still just chase sequences. After the exposition of how the four characters interlock, it is all running in lieu of excitement and shouting in lieu of acting. And setting up Schwarzenegger for incongruous gags: “Talk to the hand,” “She’ll be back!” Callbacks to previous films in the series abound, as do Pretty Orange Explosions.

I still can’t figure why Terminators throw people. The first time the TX grabs Claire, instead of grabbing her throat and asking her where John Connor is – it throws her away first, then goes over and asks where John Connor is. At the cemetery, the TX fools Claire by assuming the shape of Claire’s boyfriend, so that Claire runs toward her. Long before Claire gets to her, the TX morphs back into her lesbian self. Have you any idea of tactics at all, drain-brain! She might be able to change into any electrical appliance, but she retains the intelligence of a toaster.

Connor’s goal is to stop Skynet – the company that makes robots and cybernetic organisms that attain artificial intelligence and overthrow humanity. So the climax is ironic, as the Terminator and the Throwinator engage in expressionless combat – two robots deciding the fate of humans.

Later, when the TX “corrupts” Arnold’s system, Arnold goes after Chon Connor to kill him. So he grabs Chon – and throws him…

Written by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris (THE NET), with a few good story turns and a satisfactory ending that is just the beginning, and directed by Jonathan Mostow (U-571) like he’s bursting to go to the toilet.

END

Isn’t it about time for a Kit Kat?

Fritz Lang and Karl Marx had a nightmare-child…

METROPOLIS, Fritz Lang‘s stunning 1927 masterpiece on class warfare, is an ancient German expressionist film set in the future – but its message is as current as bank bailouts destroying the world economy.

As soon as mankind aggregated into social groups, class warfare arose, and continues – from hunter-gatherers to Utopian futures – no matter the cognizance of the lower classes of their plight, no matter the platitudes of the ruling classes on balancing the scales, no matter the parties in unbalanced power or the peons being power-driven into cheap graves… We need look no further back than the 2012 American presidential election to see the modern analogue to METROPOLIS – poor little rich idiot, Mitt Romney.

Metropolis is a thrumming factory-state – skyscrapers climb to the clouds, elevated trains thread through them, planes flying between buildings (funny how they don’t “bank” when flying around corners, but just turn like cars!), a seething hive of industrialism, created with matte paintings and process shots, with some intense physical sets. It could be construed as Utopia – but there is a horrifying secret that keeps Metropolis running, buried in its depths… Overlooking the throng like a dictator surveying his kills – Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney (played with elitist brio by Alfred Abel as Joh Frederson). And here’s idiotboy Mitt (played by Gustav Fröhlich as Freder); like the real life Mitten Romney, born into wealth, unable to conceive of how anyone would have the bad taste to not be rich and insular like him.

Soon enough, we are made privy to Metropolis’s horrifying secret – the underground working classes, who keep the city running (yet another version of the Morlocks and Eloi from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, 1895); totally isolated physically and mentally from the upper classes. Like today. Like always. The depiction of these workers is where METROPOLIS hits its scariest stride. We see scores of same-looking men, sunken-chested and hollow-faced, filing regimented, heads down, into elevators descending into the bowels of Metropolis, to labor at gigantic machines, most notably the “heart machine” (run by Grot) and the “clock operator” (named 11811).

The MGM Grand when it was more fun.

Mitt Freder inadvertently finds his way underground and sees a worker suffer from exhaustion, causing his machine to explode, causing deaths. A new experience to the naïf Mitt – actual work, exhaustion and death. He reports like an ingénue to dada.

George Romney chastises his right-hand drogue, “Why is it, Josephat, that I hear of the explosion from my son and not from you?” Josephat is sacked by Romney (“I love to be able to fire people!”) and banished to work in the depths with the other peons.

Now unlike the real Mitten, young Mitt Freder is curious on how the other half lives. “I just wanted to look into the faces of my brothers and sisters, of those who built the city.” He asks father Romney, “Where are they, those who built this shining city that you are the brain of?” who answers, “Where they belong – in the depths!” Unbeknownst to his father, Freder then travels to the depths and switches clothes with the clock operator named 11811, taking on his job. But his pasty Washington muscles cannot keep up the pace…

METROPOLIS suffers from a lengthy story with strange plot holes and even stranger motivations (e.g. George Romney’s plot to make the workers revolt – ?), created in a time when movie storytelling structure had not yet been invented, yet Fritz Lang hits his grand messages home with iconic vignettes and imagery.

Rise of the Fembots.

Cuke-opolis

Title card: “In the middle of Metropolis, in a house overlooked by time, Rotwang the inventor.” (Dont you love the name?!) He has everything it takes to be a mad scientist: a midget assistant (probably named Igor), a bionic hand, and a machine that goes bzzz.

Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) recreates Hel (the dead wife of George Romney), whom Rotwang was also in love with. This is the iconic female robot (the second ever robot in cinema, after Houdini’s nemesis in THE MASTER MYSTERY, 1919) that is the face of Metropolis in all media. The title cards state it is a “machine man,” even though she’s got a nice pair of rotating harmonic balancers. (Something got in the way of translation, because the real term for her is Maschinenmensch, “machine-human.”) Rotwang tells Romney, “Give me another 24 hours and you won’t be able to tell a machine-man from a mortal.” The metaphor is terrifying. At our juncture of technology, we usually associate “machine-man” with a Terminator-type robot – but think back to the context of METROPOLIS. Rotwang’s dialogue alludes to the men working the machines being turned into machines themselves, i.e. brainless automatons in perpetual slavery to the state.

Brigitte Helm is the robot-woman, turned from steel to flesh with Rotwang’s machine that goes bzzz. She also plays the workers’ gentle princess, Maria, who preaches of the coming of a mediator that will unite the classes. It is an incredibly taxing dual role that accentuates the Madonna/Whore dichotomy. Helm is a good-looking woman even at today’s standards and Mitt Freder falls in love with Maria, while the licentious machine-woman (sent by George Romney) does a naked, pasty-nipple dance worthy of the Whore of Babylon to incite the workers to violence, so that Romney will be justified in using violence against them. She resembles Maria so that the bitter, horny hordes will heed her, as she provokes them to let the machines of Metropolis grind to a halt to start a revolution.

Everyone loves a hoo-er.

Conjuring a Babel-licious resonance, the machine-woman stands atop the towering “heart machine” hell-raising its shutdown, while Grot tries to explain that a shutdown will destroy the city. (Hmm, sound familiar? Someone cajoling the city to act against its better interests. METROPOLIS has not dated: in 2013, the moron Republicans shut down the United States government, destroying the economy for a little while longer. Cajoling their mindless worker hordes to Vote against raising the debt limit, Vote against health care, Vote against raising the minimum wage, Vote against food and water regulation…)

If the 2nd act was intermezzo, the 3rd act is furioso, as Metropolis explodes in deluge. The Revelation of St. John is cited; the machine-woman runs rampant in scenes that conjure Hieronymus Bosch hallucinogenics; the Seven Deadly Sins come to life; Rotwang appears looking like Ozzy Osbourne, trying to accost the pure-hearted Maria, while the whoring machine-woman is captured and burned.

The talented Brigitte Helm, who plays over 10 roles, getting metal-sexy as the iconic ”machine-human.”

In the aftermath, Maria brings a message of hope to Metropolis – which is frankly a surprise. After the film’s dark vision, I did not foresee Fritz Lang (and co-writer/wife Thea von Harbou) aiming at any kind of redemption, but at a scathing cautionary lesson. And Maria’s message is demonstrably bunkum: “Head and hands want to join together but don’t have the heart to do it. The mediator between head and hands must be the heart.” Meaning that son Mitt (who fell for Maria, the working class) intercedes with his elitist, out-of-touch dad to help him empathize with the workers of his city. And they all live happily ever aft—

–cough-bullshit–

Like that’s gonna happen! Firstly, Romney Senior is on another plane of experience, cynicism, capitalism; nothing will make him empathize with the lower classes. Even if he becomes their pal for a few short moments while they get the machines up and running again, he’ll eventually revert to out-of-touch boss again, because that’s how people are. Secondly – there IS no resolution to class struggle; there never can be! No business model exists where everyone is a leader and everyone is equal. Not even in communism or socialism, not hippie communes or Alcoholics Anonymous. Even that numb-brained slogan An Army of One is a blatant LIE – you still have to answer to a higher command. There will ALWAYS be shepherds and sheep, leaders and followers.

(I do not discount that in a movie as epic as METROPOLIS, the message might be more nuanced: In a society so disjointed and insular, where the bosses don’t know how to run the machines and the workers don’t know how to rule themselves, is Maria trying to unite the knowledge of the classes, for a better understanding of how society works?…Maybe si? Maybe no.)

And lastly, what audacity for Lang’s wife to write a movie so sympathetic to the lower classes, considering she joined the Nazi Party in 1932, which led to Lang divorcing her!

In the words of Lemmy (Metropolis):
“Metropolis, the worlds collide,
Ain’t nobody on the other side,
I don’t care, I’m not there…”

END

Top Dumb.

Uninvolving tale of a hi-tech artificial intelligence warplane that threatens to make human pilots redundant. STEALTH stars Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx as the three top gun pilots the robot plane may potentially replace. Ironically, in this movie, they all act like robots.

Part of a secret military project (is there any other kind?), overseen by gruff general Sam Shepard, the stealth plane is an Extreme Deep Invader (therefore called EDI or “Eddy” by the pilots, and “True Love” by Jessica Biel). EDI proves he can outmaneuver all demographics – black guys, white guys and women (well, in her defense, she was having an orgasm at the time…). Then EDI is struck by lightning and becomes evil. Because that happens in movies.

Plane becomes too smart for humankind, as proven by the scene where the geek techie tells Lucas that the plane has downloaded songs from the internet. Lucas asks, “How many songs has he downloaded?” and techie replies fearfully, “ALL of them!” The next sound you hear will be Lars Ulrich banging down your door with a subpoena.

Of course, the EDI goes rogue and fires on innocent civilians in some nondescript country that America has stuck its military presence into uninvited. Because that happens in movies: something becomes “intelligent” – whether it be a programmed machine or a creature from a black lagoon – and all it can seem to do is Kill People.

Lucas tries too hard to be leading man; conversely, Jamie Foxx should be the star of his movies or he looks a little lost, never quite inhabiting the B-role of Black Guy Who Dies First. And Jessica Biel – well, with those pear-hugging cheeks and pole-haunting lips, you’ll keep getting work. (You do realize that’s why they’re hiring you, right? Not for whatever acting chops you’ve spent the last few minutes honing.)

Hey, dumb Academy for Motion Pictures, please create an award for the Most Anti-Climactic Scene in a Movie, as EDI is brought under control and then piloted by Lucas to go save Biel who has crash-landed behind enemy lines. WHAT enemy lines? It’s not like America is actually at war with anyone… Contrived? Yes. Funny? Totally – as every Get-The-Hell-Outa-There cliché is dumped on this last scene to try to create human drama and romance between a vanilla leading man and his pear-buttocked squeeze, with running and shooting and Pretty Orange Explosions, and of course, lots of Get-The-Hell-Outa-There’s, while the stealth plane that was just creating all the drama for the body of the movie stands parked in the background.

And the moral of this tale is that humans will always always always win against machines. Unless it’s a poker machine.

END

The Manchurian Candidator.

For fuck’s sake, man, you’re amateur!
— Christian Bale on the set of TERMINATOR SALVATION.

That’s the best description *I* can think of for TERMINATOR SALVATION. What more could we expect from writers who penned the silly TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES and a director whose claim to fame is the CHARLIE’S ANGELS franchise? James Cameron would be turning in his grave if he didn’t just resurrect himself with AVATAR.

A story about Heart that lacks it completely.

It is 2018. John Connor (Christian Bale) is leader of “The Resistance” against The Machines who have assumed intelligence and are trying to wipe out humankind by shooting at them one at a time. Will someone remind the machines that being such an integral part of humankind’s existence, all they have to do to bring humankind to its knees is to stop working – and mollycoddled humankind will start crying like little girls without dollies.

Those unfamiliar with TERMINATOR canon can apparently go suck an egg, as there are so many winks at 1984’s TERMINATOR and 1991’s TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, newbies should expect to be crushed under heavy metal in-gags:

“Come with me if you want to live”; Guns ‘N Roses’ You Could Be Mine; battles on catwalks, boiling metal, liquid nitrogen, “There is no fate but what we make,” and of course, “I’ll be back” (delivered by Connor at a nondescript juncture)…

I know why Bale is so pissed off: Sam Worthington got the best role – as machinesexy Marcus, a cyborg programmed to think he’s human, who infiltrates and unknowingly draws out Connor for destruction. Bale is a brilliant actor, a chameleon, an artisan; Sam Worthington is a block of sexy wood – and so, like the original films, the coolest role went to the guy who could act the LEAST.

Helena Bonham Carter explains the Manchurian Situation via a Marlon Jor-El Brando holo-exposition – coincidentally, like a Batman Villain – that no one asked for and would have served her purpose better to have not explained.

Cybernetic vegetable

So have they invented time-travel yet? Didn’t machines send the Governor back first, forcing John Connor to send Kyle back to stop him? Which would mean MACHINES created time travel. Thanks, Diebold! Humans couldn’t find the time to invent it, not with all that hiding and skulking in portable underground labs covered in poo.Trying to tie it all in with canon, Connor narrates at the end that “the war is just beginning,” meaning that war Kyle Reese rasps about in THE TERMINATOR, even though the Schwarzenegger Terminator was like a toy soldier compared to the techno design of the Worthingtonator, which was so technologically covert it didn’t even know it was a Manchurian Candidator. And like George Lucas’s prequel-abominations-with-better-effects, the paradoxes and anomalous plotting of writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris comes back ’round to bite them in the assinator.

The irony of SALVATION is that it is continually yammering about “strong hearts” delineating humans from machines and “what it means to be human” and all manner of poignant story element so obviously cribbed from Screenwriting For Dummies – and lacks everything it yammers about.

Bale brings his Batman rasp and boundless temper; Bryce Dallas Howard brings her three unnecessary names and a spunky red coiffure; looking like Billy Bibbit from CUCKOO’S NEST, Anton Yelchin is young Kyle Reese (in one of those many nods to TERMINATOR fans that means nothing to first-time viewers); Moon Bloodgood brings a sexy disposition for metal man meat; Michael Ironside is Bad Guy emeritus; Helena Bonham Carter goes name to name with Bryce Dallas Howard but beats out Howard on looking like a bloodless horse junkie (i.e. like Helena Bonham Carter); and a bodybuilt guy with a face like an Arnold tips another hat to the fanboys.

The production values are as scorching as Bale’s temper. There is an amazing unbroken tracking shot 360 degrees around a helicopter in distress, that then tracks INTO the helicopter (John Connor piloting) and stays with the action as the helicopter crashes and lands upside down. John Connor crawls from the wreck and sees a mushroom cloud in the distance, blasted radar dishes littering the foreground and middle background. We know this is all green screen, yet it takes us right into the murderous battle heat of Termytown. Then it gets stupid immediately – as a skeletal Terminator grabs John Connor and throws him. Let me get this straight: this steel-belted Terminator’s one directive is to terminate humans, yet having the opportunity to simply clasp its mighty metal claw around Connor’s neck from behind and asphyxiate him or snap his neck, it opts to grab him by the shoulder and throw him?

And so it goes with every Terminator: they grab Kyle or Connor or Marcus and instead of simply crushing them – again with the throwing! Or shooting without aiming. (You’d think they’d have some kind of inbuilt aiming mechanism, but apparently Terminators were built by the same useless techs who made the battle droids for The Empire.)

Which proves that McG (the McDirector) has a great grasp of constructing action scenes – but don’t let him near your story. Unless you’re two bitches who wrote TERMINATOR 3. See how it all comes around and bites us in the ass?

END

Attack of The Motionless Picture.

Poffy Khambatta

I read Kirk’s book.

Laden with anecdotes from the making of seven STAR TREK movies, William Shatner’s Star Trek Movie Memories (co-author, Chris Kenski), is – alas – light years more entertaining than the movies it describes. Shatner’s candor and dry wit propels Movie Memories like the warp drive on his vaunted Enterprise chariot. Alas, even applying warp drive to these STAR TREK stinkers would do them no service. Of course, there are the exceptions (the aficionados cry out, “The evens – II, IV and VI!” and of course, they’d be right…).

But hold onto your pointy ears! We can only watch these one at a time…

Maybe Harlan Ellison was first to coin the phrase, maybe it was just synergy, but STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE was roundly hailed as “The Motionless Picture.” For good reason.

It doesn’t move. At all. In space no one can hear the grass grow.

Witness the stagnant immobility as Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Scotty (James Doohan) silently circumnavigate the USS Enterprise in a docking shuttle, in loving reunion, as a Captain visually undresses his ship after a long separation, and you will heartily, if not sleepily, agree.

Which is ironic, considering the firestorm of indecisive action that birthed the movie Phoenix-like from its cheap, unsuccessful 1966 series that somehow spawned a cult in reruns. When fan outcry for a TREK movie reached a tipping point, Paramount execs dillydallied over whether to target the silver screen or the boob tube with a bastardized concept called STAR TREK PHASE II; a revolving door of writers and directors came and went, innumerable rewrites, pulling plugs, with TREK’S creator, Gene Roddenberry, whining about every aspect of the production from the crawlspace he was “promoted” to – until – 20th Century Fox released a tiny little thing called STAR WARS…

Suddenly, in true, characteristically gutless, tunnel-visioned fashion, the heads at Paramount greenlight a “space adventure” of their own – STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.

Eventually directed by Robert Wise, written by Alan Dean Foster, Harold Livingston and a host of poor, uncredited bastards who got the pointy end of Paramount’s stick, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE hits the 23rd century like a space version of THE WHO’S TOMMY – the sublime and ridiculous in an arranged marriage that serves cheap champagne at the reception with the best man getting drunk and falling into the cheese brioche.

Excellent concept, terrible execution. STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE is a plodding masterpiece; brains but no balls; a whole lotta nothing, to say a small lotta something. Remember this was way back in the 23rd century, long before supporting cast were actually required to act, and just after they updated their onboard computers to 1984 standards.

When three Klingon ships are destroyed by hokey special effects, by an entity traveling towards Earth to wreak more hokey special effects, Starfleet sends Admiral James Kirk to stop it; in a reconditioned Enterprise, now captained by Decker (Stephen Collins, wearing his bestest teddy bear pajamas), whose Federation Starship crew is made up of a bunch of humans and one guy in the back wearing a funny mask.

They pick up Bones (DeForest Kelley, as irascible as ever), Spock (Leonard Nimoy, dressed as Batman), Scotty (ever-complaining James Doohan) and the three Ringos – Sulu (George Takei, who can’t act), Chekov (Walter Koenig, who can’t act in English) and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols, who can’t act with a decisively street Mod Squad ‘do).

Added to the crew purely for prurient masturbation fantasies is Persis Khambatta as Ilia, whom the producers tried to make a better actor by shaving her head and not allowing her to wear panties. They failed. Ilia enters the ship with the line, “My Oath of Celibacy is on record.” Huh? Where’d that come from? Well, it’s a well-known fact the producers used Trekkie geeks as extras, so she was probably using that voodoo all day to ward off guys in homemade Starfleet uniforms who considered touching her as breaking their virginity.

Rounding out the cast ineffectually is Gene Roddenberry’s nepotistic wife, Majel Barrett, as Nurse Whatever, whose key scene involves spraying some shit on Chekov’s injured arm, like she’s acting as if she’s spraying some shit on Chekov’s injured arm. This is just after Chekov injures his arm by having it near some sparklers that suffice for malfunctioning electronics and crying “Aagh!” like some community theater actress.

The Enterprise encounters a wormhole due to Kirk not reading the instructions – a wormhole that looks suspiciously like the delay effects in old Jimi Hendrix videos – and eventually runs into the alien entity that destroyed the Klingon ships, called V’Ger, a magical artificial intelligence that adheres to no scientific or technological reality; you know, like all space films made in Hollywood.

V’Ger takes over Ilia’s mind and bequeaths her a miniskirt bathrobe so short we can see her v’ger. Then the Enterprise flies into quaint dye-in-water effects supposed to be the innards of V’Ger, and the crew stand around the bridge and look at the wavy colors changing on the monitor. For about three hours.

There are two questions: In the first hour, “Where the hell is Spock?”; in the second hour, “What the hell is going on?” Well, Spock eventually appears in his Batman outfit, making Kirk spurt in his pants, but the answer to the second question seems to be More Special Effects.

The concept turns out to be excellent: V’Ger is the Voyager space probe that Carl Sagan and NASA launched to the cosmos in the 1970s as a message of amity from Earth to the universe. After traveling to a distant civilization of robots, Voyager gained cognizance and was now returning to Earth seeking its creator.

STAR TREK tries to flex its effects muscles – and strains them. Even with effects legends, John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull, the technology just wasn’t good enough back in ’78; even with George Lucas’s ILM on the job – but we can be pretty sure Lucas held his A-Team close to his chest, for his own little space dalliances.

After feeling like a fifth wheel for the body of the movie – except when cultivating the emotionless Ilia – Decker sacrifices himself by stepping into Voyager and becoming a human-machine symbiote (or something that glows a lot) while everyone else runs and anti-climactically escapes.

Thus: the human adventure begins. Be still my v’ger.

TREK vs. WARS

The Starship Enterprise and the Millennium Falcon: two sexy ships show their afts.

The biggest battle facing the Enterprise crew was not against anything in the STAR TREK movie – it was against STAR WARS. And they lost. On all counts:

ACTION: STAR WARS was actually “action-packed” as advertised; TREK’s idea of action was sparks coming out of a console and talking a lot.

SCIENCE: Everyone associated with TREK – the producers, actors and fans – love crowing about how TREK is more “scientific” than STAR WARS. And we laugh so hard that cheap champagne comes spurting out our noses. No less a science avatar than Isaac Asimov was the science consultant on TREK! And they sure went a long way to not listen to anything he said… In the end, TREK contained as much “science” as WARS – none.

ACTING: As bad as the acting was on STAR WARS (with Hamill, Fisher and those Empire extras), STAR TREK takes it to a new level of Hayden Christensen.

EFX: Though ILM was responsible for TREK’s effects, CGI was not invented yet, so the dark Chromakey outline around every effects shot makes everything look faker than Shatner’s hairpiece.

EDITING: by half-asleep Todd Ramsay. As Shatner describes in his book, the producers were so enamored with their effects, they opted for long, loving pans around everything in space, from the Enterprise to V’Ger – no wonder Ramsay spent his time sleeping.

MUSIC: Though TREK employed the great Jerry Goldsmith (PLANET OF THE APES (1968), CHINATOWN (1974), THE OMEN (1976)), WARS boasted the even greater John Williams (JAWS (1976), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (1977), SUPERMAN (1978)). Shove that in your v’ger and smoke it.

INCONSISTENCIES: It does not bode well for the Intelligence Quotient of Trekkies (or Trekkers, or – as we normal people call them – Virgins) when they purport to being such “science geeks” and then act as apologist for all the non-science in TREK.

I will only give one example of the overarching stupidity and ignorance of “science” in this movie, for lack of space (being the final frontier an’ all):

The energy force V’Ger is reported as “86 AU” in size. “AU” is an Astronomical Unit, which is the “distance from the Earth to the Sun” – about 93 million miles. Do your first grade math: 86 times 93 million equals 7,998,000,000. That means: V’Ger is 7 billion, nine-hundred and ninety-eight million miles large. V’Ger is also reported as being near the Moon on its way to Earth. The Moon is 2,160 miles in diameter and approximately 240,000 miles from Earth. What’s wrong with this picture? You with the funny mask – answer me!

Game, Set, Match: Science.

END

Computer Bluesie, Computer Floosie.

The movie Shia LeBeouf makes when he’s in between blockbusters. Still as dumb.

EAGLE EYE. Kinda juvenile title, no? After watching the movie, it fits. Shia is Jerry, a shiftless copy boy (sorry, “copy associate”), who one day discovers boxes of CIA-type weaponry delivered to his shoddy apartment (that he is behind the rent on, of course). He has just returned from the funeral of his twin brother, who was the achiever, the military hero, the favorite son. The clichés mount as we discover Jerry’s directionless life took him backpacking around the world to end up at his dead end job. And if you think the clichés end there, you don’t know action movies….

Suddenly – a phone call. A woman’s voice telling Jerry to leave the building in 18 seconds before the FBI bust in – think Neo in THE MATRIX. Only dumber.

In another part of town, Rachel (Michelle Monaghan), whose son is on a train to camp, also gets a mysterious female phone call, threatening to blow up her son on the train if she doesn’t follow instructions.

Rachel and Jerry are thrown together by the monotonal female voice, as they evade federal agents, led by Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson, who is usually sparked, but here, as vapid as Ethan Embrey (playing Billy Bob’s overacting aide).

Set in Indiana, directed with verve and no feeling by D.J. Caruso (taking pointers from monotonal machines again, D.J.?), written by John Glenn, Travis Wright, Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott (who have all had way too much caffeine), EAGLE EYE alludes to Asimov’s Robot Visions (where robots are always getting too darned cognizant for their own good) and is also a commentary on our surveillance-soaked society.

Nonsensical and action-packed, with great effects (car crashes have especially become very realistic in the last couple of years in cinema – but, being an American movie, cars simply MUST flip over while crashing), EAGLE EYE serves absolutely no purpose when we discover the truth behind the monotonal female phone calls.

Not another supercomputer that thinks humans are illogical and don’t deserve to live! When are humans gonna learn to unplug these things overnight so they don’t become sentient and get influenced by video games and heavy metal music?

The female voice emanates from a military supercomputer (made up of golden globes – hint hint… fat chance!) that is trying to put the world back into logical balance by making Jerry and Rachel assassinate the president – ironically, in the most illogical way possible. You see, the supercomputer has total control over everything – GPS, cellphones, security cams, ATMs, e-mail, all mechanical devices; it can locate Jerry and Rachel via anything electrical, it can eradicate pursuers, raise drawbridges, blow up trains, plan robberies… it even sends our heroes to that field with the telegraph wires in the finale of SE7EN and – like SE7EN – a truck drives out of nowhere and delivers a package to them, whereupon the supercomputer kills the messenger by downing power lines onto him.

So why doesn’t it assassinate the president on its own? Why go through the convoluted machinations of involving humans who bring with them the human element of screwing up royally?

The supercomputer keeps telling Jerry “No questions,” until it needs to answer questions for exposition, then it’s happy to belch information regarding Jerry’s twin, the CIA, the Marines, Ethan Embrey’s nil prospects for an Academy Award, and even Dick Cheney’s secret death squads, if gutless Obama would ever take notice and prosecute.

When the supercomputer exposits, showing off for no reason, pulling up info from Jerry’s birth to his present, I once again get infuriated that the Amerikan Military loves portraying itself as all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful – yet pretend they cannot find Osama bin Laden. Not that finding OBL is a feasible option – we all know the government knows where he is, but it is more politically judicious to retain his dynamic as a metaphor for fear.

In a movie this vapid and thoughtless, we can rest assured the president won’t buy the farm; we can also rest assured there will be plot holes that no romantic ending can cover, but which they’ll try to distract us into thinking they covered. Like the ending of I, ROBOT, the supercomputer is brought down by a black guy and a hot chick bodily throwing themselves against it with Fluffy Movie Sparks flying to signify damage, instead of working sensibly with a keyboard and the Geek Squad.

When Rachel and Jerry were trying to elude pursuit in their first scene together, Jerry berates Rachel on her untrained gearshifting, in a car which the computer told her to commandeer. So… the computer knows everything about everything – but it doesn’t know she can’t drive a stick?

I got my eagle eye on you, supercomputer…

END