Anyone who really knows me knows that
in my
youth, I was a big sci-fi geek. In my adulthood, this fascination
has diminished considerably, mostly because I think that most of the
sci-fi out there is just awful. Rubbish, really. But,
occasionally, when the proverbial “great sci-fi film” comes along, I am
totally on board for it. This happens every couple of years, at
best, but it is something I still savor.
I have been trying to come up with a list of sci-fi films that also
work as truly exceptional cinema, and it is a pretty short list.
Films that genuinely have something to say, and that aren't just about
people running around zapping each other with laser guns. Films
that are not corny, that are well-written, well-shot, well-acted...
films that would still be great movies even if one were to remove the
sci-fi trappings.
Metropolis, Forbidden Planet, 2001, Tarkovsky's
original version of Solaris, Alphaville, Close Encounters, Blade
Runner,
The Quiet Earth,
Conact... maybe ten or a dozen others. Are Brazil and
Eraserhead
sci-fi films? Let's add them to pad out the list.
But let's face it: that's the cinema snob side of me talking. I
cannot deny that there is also the little kid in me who likes
to see
people running around zapping each other with laser guns.
However, I am not so desperate to see this stuff that I am willing to
sit through something that is clearly aimed at a pre-teen mentality,
and that lacks skilled direction,
competent acting, and a decent script. I have done the B-movie
thing. Plenty. My days of enjoying ‘so bad it’s good’
movies are receeding quickly - there is barely enough time in life to
get
caught up on all of the truly good films out there; watching all of the
entertainingly bad films is of secondary importance for me these
days.
In the realm of science fiction, I don't need the
hardware, the
spaceships, the laser guns, the robots, and strange new worlds.
They are just window dressing, just gravy. There has got to be a
solid story, a real directorial vision, and some sort of believable
emotional and/or philosophical core. Some interesting
subtext. Otherwise, all of the
special effects in the world don't matter.
That's the problem with the new Star Wars films (Phantom Menace
- 1999, Attack of the Clones - 2002, Revenge of the Sith -
2005). They
have spaceships, laser guns, new worlds, robots, lightsabers, Jedi
knights, monsters, aliens, explosions, and Samuel L. Jackson all over
the place, and they still basically suck.
This is because they have no heart.
These movies are completely soul-less, and that's their biggest
failure.
Detractors point to Jar Jar Binks, bad acting, and
unresolved plot threads as the reasons that these films are
disappinting,
Defenders and apologists for George Lucas’s latest
work claim that these flaws (save Jar Jar) were present in the original
Star Wars
films as well. And they are right to say so, because it is
true.
But the new Star Wars films are missing something essential that the
original trilogy had in spades. It
isn't Jar-Jar Binks that sinks these films. The problem is a
complete lack of passion, of real emotional content. The writing
and direction are embarrassing, and I cannot fathom how such great
actors as Jackson, Christopher Lee, and Ewan McGregor turn in such
milquetoast performances. Even the (let's face it) mediocre
Natalie Portman can do better if she really tries. But still,
this isn’t the meat of the issue. The problem is that the films
are completely free of any basic humanity.
And this tirade is coming from a life-long Star Wars fan!
Obligatory digression to establish credentials...
All of this sci-fi fascination started for me in the early 1970s, as is
the case with so many other people in my generation. There were
three seminal events that kicked it off: First my grandmother
used to take me to the circus every year. One year, my dad had
told me that after I got home from the circus, there was going to be a
movie on television about "a place where the monkeys put the people in
cages instead of the people putting monkeys in the cages". I was
hooked. I barely watched the circus that year, chomping at the
bit to get home and see this movie. You know what it was called: Planet
of the Apes. Around that time, the local
UHF channel
started broadcasting Space:1999 on Saturday nights, and I'd
make my
parents leave the television on so I could watch it while we ate dinner.
These two things primed the pump for the big events of 1977: it is not
punk rock I speak of (not in this essay, anyway), but Star Wars.
My dad and the guy who lived next door to us took me to see THE movie,
and that was it - game over! - I was doomed to be a sci-fi geek
for life, or at least until my tastes became mature enough that I
refused to watch shitty movies just because they might have some robots
in them.
But Star Wars wasn't shitty, it freakin' rocked - then and
now. The Empire Strikes Back was/is even better, and it
was
the big boom of
sci-fi movies that came out between 1977 and 1984 - all made possible
by the success of Star Wars - that made these difficult
adolescent
years bearable for me. That era produced some truly great movies,
and it also produced even more cheap knock-offs and complete
bombs that (at the time) I thoroughly enjoyed. But they were
fun years that gave us good-time classics
like Alien, Mad Max, StarMan, and even the cheap-looking,
incoherent,
mess of a wonderful film Buckaroo Bonzai.
These films defined my adolescent years, and whether they were
quality flicks like Alien and Blade Runner or guilty
pleasures like Bonzai, they sure hooked me in as a kid - right
along
with Indiana
Jones and James Bond, I might add.
Let me reinforce the impact that his era had on my younger self by
mentioning the storage locker full of boxed-up and hermetically sealed
Star Wars collectibles that I still have in my posession, or the fact
that I actually published a printed sci-fi 'zine - with a long list of
bona-fide subscribers! - for eight years.
But somehow, the luster has faded.
I have given the matter some thought, and I have often
wondered if my
indifference and even cynicism for these cinematic adventures has more
to do with growing up, or more to do with the fact that there just
isn't any quality product out there these days.
The disappointment that sci-fi geeks worldwide felt in 1999 was
palpable when we all walked out of the first screening of Star
Wars: The Phantom Menace. With reality sinking in, we
accepted
that something we hadn't thought possible had happened - after a
16-year wait for a new Star Wars movie, the one we had just seen
basically sucked. That certainly took a lot of wind out of a lot
of sails. That the two subsequent Star Wars films weren't much
better pretty much sealed the deal.
But still, I had to wonder why watching sci-fi movies as a teenager had
been the rule, and watching them as an adult had become the
exception. This can be seen by many people as natural part of
growing up, to be sure. There is also a clear path that can be traced
from my adolescent sci-fi fascination to the films I prefer to see now,
films that (shall we say) reach for some greater artistic heights, and
that (in general) are dealing with issues of being human (such as the
films of Bergman, Wenders, or Truffaut, or even the Cohen Brothers at
their best) rather than trying to escape these issues (as is the case
with most "laser guns n' robots"-style sci-fi movies).
I have wondered: has a circle been completed that begun
with the
elation of the great first Star Wars film in 1977 and ended with the
disappointment of the almost inept final one in 2005? Has the
tragedy of the new Star Wars movies destroyed my tolerance for - and
even my love for - the escapist pleasures of a good old "laser guns n'
robots"-style sci-fi movie? Or was it just that no good films of
that sort are being made anymore?
I wanted to find out.
Interestingly, this voyage of discovery took me to a most unexpected
place - away from the cinema and to television.
I watch almost no television these days. I use my television for
watching DVD movies
(about two a week), and that's about it. I don't even have
cable. I have never seen The Sopranos, Sex in the City,
or
(insert your favorite show that *everyone* has seen). Lately, I
have been working for the actor Gary Sinise, and I have never even seen
his show, CSI New York!
But, all of the big buzzes I had heard in the sci-fi world over the
past decade or so had been about television shows, not movies.
Seems that Babylon 5, Farscape, Firefly, and the new version of
Battlestar Galactica all have strong and loyal fan
bases, perhaps even
made up of people who had abandoned Star Wars fandom between 1999 and
the present.
Star Wars was supposed to be the pinnacle of "laser guns n'
robots"-style
science fiction. Sort of the template against which all other
entries in this genre are to be compared. And if Star Wars was
letting me down, I reasoned
that all the rest must be even worse (after all, this had always been
the case), and therefore, I didn’t
even watch them. But still, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly,
Farscape, the others were all getting such good press... and the
21st century Star Wars definitely wasn't.
Then, in the summer of 2005, a gal I know insisted that we go to see Serenity,
the movie based on the Firefly
television show. I
resisted a bit, basically because I was aware of the legions of fans
that Firefly/Serenity writer Joss Whedon has, and I found a lot
of them
to be rather annoying people. Therefore, I sort of wanted to not
like his writing. Silly, I know. Also, I guess I was sure
that the film was going to be a low-budget cheap-o movie version of a
low-budget cheap-o television show that had been canceled after just
fourteen episodes had been filmed (most of which were not even
aired). That, and the fact that Serenity is a brand of diapers
for adults with incontinence problems, and whenever I heard the title
of the movie, I just thought of someone’s grand-dad taking a dump at
the dinner table.
Having seen the film, I am not going to say that Serenity blew
me away
and changed my opinions entirely, but I will say this: It was
more fun to watch, had more depth of character, was better directed,
and
packed more real entertainment into it's running time than any of the
three Star Wars prequels. And this is coming from a lifelong Star
Wars fan who (as stated above) was cagey about wanting to like Serenity
at all.
But we have to call a spade a spade, you know?
So, I decided to watch the Firefly television series, and also Battlestar
Galactica, for good measure.
My goal was to decide if
my teenage love for "laser guns n' robots"-style sci-fi movies had
completely
died due to age and/or maturity, or had just become pushed into a
hibernation state by the crappiness of the only "laser guns n'
robots"-style
sci-fi movies that I was really paying attention to (the Star Wars
prequels).
I was especially interested in Galactica, because it had
started life
as a crummy and cheap 1978 television rip-off of Star Wars. I had
seen the show when it initially aired, and had abandoned all interest
in it after that. And yet, sci-fi geeks and mainstream critics
were spewing equal praise for the new version all over the place; even
The New Yorker magazine seemed to like it.
Downloading the first thirteen-episode season, the pilot, and then the
entire twenty-four episode second season, I spent the winter and spring
of 2006 absorbing them. I have to admit I was a little hooked,
especially toward the beginning of the second season. The
characters had been well-established by that point, that there were
enough ongoing plot threads happening to make me want to come back to
see what happened next. This is definitely not 'hard' science
fiction, of the sort written by famed authors Isaac Asimov, Frank
Herbert, Robert Heinlein, or Larry Niven. No, this is exactly the sort
of "laser guns n' robots" sci-fi that the original Star Wars did so
well,
the so-called Space Opera (or soap opera in space) designed to keep
people coming back for the next installment.
The technology and space ships here are secondary, merely devices to
keep the plot moving forward. The show's visual look is neither
extravagant or cheap-looking; the special effects and production
design are adequate. There is a documentary style to the
cinematography that gets annoying pretty quickly, with an unnecessarily
shaky camera and quick-zooms that draw attention to themselves.
The strength of the show is the cast of characters. For the most
part, the writing and performances are solid, and it is the fate of the
people on the good ship Galactica that keeps the viewer coming
back for
more.
The story is simple: humans living on twelve worlds created robots
called Cylons to do robotty-type things. The Cylons evolved,
became self-aware, and slaughtered most of the humans. The
remaining humans are on the run in a rag-tag fleet of spaceships,
looking to survive Cylon attacks while searching for the mythical
planet of human origin: Earth.
What impresses me the most about this show is that the 'bad guys' (the
Cylons) are a lot like Americans (from a very cynical perspective),
while the 'good guys' (the humans) display the very worst traits of our
real-life 'good friends' in the middle east. There are scathing
indictments of United States foreign policy in this show, barely
concealed under a thin layer of fiction. When the humans
contemplate (and carry out) terrorism in the name of freedom and of
repelling the invaders of their land, we cannot help but to think of
the arguments being made by Iraqi insurgents, except that it is the
so-called heroes of the show who are espousing the same point of view
as our real-life enemies, and making a convincing case for their
actions. Meanwhile, when the Cylons speak of a 'one true god' and
mock the polythestic humans (who believe in Zues, Apollo, etc.), how
many of Galactica's middle-American Judeo-Christian viewers are going
to be confused about who is the morally superior race? When the
good guys are forced by the circumstances of a larger invading nation
to become terrorists, and when they are also a people who don't believe
in the same god as the majority of the show's viewers, how do these
viewers react? Especially when the bad guys do believe in
the Judeo-Christian (and Muslim) god... and behave so much like
stereotypical Americans (all clones of each other!), using their
superior military to wipe out any nation that doesn't subscribe to
their views.
Edward James Almos is very good as Commander Adama, and most of the
rest of the cast are appealing in their roles as well. The
character of Baltar is quite interesting too (well-played by James
Callis), but is also the most confusing - mostly due to the writing of
his 'companion' (Tricia Helfer), a character who gives him advice, and
seems to do so at cross-purposes to herself and with no
consistency. It may be the point
of the story that her behavior is completely aimless, but after
two seasons, the guessing about her motives (and his), and the
randomness of both of their decisions is getting old.
Unfortunately, by the end of the second season, pretty much all
of
the characters start to behave inconsistently, just as plot ideas seem
to have begun to dry up, and story twists that defy logic crop up in a
lame attempt to keep things exciting. A Deus Ex Machina rears
it’s head when the character of the Galactic President (Mary McDonnell)
is in life-threatening danger. This may have been the point at
which the series 'jumped the shark'*. We'll see if it recovers.
Overall, I liked the first season and at least half of the second, and
I think the writers can keep things interesting for a third season...
maybe. As of this writing the first few episodes of season three
have been aired and they definitely start off with a bang. I'll
be watching season three, as long as they keep it interesting.
Watching this show is entertaining, but has not made me a
super-fan. Was it better than the new Star Wars films?
Hmmm... Although Galactica began life as a Star Wars
clone, this new
re-imagining of the show is quite different in every way, and at this
point comparing the Star Wars prequels with the new Battlestar
Galactica is like comparing apples and oranges. I think I was
invested a little more in Galactica's characters, and the
writing was
better. Both the new Star Wars movies (particularly the final
one) and the new Battlestar Galactica have a grim tone, a tone
of
heroes defeated, and a 'good' society destroyed, to be supplanted with
an evil one. I was sold on the dread and tragedy more with Galactica
than with Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.
One thing that the Galactica experience underscored for me was
how the
new Star Wars films lack the needed drama and punch. All of the
modern Star Wars films fall flat on virtually every key moment of
drama. Each time something galaxy-shaking happens, the moment
feels limp. Moments that should have inspired awe among the
legions of Star Wars fans just inspire a “that’s it?”. Moments
that should have been gripping inspire a shrug. Scenes that
should have been the thing of legend are glossed over and hurried
through. There is no balance in the Force.
So, on to Firefly. Here we have Joss Whedon's “western in
space”
series. Basically the idea is that Earth got too trashed to
live on**, so the people - mostly from America and China - settle a new
solar system that (with terraforming) now has dozens of inhabitable
planets and moons. The inner ones are where polite society lives,
and the outer ones are like the old west. These outer planets
recently lost a war for independence, but some people just won't give
up. Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) is a former soldier for the
losing side who now owns a spaceship (named Serenity - after
the Battle
of Serenity Valley, which he lost), and works as a trader while
undermining the government whenever possible.
What I found interesting is that Whedon has basically taken the promise
of the Star Wars character of Han Solo (Harrison Ford), as Solo
appeared in the first Star Wars film, and changed his name to
Mal Reynolds. The tough guy character of Solo was softened
significantly in the later Star Wars films, spin off novels, and
comics,
but Whedon seems to have imagined Reynolds as an alternate-universe
version of Solo, one who didn’t get all mushy on us.
Like Solo, Reynolds is on the wrong side of the law, but is loyal to
death to those in his inner circle. Like Solo, Reynolds owns a
crappy ship on which he smuggles goods, both legal and illegal,
breaking the law if necessary. Like Solo, Reynolds is a
thirty-something, white, good looking tough guy who will shoot you if
you cross him. They are both likable criminals who haven’t
entirely lost their humanity, but who walk that line between good and
evil every day of their lives. Both are presented as heroes, but
both are seen committing murders in cold blood (Solo’s shooting of the
alien bounty hunter Greedo was changed in the later revised editions of
the Star Wars films to make it a somewhat more justifiable xenocide).
Mal Reynolds, however, is never is written as a sap, which is what
George Lucas eventually did with Han Solo - both in the Han/Greedo
revision and in Solo’s overall character in the final original Star
Wars film, Return of the Jedi***.
All of the Star Wars fans who stayed up at night wondering about 'The
Further Adventures of Han Solo' can look directly to Firefly
for
satisfaction. What Whedon has also done, is to take aspects of
Han Solo's personality and split them off into other characters.
Reynolds has no real mechanical ability (Solo is seen fixing his ship
several times in the Star Wars films), but he has a cute little Asian
girl named Kaylee (Jewel Staite) on board who can fix anything (really
she reminds me of Maggie in the genius Love and Rockets comic
books
series more than anything else!). Solo is also a brilliant pilot,
but Reynolds cannot fly his own ship at all, so he has a fella named
Wash (Alan Tudyk) to pilot it for him. Reynolds has all of Solo's
personality traits, but Kaylee and Wash have his skill set.
Except for his marksmanship. I would like to see Reynolds vs.
Solo mano-a-mano some time.
Mal Reynolds is one tough hombre, and every time he makes a decision,
every time he shoots someone in cold blood, and every time he outruns
the galactic government, it brings back the essence of Solo, but more
so. An UberSolo, a fanboy's ultimate extrapolation of what the
character of Han Solo should and could have been like, had the
character moved in the direction indicated by the first Star Wars film
rather than who he ended up as two films later in Return of the Jedi.
Han Solo's trusty co-plot Chewbacca has also been split in half, with
'the loyal companion who has been through it all and will never abandon
his friend' half of Chewie becoming personified in Reynolds’ lieutenant
Zoe (Gina Torres), and the tall, strong, volatile, don't-mess-with-me
berzerker half of Chewie showing up as the sociopathic Jayne (Adam
Baldwin).
Han Solo's most famous passenger - a goody two shoes with psychic
powers (The Force) named Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) - is split into a
goody two shoes doctor named Simon (Sean Maher) and his sister River -
who has psychic powers (Summer Glau). Luke’s personality is
present in Simon, and his powers show up in River. Simon is
selfless, thinking only of his sister's safety, and is primarily
concerned with helping other people, not unlike Luke. Like Luke
and
Star Wars’ Princess Leia, Simon and River are also siblings.
Luke's mentor and companion Obi Wan Kenobi is reflected in a holy man
abord Serenity named Book (Ron Glass), who often disagrees with
Reynolds, just as Solo and Kenobi are often at odds. A beautiful
escort named
Inara (Morena Baccarin) rounds out the cast of Firefly - she is
as
feisty, willful, and independant as Princess Leia (Carrie
Fisher). The bickering and banter that belies an unspoken
affection between Inara and Reynolds recalls the identical relationship
between Solo and Leia in The Empire Strikes Back.
Even Solo's ship the Millennium Falcon is paralleled in
Reynolds' ship Serenity. Both are falling apart, barely
held
together by the
mechanical skills of Solo and Chewbacca (or Kaylee and Wash), both
vessels seem to be characters in themselves, and are integral parts of
the story, not just a bit of hardware. Note that the ship Serenity
is a Firefly-class vessel - and the television
series and
movie are named Firefly and Serenity respectively. In
other words, the
ship is important enough to have named both television series and film
after it.
Firefly satisfies a good chunk of what the that the 21st
century
rebirth of Star Wars could have been. Firefly’s exclusion
of such
key Star Wars elements as Jedi Knights, lightsabers, droids, and aliens
leaves room for the essence of Firefly’s characters. Like
Battlestar Galactica, the characters, how they are
written, and how
they are performed are what make Firefly good, and are what is
missing
from the new Star Wars. All of the alien worlds in Firefly
look more or less like Southern California, wheres a slew of new worlds
in Revenge of the Sith (Utapau, Mustafar, Kashyyyk, etc) are
amazing to see. But I'll take Death Valley standing in for
Planext X over the gorgeously imagined Kashyyk any day, if it means
that the auteur's energies are being spent on characterization,
subtext, and story.
This is not enough to turn me into a raving Firefly fanboy,
however. The show has strengths, and like Galactica, it
was worth
spending the time it took to watch it. Devoid of either robots or
laser guns, Firefly is still entertaining "laser guns n'
robots"-style sci-fi entertainment. Unlike Galactica,
it can be
compared to the
new Star Wars with some fairness, and frankly, it wins. Maybe
this perhaps only because of what it lacks: the fourteen episodes (and
a movie) worth of Firefly contains less cringe-inducing
dialogue, fewer
plot holes, fewer unresolved story threads, fewer unanswered questions,
fewer offensive performances, more good character moments, and more
tasteful use of special effects than seven hours of Star Wars prequel
trilogy does.
I guess that is saying something.
Having felt that watching Firefly and Galactica was, on
the whole,
something worth having done, I decided to peruse Babylon 5
next, on the
advice of a pal I have in Germany, who swears that the five seasons of
this 1990s television show (plus the five made for television movies
that supplement the regular series) are better than anything previously
mentioned in this essay.
Big claims, there.
Initially, the show really turned me off. The acting in the pilot
was so wretchedly bad that I had trouble staying in the story. I
mean, watching Babylon 5 after Galactica and Firefly
made me realize
how bad the other two shows could have been, and made me appreciate
them even more for being decent entertainment. Hell, the acting
in Babylon 5 eclipses even the worst moments of the Star Wars
prequels. Come to think of it, during the early episodes I have
watched to date, it is the human actors who suck the worst
(particularly Michael O’Hare, Patricia Tallman, and Tamlyn Tomita), but
the people playing the various aliens do a good job (Mira Furlan, Peter
Jurasik, Andreas Katsulas). So go figure.
There are some good ideas here. What I liked was the basic
premise of the show, the idea that five discreet races were making an
effort to coexist. The human, Narn, Mimbari, Centauri, and Kosh
races realize the need to get along despite past differences. The
Mimbari once defeated the humans, while the Narn were subjugated by the
Centauri. The Kosh keep to themselves. I like that in all
the races, there are also separate factions. The Earth has not
been united - our different countries still squabble, and the UN still
exists - and similar spliter groups exist in the other races as
well. All must unite against foes such as the Vorlons and the
mysterious Shadows. There is a pretty complex back story in
place, with the politics and agendas of all of the races - and various
factions within the races - intricately intertwined.
The makeup on the aliens is pretty good. The spaceship effects
are early CG, and look truly awful. But really this doesn’t
bother me much. As I have repeatedly stated, this stuff is gravy,
the important things for me are the writing and the performances - does
this show have something to say, and is it said well?
My German pal assured me that the show got better as it progressed, so
I stuck with it for a bit. Perhaps this show paved the way for
Battlestar Galactica and Firefly a decade later, but I
don’t think I
can sit through five seasons and five movies worth of this. It
just doesn’t have the meat to it that would keep me quite so interested.
But we’ll see - the whole enchilada is available on Bit Torrent... and
then, perhaps, I will look at Farscape.
In conclusion, what I have discovered is that in addition to the
sought-after “sci-fi as quality cinema” realm, there still exists a
need for "laser guns n' robots"-style space opera, if it is done
well.
There are indeed alternatives to Star Wars to satisfy the cravings for
these "laser guns n' robots" space operas, cravings that the Star Wars
prequels
failed to satisfy.
So we come back to the initial question:
Is it that I lost interest as I got older, or is it that there was
nothing worth watching out there?
A bit of both.
The good news is that the "laser guns n' robots"-style space opera
genre is
alive and well, and there are some watchable entries out there.
None approach the late 1970s/early 1980s
movie heyday of the genre, but there are some nice tries on television
in Battlestar
Galactica and Firefly.
On the other hand, age, maturity, and a developing interest in films
that tackle the issues of real people in the real world have maybe put
me in a position where I can never again become as excited about a
"laser guns n' robots"-style space opera film as I once did.
However, I do think that someone, sometime, must take a more successful
stab at it than George Lucas has done in recent years, and I will be
there to (hopefully) enjoy it.
The End - OR IS IT?
* = Fans of the old show Happy Days point to the episode where
the
character of Fonzie performs a motorcycle stunt - jumping over a
giant pool full of sharks - as the exact point at which this once good
series became a crappy series, devolving into self-parody.
'Jump the Shark' now refers to that point in *any* series.
** = Let us hope that the surivivors of Galactica do not
discover this
particular Earth at the end of their voyage.
***=If it is the point that Solo's character softened, and now
walks only on the right side of the law, then why modify the Greedo
scene, since doing so diminishes this point?
**** = On Star Trek: I never got into Trek. The problem for me is
that it just takes itself way too seriously. Also, all of the
pseudo science is just more Deus Ex Machina in a thinly veiled
disguise. Every episode seems the same to me. The crew of
one or another incarnation of the Enterprise finds itself
confronted by
some insurmountable problem. Then one of the techs on board says
something like: “Well, if we were to invert the modulatiors through the
overthruster and divert power to the diithium crystal via the
hydrospanner, we could create a cosmic flux that would allow us to
bypass the interstallar entities’ internal psycho-evolutionary shield
matrix”.
The capain says, yes, yes, this just might work!, and all of us at home
nod in agreement, hoping that it will indeed work. We have no
freakin’ idea what it all means - nor did the screenwriters or actors -
but it sounds cool. Then we see some special effects, and then it
is all over. The heroes fly off to do the same thing next week,
alternating between malevolent alien villians and odd cosmic forces as
their antagonist of the week.
Sorry, not interested.
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