Modern Culture - Salvation or Soiled Pants?

The usual spoiler warnings apply...

Bad Acting and Boredom Problem

Christ, where do I start? This review is going to end up being done in two chunks over two weeks because I won't finish this series before the deadline of this blog passes. I will try to keep this as linear as possible and therefore easier for you to follow it... This is the 3 Body Problem.

It's just eight parts (to start with), so you'd have expected the opening episodes to have explained things a little better, because by the end of episode two you know pretty much one thing - the Chinese contacted an alien race in 1977 and knew from the offset that they were not friendly; this didn't stop the disgruntled hater of the communist regime from inviting them to destroy our world. That's about all you need to understand from the opening two parts, despite a shedload of other stuff happening which might be bollocks but could possibly be a solution to the 3 Body Problem...

Now, I'm going to review episodes 3 & 4 tomorrow night and this blog will go live, as usual, on Saturday morning. The review of 3 & 4 will follow the extrapolation I'm about to make, so I may well spend some time tomorrow night rewriting this, or I might leave it as is because it works equally as well. The thing is in the near two hours of the opening two parts we learned that the Chinese girl saved from slave labour by communist scientists is also the mother of another scientist - based in Oxford - who has just killed herself in a research lab [that doesn't actually exist] in Oxford. This Chinese girl is the person who works out how to contact aliens quicker and is the person who goes against the commanding officer's wishes and does exactly that. The Chinese scenes are harrowing at times and quite authentic looking.

Add to this the scientists, from all over the world, who seem to be killing themselves off because they're either seeing a countdown clock in their vision or they no longer believe the laws of physics apply and have given up their research. One of the scientists gets to stop her clock by giving up on her research about nanotechnology; other scientists not so lucking were also working on largely experimental ideas. This was the first thing that gave me a theory. Along with these scientists is a man who is working for some unnamed British intelligence agency - Benedict Wong - who is beginning to cotton on to what is happening but doesn't know why. He's obviously important to the story because the mysterious woman who paid a visit to the scientist who gave up her research also pays Wong a visit. Also in this mix is Jonathan Pryce's multi-billionaire Mike Evans, who may or may not be the father of the daughter of the Chinese girl who has recently killed herself. He's mysterious and might know stuff but we haven't seen anything of him apart from a brief appearance at the dead scientist's funeral.

There's also a really high tech VR headset that plunges [invited] scientists into a video game that seems to be challenging them to solve a problem - presumably the 3 Body Problem of the title. How to predict the solar cycles on a world where one sun makes it too cold, one sun makes it too hot and the other just right - very Goldilocks. Samwell Tarley's in it as a scientist who gave up science to make Jack's Snacks, the third most popular crisp maker in the UK; his mate who gave up science to become a teacher and has now been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; a scientist fellow who worked with the newly dead scientist who is apparently a genius but likes his recreational drugs too much; a young American who has come up with a fantastic nanotechnology advancement and a Chinese scientist who grew up in New Zealand and appears to be the main focus as she is invited to be part of something mysterious....

I think it would not be unfair of me to say that the acting is fucking atrocious; the story is so convoluted that I wouldn't be at all surprised if half the people watching it had fallen asleep half way through the second episode through lack of fucking interest. This is a series by Benioff and Weiss, the people who brought us Game of Thrones and there are some GoT alumni in this, some token nudity, no sex and not a lot of violence but it's still early doors and I'd really like this to be good, but what I think is it's akin to V from the 1980s, which had an alien race invade the planet but had a Fifth Column trying to prevent it. The Chinese girl's first message from the aliens is and I paraphrase 'Don't reply to this because I'm a pacifist and if my bosses find out you've contacted us we're going to come and shit on your planet.' But she's so pissed off with communist China she decides the world doesn't need saving.

There is also a mysterious girl who seems to have superpowers, the VR headsets that propel the user into such a realistic reality they could actually be there and there's Mike Evans - are these all working for the 'good' aliens, trying to come up with a solution to their Three Body Problem before Earth is invaded in about 400 years time - solve the problem of their planet and maybe the nasty aliens won't take over Earth? 

The review of episodes 3 & 4 will continue after the short review for the other alien invasion TV series I wasted my life on...

Too Much Going On

It was time for a second outing for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, a film we watched less than two years ago yet remembered so little. At times it felt like we'd been given a brief outline of the film verbally, with some pictures to help and like so many MCU films the second viewing was considerably better than the first. That's not to say there are/were some big problems with this movie, but most of these were when Namor and his undersea warriors were involved...

The first thing you realise is that while original reviews suggested that it was respectful but not too fixated on Chadwick Boseman's death, they were completely wrong; this was a film with the dead actor writ large all over it; his character haunted almost everything and when he wasn't being talked about, he was being referenced or alluded to because how do you have a Black Panther film when your panther is dead?

The second thing is if this had been a Wakanda versus the world film it would have worked so much better; forget your amphibious nonsense and concentrate on the world's 'leading' powers trying to bully and intimidate Wakanda out of the resource that makes it the most powerful and rich nation on the planet and you would have had an excellent film, but by introducing an entirely new race and one that had never even been hinted at prior to this film Disney lost something that it's never regained. The MCU has too many new deities and gods without introducing a 600 year old mutant and the race of undersea dwellers he commands. It added an extra half an hour and far too much shite it didn't need. Had Wakanda faced a threat from nations throwing their own superpowered government vigilantes then this might have worked so much better. If you're going to have the Countess as a foil in it have her as an adversary that's worth more than just a token subplot - get her leading a group of anti-heroes bankrolled by the CIA that could have threatened the Wakandans without adding to a mythos that really didn't need adding to (a bit like what she's been suggested as doing in numerous post credit scenes). This film gets flabby and bloated the moment we go underwater; it was actually a really intriguing premise and then the Mexican with winged feet came along and it got a bit silly. It didn't have to, but the MCU presumably needed to add a 'super' to a film that was actually doing okay without it. Namor ruined it on a number of different levels, but fortunately he didn't ruin it enough, as this wasn't as bad as I remembered it and while it gets a wee bit contrived at times, it does kind of feel like a sequel even if the main protagonist is dead before the opening credits. 

There is also the thorny issue of the 'Power Ranger' in the room. Riri Williams' Ironheart was a character that didn't need to be anywhere near this film, arguably anywhere near the MCU. The Iron Man clone felt like she was written by committee; she changed personality when the plot demanded it and her presence was like a product placement rather than a plotting necessity. The MCU doesn't need an ethnic Iron Man, it just needs an Iron Man, whether that's a Tony Stark from the multiverse or someone taking on the mantle - like Scott Lang's Ant Man. The other weird thing about this is that Letitia Wright, who plays Shuri (the new Panther) looks younger than Dominique Thorne - who plays the 19-year-old college girl Riri. 

I can't see this character leading her own TV series, whether it's a proper MCU show or something aimed at younger audiences. This for me perfectly highlights where the MCU is going wrong. It's like the 1970s all over again... 50 plus years ago, a dominant Marvel Comics decided to expand its compact and bijou universe and introduce a raft of new heroes and comicbooks. It felt like you simply needed to throw some shit at Stan Lee's wall and it would be a comic inside six months. Literally nothing stuck for very long and while many of these failed attempts still exist today. they crashed and burned in the 1970s. The only successful comics Marvel launched in that decade was a spin-off Spider-Man title and a revamped X-Men - nothing new here to see. This is now also the MCU's biggest problem and to be fair and give Feige and co some credit, you can't just stick with what you've got because of ... actors (their age and contracts always get in the way). You need new blood to shake things up, but one would have thought there would have been some circumspect thinking done rather than literally having such a shit and seeing how much sweetcorn was in it approach to creating a universe.

The only reason a Shang-Chi film was even made was so that Disney could exploit the Chinese market. Kevin Feige can claim it was something he wanted to do for years, but it was a balance sheet decision and nothing else. Arguably the Black Panther could have the same accusation levelled at it, but at least the character was one grounded in the 1960s, with a solid history of being among that group of Marvel heroes that helped create and make the MCU such a brilliant concept in the first place.

Numbers Up

There have been some extraordinary animated films over the years and I'd say that 99% of them were aimed at a younger than adult audience, so it was honestly a real treat to watch a CGI film that would have scared the bejesus out of any kid under the age of 15. 9 is an absolutely wonderful film with a story that probably wouldn't have been out of place had it been made by the legendary Czech animator Jan Svankmajer.

It tells the story of a small cloth figure who awakens in a post-apocalyptic world not knowing who he is or where he comes from. He quickly meets someone who looks very similar to him who helps him by fitting a speaker inside his chest so he can speak. The two cloth men then meet a scary skeletal robot dog who captures being #2 - who helped the new figure - the titular #9. What happens after this is #9 meets others similar to him, all of them hiding inside an old church. This is where 9 meets 1, who tells him of those who have died and how 9 now has to stay with them and avoid meeting with the scary skeletal robot again. 

We discover quite quickly that man built machines that eventually turned on them and eventually everything was destroyed and all that was left was the little cloth men (and woman) and the machine. What then starts out as a rescue mission becomes a fight for the future as the past is unveiled and the cloth men have to make decisions that will affect the future. It's a creepy, atmospheric and relatively short film that we've had on the Flash Drive of Doom for nearly two years but the wife has never fancied watching; however because of time constraints it was the best option to watch and as with many things that one puts off it turned out to be a very satisfying thing. If you ever get the chance it's worth watching - far more than many CGI films. It's a cracking wee movie even if it does have a very unusual ending.

Casualty 90s Style

We delved back into the archives again to watch the second series of the 1990s medical drama Cardiac Arrest. It had moved on over a year since the first series and while many of the doctors and nurses were the same it had new arrivals and ramped up the tensions, many of which are still prevalent in the NHS 30 years later. It's amazing how this drama could easily have been made last week and most of the issues would be contemporary.

Dr Collin is back, now as a senior Houseman along with the usual suspects and some new faces - including a posh new junior doctor who has the ear of the scumbag consultant Mr Turner - not that that helps him in the long run. This season is all about Dr Claire Maitland - Helen Baxendale - rebelling against her position and kicking up a stink despite the threats of her superiors. The new hospital manager and the levels of shittyness he goes to in order to piss off almost everyone in the hospital is another recurring theme in this 8 part season. Anaesthetist James's AIDS diagnosis as his secret gay life is finally revealed, Raj's search for a partner and Andrew Collin's failing marriage as well as his equally failing faith in god and religion. Yes, it's got a lot of 1990s trademark problems; some of the acting is straight out of am dram and it looks so dated, yet as I said earlier it could also have been made last week and 95% of the issues raised would still be pertinent. That's how much the NHS has changed... or rather hasn't. 

The third and final season was extended to 13 episodes, almost as if Jed Mercurio and co wanted to drive home the point even further; to make the viewer in 1996 realise that the NHS was on its knees and middle managers and consultants, with lucrative private contracts, were the fault. Even the emphasis on nurses being part of the problem disappeared as the final act takes on an us and them mentality. The extra episodes allowed extra focus on specific doctors and the constant throughout is Andrew Lancel's Dr Collin; one of the best doctors the NHS has created slowly drowning in a sea of inadequacy and management incompetence.

Of course, while the third season carries on almost straight after the second one finished, there are subtle differences and more new characters. There's also a greater degree of confidence, my only reservation is I remember how it ends because the end was and still is one of the most memorable to ever grace a TV screen.

Multiverse of Mindlessness 

It was also time for a second outing for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and given that the Black Panther sequel was actually a better film second time around I expected this to fair better than it did first time around. I was wrong; I shouldn't have expected anything...

This is woefully poor film. It has an inadequate story, it's as contrived as hell, and the use of the Multiverse was truly bad; it was an excuse to play with a computer and introduce us to characters from other realities that were supposed to impress but ultimately were in for so little time they just felt like afterthoughts and footnotes. This is an awful movie almost from start to finish. The thing is the first Doctor Strange film does a really good job of putting the 'strange' into Doctor Strange, this just threw everything and the kitchen sink at the idea of weird and it failed on almost every count. Bad plotting; unbelievably poor dialogue; piss poor script editing - surely someone in the production team must have seen the atrocious errors from the Illuminati's crass speeches to the flaws in everything from the logic to the execution. It was like someone wrote a lot of bullet points down on a piece of paper and they made the film from that. There was no real explanation as to why things happened; America Chavez came out of nowhere, had little explanation and the entire film ended up being about her, yet we knew as much about her at the end as we did at the beginning. The thing that tipped evil Wanda into realisation was something that two different characters had pointed out to her already, oh and why would a bunch of magicians need to rebuild their home when they could just magic repairs out of thin air? I mean, they can change white wine into red, so why not rebuild a roof?

The thin and weak subplot about Stephen Strange's personal happiness was also odd, like it was the driving force behind the entire film but it was only really to drive home a pointless analogy that his character is destined never to have the woman he loves - played by Rachel McAdam, someone who appears in superhero films like some people go to the toilet. So much of this film either didn't make sense or was simply there to enable the next scene to happen. How come Stephen needed to be protected from the souls of the damned - when he was dream walking - but Wanda didn't? How come there was a bunch of helpful monsters in Wundagore? Why was Wanda pruning apple trees and smelling the blossom if it was really just a burning hellscape? This was style over substance in overdrive and while there were many redeeming factors about Wakanda Forever as a sequel, this had nothing. It did introduce the Multiverse in a much bigger way, but in reality it did so little with it, apart from kill off some fleeting glimpses of alternate heroes. Even the post credit scene stunk; Charlize Theron as Clea is like casting Bella Emberg as Sue Storm. This was just a huge load of bollocks - the kind that Sam Raimi absolutely specialises in; he is one go to director if you want a shit film.

Crimes of the Future

It's been 22 years since we last watched Minority Report. Tom Cruise was still in his 30s (just) and Samantha Morton was at the start of a pretty diverse and successful career. This Steven Spielberg sci-fi thriller has remarkably not dated all that much; some of the tech used is a wee bit clunky and chunky, but in all, it's quite a prescient movie with some slightly absurd ideas but also some very good suggestions of what life in 2054 might be like.

It's the story of the Precrime department; a bunch of specialist cops who arrest people just before they're about to commit a murder; these people are prevented from committing their crimes but still face a harsh and stiff penalty for [not] doing it. As usual Cruise plays the hero who seems to get framed for something which he is unlikely to commit and it's a race against time for him to save himself. Let's be clear about this film, it's a really great idea until you start to seriously unpack its timeline. The FBI send a man to investigate whether the Precrime Division are all above board and operating within safe parameters and within a few hours Cruise's character is being set up, just because one of the precogs - the three telepathic people used to determine future crimes - decides to start talking to him about a murder that happened many years before. There's nothing wrong with the actual story, it's the speed and effectiveness of the set-up that feels totally wrong. This was the problem that followed me all the way through the movie - how come this happened so fast and how come something as elaborate was put into motion so quickly?

It's not like me to dissect Spielberg films in such a way, but the pace of the movie is one thing, whether or not the pace of it was true to the story is another. The film's actual villain - like in so many other films and stories, a close associate of the hero - either had the set-up [ahem] set up just waiting for something to go wrong or he managed to put everything in place in less than 24 hours, which suggests that there would have been problems any detective worth their salt would have spotted and to be fair Colin Farrell, as the FBI agent, did seem to work out that there was something fishy very quickly, what he didn't work out was who had been doing the setting up, so why he was despatched very quickly by the actual antagonist seemed yet again to be a poor bit of plotting, especially for a film by Spielberg. Anyhow, all this suggests I think the film wasn't as good as it was, which isn't the case, it's a very good, slightly queasy thriller with a truly unique feel about it, even down to the camera work and the way the set is designed. It's way ahead of it time in terms of everything but the story; the story had more holes in it than a Swiss cheese. 

Billy Liar?

The 2003 Tim Burton fantasy film Big Fish has an extremely high rating on IMDB. For a film that is 21 years old it currently has a rating of 8.0 and this is the main reason why I downloaded it to watch. When pickings on the Flash Drive of Doom got slim, I decided to look at the list of films rated 8.0 and higher on IMDB to see how many I a) hadn't seen and b) would like to see and Big Fish was really an a) rather than a b). I'd never heard of it - which is odd considering it's Tim Burton - and it didn't look like it would be my cup of tea, despite it being a fantasy. It wasn't my cup of tea at all...

Almost from the opening scenes, I thought, 'this is going to be a bit boring' and that is exactly what I felt when it finished. A load of fantasy nonsense that felt more like a hyper-fantasy version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty or Billy Liar. The one good thing about it was Billy Crudup as the son of the main character - Ed Bloom. What I struggled with was Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor and Helena Bonham Carter - all British - playing people from Alabama. The film tells the story of a frustrated son who tries to distinguish fact from fiction in the life of his father, a teller of tall tales - was his father just a fantasist or did he really do some of the amazing things he claimed to do? This is kind of where I struggled with it almost from the off. Ed Bloom's favourite story - which was debunked as a complete lie - was about him catching the biggest fish in the local river when he should have been at the hospital waiting for the birth of his son. We found out towards the end of the film what actually happened, but we also find out that many of his stories might have happened, possibly not in the slightly embellished way that Ed told them, but maybe not too different.

The problem is, I want to say I wanted to like it, but I simply couldn't find much about it that I liked. The fantastic scenes weren't that fantastic and the over exaggeration felt like a load of bollocks. I wasn't convinced by McGregor or Finney and it all felt just a little too stupid, I get what the analogy was supposed to be and I understand the over all 'moral' of the story, I just don't think it worked.

This Week's Resident Alien...

... Was largely a load of shit. Two to go.

Is 3 A Magic Number?

So, the next three episodes of 3 Body Problem have been watched... Firstly, my hypothesis is probably completely wrong; but perhaps that's how this series was designed to be. Lull you into thinking one thing and then smashing you in the face with something else... We watched three episodes because we figured we'd get it out of the way as quick as possible as it seemed to be meandering around a bit aimlessly and still felt really boring. We felt committed to it because we'd spent four hours watching it and it's only eight parts - we don't have to watch season two, do we? There were some interesting things that happened in parts three and four, but part five is where this sci-fi series really starts. It was absolutely epic TV and probably should have been the episode to kick things off, then work backwards to fill in the blanks.

Leading up to part five we see the death of what we think is a major character, the exposing of another character as one of the leaders of what appears to be a death cult awaiting the arrival of the San-Ti (the name the aliens have in the TV show, they're called Trisolarans in the books) and the fact that the aliens scientific advancement means that much of the things in the series so far - the fabulous AI helmets, the stars flickering on and off and the ability to hide humans from CCTV or other surveillance cameras - seem fantastic, but logical for a race that is travelling four light years to conquer us. 

You spend four parts wandering if this series is going to wake up and show us why Netflix has been so bullish about it; there's a few twists and turns but generally the poor acting and dodgy script have let it down; but part five kind of butt fucks you really hard with no lube. During this episode there is one of the most horrendous mass killings you'll ever witness on TV, done in a really nasty way. You will also discover how the San-Ti intends to inhibit human development, because in the 400 years it will take them to reach earth, humans will be considerably more technologically advanced than their alien counterparts and able to wipe them out quite effortlessly, so for these aliens to successfully take over our world and make it their own they have to ensure that science is killed off and they do that via an ingenious way you also don't see coming. It's at this point in the story where we're finally in the world of true science fiction and boy is there a lot of science involved, yet it remains gripping and while it's going to be way above the heads of some people, it's also going to have enough sex and violence in it to keep most people happy. The slow start, while a bit unnecessary has a big payoff. I'm now a bit hooked on this and expect it to keep up this high standard into the last three parts of season one.

Next Time...

The last three parts of 3 Body Problem, we're going to dip into Twisted Metal as I've heard some good things about it and the - hopefully - penultimate Resident Alien (although to be fair you might get less of a review than this week). A whole bunch of films, including Don't Breathe which is by the director who is responsible for the latest Alien reboot and a second outing for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, there's also a few newish additions to the Flash Drive of Doom. I have more optimism about the week ahead than I have had for a while; hey, there might even be something I wasn't expecting to help pad out the blog. Stay tuned. 

I have to laugh though; I woke up this morning (Saturday) and saw that Dr Who was trending on social media. It turns out that because Disney now bankroll the series they're going to be showing the new series 24 hours ahead of British viewers (unless they're subscribed to Disney+). In the last 24 hours, the future queen of Britain has admitted she has cancer; there's been a mass killing in Moscow; 600,000 extra children have been added to the extreme poverty list and the two subjects that are fascinating and angering Brits the most are a redesigned George Cross flag and the fact that Americans will see Dr Who 24 hours earlier than British people unless they want to fork out money for something they'll see for free less than a day later. It's good to see we have our priorities right...