Plain Ketchup
I’ve been playing catch-up on SF/Fantasy films/TV that passed me by. (Here be spoilers.)
Enders’ Game
Did you ever see a movie so bad you genuinely start to think you licked a toad at some point? If not, look no further. Not quite as offensive as the book, but only because it seems to have been drained of any ideas at all… in the same way that you drain butchered farm animals of their blood. Which is a fate you start to long for after more than half an hour of looking at Asa Butterfield’s sullen, gormless face. Harrison Ford makes it worth watching for his open, blatant boredom. One empathises.
Pacific Rim
The level of disregard shown for plot logic – even their own heavily-established plot points – is so brazen as to be almost admirable. Beautifully made. But making this story beautifully is a bit like taking ages to weave a tapestry for your grandma out of the finest silks with a message on the front that gets her name wrong. The little girl who plays young-Mako is a better actor than most of the main adult cast.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
(Yes, I know it’s ancient. There were reasons for me seeing it now. In fact, I think it goes to my credibility that I can honestly say I never watched it at the time.) I see one of the guys who ended up doing Game of Thrones co-wrote this. So he never needed George R. R. Martin’s influence to get him interested in heavy-duty misogynistic woman-fridging and needless rapeyness.
The Wolverine
(Okay, so I kind of like the Wolverine.) I should’ve mentioned the weepy Asian woman stereotype under Pacific Rim. So I’ll mention it here instead. There’s a fight scene on top of a bullet train that is exactly the sort of thing that the character of Wolverine should be doing. It’s the sort of thing that he, and only he, could do. Trouble is, there has to be someone on top of the train with him… someone who, in this case, isn’t a guy with an adamantium skeleton, the reflexes of a wild animal, and claws that can help him defy gravity and inertia… so… umm…
The Machine
Seriously? An ‘is the A.I. alive’ storyline? A naked fembot? Again? In 2014? By the way… the main character has a little girl who is sick, and he puts her brainwaves in his fembot, who speaks in little-girl-voice, and who walks around naked, and with whom he has obvious sexual tension. So, creepy much?
Believe
Psychic/telekinetic little girl and her Dad on the run from sinister government types. Just go and watch Firestarter instead. The story is essentially the same, and even if you don’t like it, at least it’ll be over quicker.
Gravity
A bravura exercise in saying absolutely nothing. Virtuoso silence. Like space itself, spectacular nothingness.
By the way, Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity is in mourning for a dead little girl. Hey, SF writers… could we just leave the little girls alone for a bit? This is getting worrying.
Lucy McGough
May 11, 2014 @ 4:04 pm
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Anonymous
June 3, 2014 @ 9:18 pm
I care a lot more about Pacific Rim than the rest of this stuff. Which heavily established plot points were they ignoring? And ggodness, what is your problem with Mako Mori?
Jack Graham
June 4, 2014 @ 7:44 am
You can only mind meld with a fellow Jaeger pilot if you share a deep connection… until Idris needs to mind meld with some random bloke, then you don't need to share a deep connection. You need to be in the hyperspace tunnel when the bomb goes off in order to collapse the tunnel… until the end, when exploding the bomb on the Kaiju side of the tunnel works too. Etc. And I don't have that much of a problem with Mako actually.