Regularly Expressing

Category: movies

  • Review: Elysium

    Elysium was an enjoyable movie. Matt Damon and Jodie Foster do a good job, the visuals are stunning, and the camera work has that gritty feel of Battlestar Galactica. The story is well-constructed from a story point of view, i.e. plot points, decisions at critical points. It was also fun to see a Warehouse 13 actor (Faran Tahil) playing a similar role.

    On the minus side, there are serious logical flaws. Why does a society with robots sophisticated enough to serve in law enforcement still have dangerous manual labor jobs? If John Carlisle can rewrite the basic code of Elysium to change control of the station, why wouldn’t he just take over himself rather than making a deal with Delacourt?

  • Men in Black, III: Story Analysis

    Spoiler alert! Don’t read this if you haven’t seen the movie.

    I just saw MIB3. Very cool movie, I found myself laughing almost continuously. Josh Brolin did an amazing job as the young agent K. The theme of the movie seemed to be the importance of telling the truth, as this issue came up in a number of different contexts.

    My attempt at analysis: Plot point 1: When agent J decides to go back in time to save his partner. Mid Point (I wasn’t watching my clock here) but I think it must be the point where Griffin shows them the Astranet. At this point the heroes can stop reacting and start moving toward the resolution, stopping Boris. Plot Point 2 should be the moment when all hope is lost, just prior to the final chase. Since the “final chase” is the moon launch sequence, plot point 2 ought to be when agent J and K have their falling out about going to Florida.

    Protagonist: Agent J. What he wants: to save his partner, agent K. Antagonist: Boris. Relationship character: I think it ought to be Griffin, because he’s the one who expresses the theme, the importance of telling the truth.

    Things I thought didn’t work: Having J as a kid standing on the beach right after the moon launch. Why was he there? Explanation of why K never smiles or says anything–missing, as near as I can tell. Explanation of why O and K aren’t together. Also missing.

    Things I would change: I wouldn’t have agent J’s father or young agent J be the source of K’s emotional devastation / shutdown. What would make more sense to me is if agent O and K had a love child who was killed in the end sequence by Boris. That would have put emotional distance between the two and contributed to agent K’s shutdown. A baby wouldn’t have much to contribute to the story/action, so he/she would have to be a time traveller–so I would change Griffin from being an alien to a human time-traveller. Of course, that would be too much of a downer for a comedy such as MIB3, so the resolution might have to be a new timeline where that child survived.

  • Star Trek is Dead

    That Star Trek is dead came to me as a sad realization while attending the Teragrid 2011 conference. On Wednesday we made an excursion to the planetarium. There were two shows. The first was titled something like “This Violent Universe” and Patrick Stewart was the narrator. The second show was titled “Black Holes.” As I listened, I knew the voice sounded familiar–and it turned out to be John de Lancie! I thought, How cool. The shows have a Star Trek theme.

    When the show was over I went out to talk to my students and commented on how cool it was. One said, “Who’s John de Lancie?”

    I replied, “Why, he played Q on Star Trek.”

    “Who’s that?”

    My mind reeled. “Do you know who Patrick Stewart is?”

    Student 1: “No”

    Student 2: “He’s the guy that does the narration for the Discovery Channel.”

    Student 3: “He played Captain Kirk on Star Trek.”

    What is the world coming to when students of Computer Science give these kinds of answers? One can only conclude that Star Trek is dead, forgotten, and that its gravestone has cracked and molded over with age.

  • Thor: Too Big for Two Hours

    Stories come to us in various sizes, and they don’t always fit into the box we want them to fit into. Take the recent moving “Thor”. It was a decent movie in many ways but afterwards my wife and I both analyzed it (that’s what we do after we watch a movie) and came to several conclusions. The primary difficulty with the movie (in our opinion) is that it was far too rushed.

    Plot: Thor is arrogant and needed to go to Earth to learn lessons in humility, and a lovely scientist helps him to see the light.

    This could have worked by itself. But we spent a lot of time setting up the rules of the universe and developing Loki’s character. Loki was complex because he was an adopted child from a hated race of frost giants. When he learned his true origins he had trouble coming to grips with learning he was of the evil race. We also needed an introduction to Thor’s companions. As a result, none of these elements got the attention they needed. The romance felt forced, Thor’s learning his lesson was almost instantaneous, and Loki’s actions didn’t quite make sense. IMHO, this story would have worked better as a mini-series, or with fewer elements.

  • The Matrix Refactored

    The first two Matrix movies were quite fun — despite the rather strange and improbable premise that humans make good batteries. However the third movie was quite disappointing. In the software development world, the process of revising your software to make it better is sometimes called “refactoring.” This suggests to me the title of a new Matrix movie, “The Matrix Refactored.”

    The Matrix series raises a number of questions about the borders of reality and machine world, and introduces a number of mysterious entities. By the third movie, I expected some explanations of what was what. Alas, I got none.

    1. Consider the program called “The Merovingian.” Many people currently believe that the Merovingians are the descendents of Christ and Mary Magdalene. Whatever you think of the historical merit of such an idea (I think it is rubbish), the name of this character suggests that he is a child of the One, a program authored by Neo in a previous iteration of the Matrix. In my version of the Matrix, this idea would have been developed.
    2. When Neo confronts the Architect in the second movie, he sees recordings of previous confrontations he has had with that entity. If he always looks the same, then why can’t the Architect and the agents use that to find him? Why is there a “One” in each iteration of the Matrix? What I would suggest is that the Architect and the Oracle are two AI programs that are playing a game against each other. The Oracle decides to seed the vats with DNA, deciding where to hide the One. The Architect uses the agents to try and stop him — sort of a giant shell game. I would have had Neo discover this fact.
    3. Neo is able to use his powers to stop the squids when they are not in the machine world. This suggests that either he did not really leave the Matrix, or that there is a Matrix inside the Matrix, or that reality itself is, at some fundamental level, nothing but a program. Maybe Neo has control over machines through some radio link. I would have tried to preserve the ambiguity here, pointing to “love” as a deeper reality. But “love” becomes it’s own item in this list….
    4. One of the themes of the first two movies was that love conquers all. Both Trinity and Neo were brought back from the dead by love. In the third movie, however, we get the horrible “love is a word, and I have a relationship to it” speech — followed by the death of Trinity. I would have given this speech to the agent, or the Architect.
    5. They could discover a space station, Nirvana, was built before the machines took over, and that it is still functional. Persephone (as her name suggests) would be the one program that spends time on the station and on Earth, and she could arrange a rendezvous by which Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, etc. can escape to Nirvana and escape the cycle of the Matrix.