Habst and the Disney Saboteurs

I rarely read reviews of things before I experience them. More often I watch or read the movie, TV show, book, or whatever and then I read the reviews to see if I agree with them. I think it’s got something to do with left-handed people doing everything backwards. My point is that this is not going to be one of those spoiler-free reviews that dances around major plot points and only speaks in generalities. If that’s not the kind of review you want to read, pull the handle and bail out. Otherwise, join me after the jump.

The Lucasfilm Announcement Stream-Of-Consciousness Reaction

Tuesday afternoon. Think I’ll check Twitter, see what’s going on.

Hey, look! Somebody tweeted that Disney acquired Lucasfilm! Ha ha! What a hilarious joke! Now other people are tweeting it, too. Hmm, I sure hope they realize it’s not true, otherwise a giant false rumor could get started.

Wait, one of the tweets has a link to a press release. A Disney press release.

Holy crap, it’s true! Disney acquired Lucasfilm. That means they own Star Wars. Disney owns Star Wars.

Disney. Owns. Star Wars.

Wow.

Well, I wonder what this means. Probably nothing. There’s already a Star Wars ride in the parks, after all. And they already sell Star Wars and Indiana Jones merchandise in the parks. Probably all this means is that Disney just gets a piece of all the money Lucasfilm makes. They’re not going to do anything major, I’m sure.

Hey, somebody tweeted that there’s going to be a Star Wars Episode 7 in 2015. Okay now, that’s just stupid. There’s no way that one’s true. In fact, let me read over the press release. There’s just no way Disney’s going to make another-

Sweet Mother of Optimus Prime, they are! They’re making Episode 7! What? WHAT?!

No. No no no no no NO NO! No. Uh-uh. Nyet. No more Star Wars movies! The prequels were bad enough! The last thing we need is more wooden acting, long conversations about politics, and racially insensitive CGI comic-relief Muppets! More of THAT please!

On the other hand, maybe it could be good. I mean, if Lucas isn’t directing, and the people involved are fans of Star Wars it could work. Right?

Holy Mr. T’s Mohawk, I can’t believe this. I must be having some kind of a fever dream. Did somebody spike my Pepsi with a hallucinogen?

Disney owns Star Wars.

There’s going to be more Star Wars movies.

Holy William Shatner’s Toupee.

Holy Wesley Crusher’s Rainbow Sweater.

Look, only 50 people have made the “I guess Leia is a Disney princess now” joke. And every one of them thought it was original and funny. Sometimes I think the Internet is making it where we all think alike. This is probably how the Borg Collective got started.

More Star Wars movies, wow. This was not what I expected when I got out of bed this morning.

Star Wars. Disney. Star Wars is Disney.

Holy Richard Simmons’ Afro.

Holy Superman’s-Red-Underpants-That-He-Doesn’t-Have-Anymore-In-The-New-52-Continuity.

Wow . . . .

Rebooting Superman

As long as I can remember, my three favorite things have always been (in no particular order) Star Trek, Disney World, and Superman. This blog is mainly about Disney World, and I’ve written about Star Trek from time to time, but this is the first time I’ve been compelled to write about Superman. The reason, as you might have guessed, is the recently-announced Giant Reboot Of The Whole DC Comics Universe.

There’s a lot we don’t know at this point, but it seems that Superman will get the most drastic changes, with a new origin and even a new costume:

^{Okay, why does he need a belt if he no longer has the red undershorts?}

So what’s the reason for all this? After all, this will be the third new origin Superman has been given since 2003. Well, since the reboot is being coupled with a new digital distribution scheme it’s obvious that DC is trying to create a jumping-on point for new readers. Unfortunately, there may be an even more nefarious reason for the big changes coming to Superman: lawyers.

You see, a court has ruled that the rights to the Superman’s first appearance in 1938’s Action Comics #1 should revert to the family of co-creator Jerry Siegel. I’m no expert in coypright law, but based on what I’ve read elsewhere this means that the Siegels now own all the elements of the Superman mythos that appeared in that seminal issue. This would include his classic costume, his Kryptonian orgin, his power of invulnerability, and Clark Kent’s job as a newspaper reporter with a gruff editor and a co-worker named Lois. The theory in most Superman fan circles is that this new version of Superman has been designed to excise those things. This amounts to having lawyers make creative decisions, and that’s a very bad thing.

There are already Superman-like characters that are designed to be similar to him, yet different enough to avoid claims of copyright infringement. It doesn’t matter if DC still has the right to publish comics about a character named Superman who wears the S-shield on his chest, if he’s missing half of the Superman mythos then he might as well be Mr. Majestic, Samaritan, Supreme, or any of the other knock-off characters we’ve seen over the years.

The worst-case scenario here is that Warner Brothers (DC’s parent company) and the Siegels will be unable to come to terms, and that both parties will market their own versions of Superman using the pieces of the character that they each own. This would obviously be a disaster. Hopefully, both sides realize this and reach some kind of a settlement.

The only reason I have for optimism here is that Grant Morrison, author of All-Star Superman, the most perfect Superman story ever, is involved with the reboot and will be writing Action Comics. My hope is that the “new” Superman will end up a lot like the proposed Superman 2000 revamp that Morrison, Mark Waid, and Mark Millar proposed back in the late ‘90s.

Still, if Warner Brothers and the Siegel family can’t come to some kind of an agreement over the copyright issue, then not even Grant Morrison will be able to save Superman. And that would be a shame.

The Ultimate Robert McCall Tribute

Outside the sci-fi and Disney geek communities, the passing of artist extraordinaire Robert McCall on February 26 sadly did not garner a whole lot of notice. The general public, it seems, it far too interested in Kardashians and people named “Snooki” to notice someone with actual talent.

And boy did Robert McCall have talent. His futuristic paintings were so unique that you knew who the artist was as soon as you saw them. Although McCall produced artwork for a few Hollywood productions, most notably 2001, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Disney’s The Black Hole, I believe that his influence on filmed visions of the future should be much stronger than it is. Tell me, what do you think of when you envision a futuristic city? Probably something like this:

Or this:

Why do all futuristic cities we see in movies look like this? Because that’s what Blade Runner looked like, and it was so visionary that it influenced an entire generation of artists. I don’t mean to denigrate the hours of painstaking work it takes create something like this and make it look real when it’s shown on a movie screen, but I believe that the Blade Runner aesthetic has been done to death and it’s time for something different. When Robert McCall started painting his particular brand of futuristic landscape, the technology didn’t exist to render them onscreen in a suitably realistic manner, but times have changed. Isn’t it time for the futuristic cities we see in the movies to start looking like this:

or this:

Instead of continuing to borrow from Blade Runner, I think it’s time for Hollywood’s art directors to start borrowing from Bob McCall. Granted, they’d probably have to pay money to his estate for the privilege of using his designs, but it would be money well spent. And wouldn’t McCall’s vision of the future becoming the “default” one in the minds of the moviegoing public really be the ultimate Robert McCall tribute?

A Future You Can Wear

Throughout my childhood, I kept hearing that the year 2000 would usher in a flood of Jetsons-style technological wonders: space colonies, flying cars, personal jetpacks, and robots that cleaned your room. A lot’s been written about how disappointed we were when the 21st century rolled around and we didn’t get any of that stuff. However, there’s one element of that imaginary future that no one seems too upset about losing: space clothes.

Where, oh, where is my one-piece periwinkle leisure suit with matching galoshes?

Naturally, there’s a reason for that. Whether they were tinfoil-inspired:

 

. . .or disco-inspired. . .

. . . space clothes are almost always impractical and stupid-looking. In the nineties, it got so bad that the cast pictures for the various Star Trek shows started to look like they were taken at a pajama party:

This is the grimmest sleepover I’ve ever seen

Interestingly, clothing is one more area in which the reality has outstripped our imagination. Consider these two samples of futuristic footwear:

 

One of them is part of a costume worn by a member of an alien race in a 1990s Star Trek production, and one of them is an actual product that was manufactured in large quantities and enjoyed wide availability during the years from 1999 and 2000. Which is which?

Incredibly, the shiny moon boot on the right is the actual product: the Nike Air Flightposite basketball shoe. Although its futuristic look landed it onscreen in a couple of Hollywood science fiction productions (an episode of Star Trek Voyager, and on the feet of Wilhem Dafoe’s Green Goblin in 2002’s Spider-Man) the Flightposite was more commonly seen on college and professional basketball courts around the turn of the century. But it wasn’t just futuristic-looking, the Flightposite was a legitimately amazing piece of technology. The greenish-gold element is actually a single injection-molded piece of a material called Foamposite. Although it’s heavier than leather/fabric based shoes, the “unibody” construction offers the wearer greater stability. Even better, the Foamposite material actually molds itself to the wearer’s foot over time. And I haven’t even mentioned the incredible Zoom Air cushioning technology in the shoe’s sole.

Sure, you could argue that the boots that have been the staple of just about every sci-fi costume ever might very well conceal futuristic technology, but the fact is that, although we still wear the same basic items of clothing we wore twenty years ago, “space shoes” are something we have right now. Sure, they may not be as cool as these:

But they’re close. It’s not a stretch to say that you’ll find as much advanced technology on the display rack of your local mall’s Foot Locker as you will in the Verizon Wireless store next door.

Now if only someone would invent the Hoverboard.

Superman: Skinny and Pissed

It amazes me how often well-established companies utterly fail at the one thing they’re supposed to do well.

Comic books are a visual medium. It’s not enough to tell a good story, you have to provide good pictures to go along with it. In fact, generally speaking a comic with good art and a bad story will sell better than one with a good story and bad art.

One of the ways that comic book companies like DC and Marvel attempt to maintain reader interest and drive sales is by having Big Events, which are kind of like the comic-book versions of summer blockbusters. These events usually have overblown names like Our Worlds at War, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, and so forth. Along with the announcement of such an event, it’s customary for the comic companies to release a piece of art from the event as well, to set the comic book fans a-salivating.

Yesterday, DC announced their big “event” for 2010, a Superman-themed storyline entitled “War of the Supermen”. Although I’m not a regular reader of comic books, I am a big Superman fan, so this naturally piqued my interest. Then I saw the accompanying piece of art:

“Mommy, why does Superman look like he has the runs?”

Rather than getting me excited about the upcoming event and causing me to want to know more, the only question I have after seeing this picture is “Why does Superman look like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory?”

It would be like if a new Transformers movie were announced, and the teaser poster looked like this:

 

It amazes me that a company like DC that’s been a leader in its field for the better part of a century still has trouble grasping basic truths such as “people don’t like ugly pictures” and “Superman is not skinny”. Fortunately, the above picture is the cover on a book that DC will be giving away for free as part of something called “Free Comic Book Day.” Which was a good move, because I can’t imagine anyone would want to pay for it.

Thoughts on the Battlestar Galactica finale

Ron Moore was wrong. He kept saying that the BSG finale wouldn't be what anyone was expecting, but my two main predictions came true. I won't bother with a detailed review (there are plenty of those to choose from) but here are a few random thoughts:

Earth: The Colonials wore suits and ties like us. They worshiped Greek gods. Well before "All Along The Watchtower" it was inevitable that their world and ours would be connected somehow, and since a major part of the show's premise was the quest for Earth, I always believed that the fleet would eventually land on Earth, and it would be revealed that all this happened thousands of years in the past and the Colonials are our ancestors.

Starbuck and the Head People: Ron Moore and co. were in a lose-lose situation with this one. No matter how they handled the mystery of what the resurrected Starbuck, Head Six, and Head Baltar ultimately were, there was no way to please everyone. From the many Internet comments I've read, I think people were upset that we didn't get some kind of Star Trek explanation, especially in Starbuck's case. The term "Star Trek explanation" refers to TNG-era Trek's propensity to reduce any seemingly unexplainable phenomonon to a quantifiable, not-at-all-mysterious thing, usually by way of dense, technobabble-heavy exposition. All in all, I'm not unsatisfied by the choices Ron and co. made here.

The Flashbacks: Watching the flasbacks during Daybreak's first hour, I assumed that they would pay off during the story's final two hours, that the character's actions in the flasback sequences would somehow inform their choices in the present day. Mostly, I was wrong. Except for the Baltar story, which set up his eventual choice to become a farmer like his father, the flashbacks just felt like a late addition. I mean, did we really need to see a drunken Adama vomiting in an alley? And yes, I understood that the pigeon in Lee's apartment was supposed to represent Starbuck, but that, too, seemed tacked on. In one of this interviews about the finale, Ron Moore revealed that it was originally concieved as a two-hour episode, but then the network gave them an extra hour fairly late in the game. More than anything else, the flashbacks look like an attempt to spend the extra hour they'd unexpectedly been given.

I haven't seen every episode of BSG, some of it is just too dark for my tastes. However, I think that Ron Moore and the writing staff did the best job anyone could have done in telling the story of Battlestar Galactica. To do four seasons of a science fiction TV series and never once fall back on genre conventions like time travel, evil twins, ray guns, bumpy-headed aliens, and cardboard characters is a feat that's never been accomplished. It's a testament to the good that can come when you scrap an old and tired way of doing things in favor of a fresh approach.

Making it up as you go

Sorry for the dearth of new entries lately, but sometimes that's the way it goes. Creativity does not, unfortunately, work on a schedule; the ability to write good stuff on a consistent schedule is what separates professional writers from amateur hacks like me.

The TV shows I grew up with stayed scruplously away from anything resembling a continuing narrative. If a character got married, or died, or had any kind of life-changing event that would seriously alter the show's status quo, it would always get reset-buttoned out of existence and things would proceed as though nothing had happened. As my generation matured, though, we began to demand more sophisticated fare, and thus we got shows like Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine, and later Lost, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica, that made heavy use of character arcs and continuing storylines.

As Battlestar Galactica draws to a close, a lot of fans are complaining that Ron Moore and the writing staff are making things up as they go. This was a criticism that I remember hearing during Deep Space Nine's final season, and although I don't watch Lost, I've heard people making the same complaint about that show. Apparently, these fans believe that the show's creator should map out all of the story and character arcs in advance, before anything is filmed, and then stick to his original plan no matter what. That's hardly feasible. Although the idea behind a new TV show may be the brainchild of one person, once it's picked up and goes into regular production it gains a whole team of writers, each with their own ideas and opinions that will inevitably shape the show. Also, it's a lot easier to set up story points than it is to deliver the payoff.

Think back to one of the earliest examples of this that people my age remember: The Empire Strikes Back. Think of all the awesome pieces of setup in that movie: the revelation that Darth Vader is Luke's father, Yoda's cryptic reference to "the other", the inevitable attempt to rescue Han from Jabba The Hutt; all of it left us screaming for more. When it came time for all that stuff to be resolved, of course, we got Return of the Jedi, and a lot of people were disappointed to learn that "the other" was Leia and she was Luke's sister, to say nothing about the Ewoks or that most of the Luke-Vader-Emperor scenes consisted of the Emperor sitting and talking while Luke stood there and looked conflicted. And although we've spent the last twenty-odd years complaining about it, I've never seen anyone put forward any better ideas. There was just no way to satisfactorily pay off the story elements that Empire set up.

Which brings me to Battlestar Galactica. Throughout it's run, BSG has been setting up all kinds of interesting story points and promising to pay them off at a later time: the Cylons' plan, Roslin's visions, Starbuck's destiny, the quest for Earth, and the future role of Athena and Helo's daughter Hera. In Season Three, a new mystery was added: the identities of the Final Five Cylon models. The last few minutes of that season's finale are amazing: the mysterious power outage that affects every ship in the fleet simultaneously and is seemingly orchestrated by a higher power, the revelation of Tigh, Tory, Anders and the Chief as Cylons after they're drawn together by strains of "All Along The Watchtower", and of course the return of Starbuck, followed by the dramatic pull-back-out-of-the-galaxy-then-zoom-back-in-to-reveal-Earth shot which shows us that the Fleet is fairly close to Earth. Like The Empire Strikes Back, there was just no way to pay off all that stuff to everyone's satisfaction. Ron Moore and company tried, though, and now that we're two weeks away from the finale's first installment, people are complaining that the writers are making it up as they go along. I wonder, would the story be more palatable if Ron Moore made it all up in 2003 when he wrote the miniseries?

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, of course, and I've read some very thoughtful critiques of the last few episodes. For example, why did "Deadlock" give us scene after scene of Adama wordlessly watching the work crews fix up the Galactica with Cylon spackle, but relegate important information like the disposition of Galactica's mutineers (they're on the prison ship, BTW) to the Ron Moore podcast? Did anyone even watch the episode after they cut it together? And you can't tell me that the piano players' true identity in "Someone To Watch Over Me" was a surprise. Most of us guessed it before the opening credits. Still, when BSG is finally over, I firmly believe that, although we may gripe about how certain things were handled, no one will be able to offer up any substantially better ideas.

So sit back and enjoy the ride. Because whether it was all made up at the beginning, or just made up as we went along, in the end it's all made up anyway.

Why I prefer Star Trek to Battlestar Galactica

Notice that the title of this post is not "Why Star Trek is better than Battlestar Galactica". I'm not an ill-tempered Internet fanboy who believes his opinions are the only correct ones. I'm just going to tell you what my personal preference is; your mileage may vary.

Despite the space travel element, the two franchises could not be more different. Star Trek has survived for over forty years, through good times and bad. It's told some truly great stories, lots of mediocre ones (see Voyager, entire run of), and even a few that are just plain awful, but almost all of its episodes and movies are united by Gene Roddenberry's idea of a future in which mankind has moved beyond its baser instincts. You could never imagine Captain Kirk or Captain Picard torturing an enemy for information, even in a "ticking time bomb" scenario, or executing an hostile alien, like a Klingon or Romulan, without a trial simply because they were a Klingon or Romulan. In one of Star Trek's more critically acclaimed episodes, Deep Space Nine's "In The Pale Moonlight", Captain Sisko's decision to resort to unethical, even illegal, means to turn the Dominion War in the Federation's favor clearly plagues his conscience. Even as he looks back on what he's done, and insists "I can live with it", the clear subtext is that he can't.

On the other hand, Battlestar Galactica's heroes don't behave like idealized 24th century humans, they behave like regular 21st century humans who haven't yet figured out how to get out of tight spots without selling out their most cherished beliefs. They claim to have morals, and yet they don't hesitate to engage in torture if the situation seems to call for it. President Roslin routinely airlocks Cylons without one shred of hesitation or remorse. And in the third season episode "Dirty Hands", Admiral Adama is prepared to execute Chief Tyrol's wife and baby son to end a strike of overworked menial laborers. Can you imagine any Star Trek Captain threatening the innocent family of an officer who disobeyed orders? For that matter, can you imagine that kind of behavior from a military commander in today's world, outside of places like North Korea or Zimbabwe? The human-Cylon conflict in Battlestar Galactica isn't good guys vs. bad guys; it's two equally amoral factions slugging it out in a mud pit. If Star Trek depicts humans as we ought to be, Battlestar Galactica depicts us as we truly are, and it's not pretty.

To be sure, there are things I like about BSG. I like the un-choreographed, documentary look of the special effects shots. I appreciate how the effects of 50,000 people being crammed onto a few spaceships for an extended period of time are realistically explored. BSG is well-shot, well-directed, and superbly acted, and I really wish I could enjoy it. In the end, though, it just doesn't give you any heroes to root for.

Star Trek has endured for forty years largely because its optimistic vision of the future inspired people. Kids have grown up to become doctors, engineers, scientists, and even astronauts because they grew up watching characters like Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty. Decades from now, will we be saying the same of BSG? Sure, someone may say Colonel Tigh inspired them to be an alcoholic, but that's not really the same thing.

Normally when I hear people comparing Star Trek and BSG, they're snidely asserting that BSG's grim-n'-gritty approach makes it automatically superior to the more optimistic Star Trek. It reminds me of the way high school jocks make fun of the "nerdy" kids who concentrate on their studies, not realizing that in a few years those same "nerds" will likely be their bosses. I guess I'm one of the nerds. If I want to watch something grim and depressing, there are four 24-hour news channels to choose from. Otherwise, I'll be watching Star Trek.