Also looming on the horizon, even sooner... I’ve consulted for the new SyFy show “Ascension,” helping them design the ship and life-support systems and other tech… and the society of colonists who last had contact with Earth in 1962.  There is a new trailer up on Entertainment Weekly now.  See the premiere November 24.  At least on the idea level, the concept meetings had me thrilled.



What about Avatar?  The sequel soon-to-be-released?  Didn't I write a whole essay of advice for James Cameron (as if he needs or wants it) a year ago?  Okay, I'll post that soon... as an artifact. 

 

Of course, like most of you, I am eagerly hopeful about Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. There appears to be some indication that it will offer us all the optimistic, can-do kind of confidence-building sci fi that this civilization desperately needs, after decades of stylishly-imitative cynicism. A theme that Luc Besson kind-of, sort-of, went for in “LUCY” (an under-rated film) and that Nolan’s protege Walter Pfister murkily tried for, but failed to achieve in “Transcendance.” Marc Zicree and his team are clearly aiming for this sensibility in “Space Command.”

 

About LUCY. Now, first off, I am a Luc Besson fan — though I always make sure to tune down my IQ and mental age dials, whenever I go to see one of his films. Nothing wrong with that! (The Fifth Element is one of my all-time faves.) I did that for LUCY and was rewarded by having a very good time. Though on this occasion… alas… well, this film was kind of tragic, because the IQ downshift should not have been necessary!

 

Look, I am not always searching for something as deeply thought-provoking as Leslie Dixon's terrific screenplay for LIMITLESS but just five minutes of dialogue-doctoring could have shifted LUCY's “we use just 10% of our brains" howler (that offended so many) into some much more plausible-sounding blather that we could more-easily accept. A little work with some sober science-advisers and hard SF idea guys could have soothed you nerds out there enough to make this film a real success. Likewise, some of the most "magical" scenes could so easily have been replaced with equally cool tech-manipupation stuff.

 

Having said that... LUCY has many moving and thoughtful moments, along with gobs of Luc Besson's trademark fun. And it does not go for the cheap idiot plot that is so common these days -- the tediously common assumption that all our human institutions, neighbors and professionals are useless fools. Indeed, most are portrayed here as fairly smart and trying very hard.

 

Especially, in the penultimate scene, when Morgan Freeman holds the super USB drive containing… well… no spoiler. But it represents a notion that is unabashedly Faustian and friendly to unlimited human ambition. That is refreshing, compared to the cliched, Crichtonian-nostalgic rant against science that pervades most media. I saw this also in the lovely-gentle film HER.

 

The crux? I found myself won over more than I expected to be. Many good aspects of the film far outweighed howlers — like the ditzy villains. It is what Luc Besson does. As in The Fifth Element, this film is like a golden retriever who jumps on your lap and licks your face and pours love all over you until you surrender.

 

It is an uphill struggle for any film maker! Note the relentless number of dystopias, especially aimed at teenagers, that go for the cliched but timeless message: “I am a star-shaped peg that YOU (society/parents/schools) are pounding into a conformist square hole! Just you WAIT until I find my real friends and my real talents and powers!”

 

Who can compete with that timeless theme? Indeed, I praise and support the basic, individualistic, non-comformist love of tolerance, diversity and eccentricity that pervades most Hollywood dramas and sci fi novels! It is the only way we’ll get the self-preventing prophecies we desperately need, while keeping up our momentum of self-criticism toward a better world.

 

But when “warnings” become “idiot plots” that never once show the possibility of a decent civilization… hackneyed copycats that ONLY portray teen angst and repetitious chosen-one pablum, then we have a problem.

Below, I will offer up my comments (at last) on the flick Gavin Hood made from Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game”… and my reaction may surprise you!

 

But first… and be warned I am about to go VERY fan-boyt geeky on you now…

 

 

First… a couple of added notes about "Axanar" the cool looking indie film being developed in the pre-Kirk (and pre-JJ Abrams) Ortho Trek universe.

1) Reiterating — do have a look at the “Prelude” online. This is way cool and I hope you will support the Kickstarter.

 

2) All praise to Paramount for having taken the simultaneously noble and excellently profitable route of allowing wide latitude for indie and amateur play in this beloved universe, one of the very few that expresses belief in a better tomorrow.

 

3) One small note... I have long been rankled by the tendency of Trek producers to admire the Klingons as macho dudes -- kind of the way Frank Miller praises Spartans... when both were/are horrific slaver-holders and vile oppressors, deeply and savagely cruel. Yes, you must wind up with the Klingons of Deep Space Nine, who have reformed a lot and have (by that point) become gruff-macho but decent allies. But clearly they had to suffer many major losses before finally cleaning up... as did the Kzin in Larry Niven's Known Space cosmos. One of those setbacks was the Chernobyl-like calamity shown in the Kirk flicks. Axanar will be the first of these setbacks for the earlier, super-nasty Klingon types. Fine..

 

But how about a glance at the slave races, languishing under Klingon conquest-rule? (If Klingon territory is comparable to that of the Federation, there would be a lot of such oppressed systems.) Even a nod toward them changes the equation! As even a momentary sight of the real-life Spartan Helot-slaves would destroy our sympathy for the vicious Queen Gorgo and her entire caste of monstrous bullies, in the wretched “300” series by Frank Miller and Zack Snyder.  Miller and Snyder had a good reason never to show that aspect of the Spartans.  But Star Trek should cinch up and shine a light right at the moral imperative of Federation victory, at Axanar.

 

I hope the AXANAR script will show some slave planets rebelling and helped to join the Federation! With others promised… “someday, we’ll free you, too.”

 

4) Finally, about the J.J. Abrams spinoff series. Okay, okay, things could be way worse. Compared to the vast majority of Hollywood sci fi betrayals, they are fun flicks and Abrams seems to actually think he is paying homage to the Roddenberry vision. He does not get the need for an underlying theme of can-do optimism, but at least he’s not doing the cliched opposite.

 

That is, except for killing off Planet Vulcan and raising James Kirk as a traumatized, bratty orphan. But yes, that works, too. Sort-of. At least Abrams is handling Chris Pine’s character well.

Only… buthere’s the rub… ** Has the original Kirk Universe been erased? **

 

It is a major bone of contention when you discuss the range of possibilities in multiverse and parallel universes! And artistically, it is one thing if the branch point (when Kirk’s father is killed) created a NEW track without destroying the original. It is another — with many philosophical ramifications — if it is an erasure and replacement. (For one thing, it means Abrams’s cosmos could likewise be erased, at any moment!)

 

Sure, this may be worrying the bone way too much! But it is a sign of how deeply this mythos has wormed its way into our hearts that it really does matter!

 

Indeed, what’s all this with the old (Nimoy) Spock having sworn never to tell anything or interfere? To what end? All the paradoxes are already in place. His words of advice are needed! Especially since, on this track, the Federation has been robbed of one of its strongest members — Vulcan itself. Old Spock should be putting a number of advice gems in a can — like Hari Seldon does for the First Foundation… and JJ Abrams could be doing this NOW, while Leonard Nimoy is still able!

One of those gems should show Nimoy's Spock saying:

 

 

That statement would give solace and comfort to the millions of fans who are (frankly) just a bit cheesed off at Abtrams over the genocide of Vulcan and Kirk’s lost childhood. It also (hint-hint) lays the seed for a way-cool encounter between enterprises (and ChrisPine-Kirks) in some possible sequel.

 

And that’s my earnest (urgent) advice to JJ Abrams, as one storyteller about destiny to another. Please.  Remember what Trek is about.  It is the only major franchise in cinema that looks at the future and offers us... hope.

 

And turning to provide a case-in-point....



Okay, we finally rented Ender's Game for a viewing of four families, having all delayed until we could share it, cheap. (That’s the trick, if you need to see a flick, legally, but want only pennies to go to the makers.) And yes, it had many of the flaws I expected. And yet…

 

1) It is still the formula Card perfected so well. A demigod-chosen-one-Nietzchean-ubermensch-child garners reader-viewer sympathy by seeming really weak and standing up to bullies… finding his “true friends and talents and powers” and showing those bullies what-for.

 

2) He feels really really BAD about every brutal use of power that he was forced… forced!… to engage in. Luring the reader or audience member to say: “Ender, don’t be so hard on yourself! They made you do it!”

 

That’s what I like about cardian demigods. They are so soulful and angst-ridden. When they take over the world, they never enjoy it. It’s always for our own good. They never wanted power! We forced them - though our shared obstinacy and the hopeless badness of all society.

Gavin Hood’s screenplay softens some of this stuff.

 

​For example, Card’s relentless tirades that all democratic institutions absolutely cannot ever be trusted and are guaranteed to be corrupt, and that rule-by-demigod is the only rational choice. Those are gone from the film and the core villainy of the Earth Military is portrayed in a fairly plausible way. Indeed, that particular failure mode can - and has — happened! The quickie incorporation of the Formic Queen from “Speaker for the Dead” was okay and left out the truly horrific rationalizations in the original novel, reducing it, instead, to a fairly sweet paean to tolerance. Fine.

 

As a flick, it is only so-so. Ender only earns his rapid promotions by passing unscientific “tests” that are designed to fit the schoolmaster’s tendentious expectations. There is never a rising-from-equals that would truly be dramatic, as we see in “Hunger Games” for example. Without question, Hood’s film is an improvement over the dismally anti-civilization, demigod-worshipping originals.

I kind of enjoyed it, in fact.



Still, start growing aware of when you are being manipulated. The future will not be made by demigods, no matter how intensely Orson Scott Card and George Lucas and other romantics insist.  It will be made by millions, even billions, of somewhat above average (if flawed) people who innovate smartly, struggle bravely, negotiate with each other, build and gradually improve institutions, keep spreading their horizons of tolerance, diversity and imagination, while never losing confidence that we can make things better.  



That's the focus of our great experiment.  And those who preach we should go back to feudalism, couching their allure in epic tales of demigod chosen-ones... these folks aren't the friends of your grand-children.  They are propagandizing for the enemy.