Sci-Fi Malady

Steven Spielberg September is here.

We wrap up Apocalypse August with a review of the lighthearted Pixar film, Wall-E. It is a pretty creative film that manages to tell large parts of the story without words. Knowing that this film would have to in many ways be similar to a silent movie, the crew spent a year watching silent films and learning the craft, and it paid. Wall-E is a fun comedy that manages to make some on the noise points about our modern society.

Continuing on our journey through the apocalypse we take a look at Escape From New York, and briefly Escape From LA. I…..remember these movies both being better. Not to say that they are bad, but i remember them just being better. Regardless, they remain fun romps and Snake Plissken is one of the rogue characters ever created. These movies are fun, just don’t dive in as the pool is shallow and may crack your head.

Slow. Glacial. Plodding. The adjectives don’t adequately describe the utter absence of action or drama included in the movie IO, The Last On Earth. To be fair IO isn’t supposed to be a fast paced action romp. This movie aims for heady and thought provoking. The problem is that it misses. The intended discussion of human nature, culture, the value of love and basic human interaction, as well as the responsibility of humanity to be the ecological caretakers of Earth, is disjointed and jumbled, without focus or clarity. Paired with a story that has a paper thin plot without an antagonist or identifiable protagonist or conflict, results in a lackluster and boring tale that also isn’t though provoking. This movie is utterly forgettable.

Apocalypse August kicks off with Book of Eli, a film in which Denzel Washington is on a quest to get a copy of The Bible to safety. The film does a great job using a simple plot, get the object to the destination, to show a decimated and dangerous post nuclear winter Earth. The movie effectively uses setting and score to convey the desolation that has become the remnant of America. The entire time I was watching this movie I kept thinking it would make a great side quest in Fallout 4, but I digress. Book of Eli is a simple story that keeps you interested and immerses you in setting. It is not a tour de force, but its pretty good.

We had so much fun with terrible movies in Apocalypse August that we decided to bring it back for 2020. It’s like Die Hard 2 - Die Harder - Apocalypse harder Sickies! We kick it off with Book of Eli on 8/6

Jericho, or proto Walking Dead, is an intriguing post apocalyptic drama were rogue elements within the United States government conspired to detonate nuclear weapons across major cities in America. The reason is unclear but basically it is seen as the only way to destroy a corrupt system and rebuild a government that works. The result is a United States split into three parts, The Allied States of America, The Republic or Texas and the legitimate successor to the United States government in Columbus. The series tracks one small town in Kansas and its inhabitants efforts to survive. It also has Morgan from the Walking Dead and Billy from Scream, so hey.

Give Me Sci-Fi or give me death month continues with a review of 1984, George Orwell’s dystopian classic. This movie/book/story is so dystopian is has its own branch of dystopian fiction, Orwellian. The reputation of this story is well deserved. It presents the perils of communism, surveillance, state controlled media, propaganda and history better than any story before or since and in today’s current climate is more relevant than ever.

We continue give me Sci-Fi or give me death month with a discussion of Logan’s Run. I find this film to be underrated. It certainly has problems from a technical story telling perspective, but it dives deep into a dystopian post apocalyptic world in which the remaining settlement has finite space and resource, and solves those issues by requiring everyone to die at 30. In order to make people willingly sacrifice themselves society has a myth that some, if worthy, will be renewed for a longer life. No one is ever renewed. With everyone knowing that death occurs at 30 society is understandably hedonistic. Eat, sleep, get it on and be merry because life ends at 30, you don’t have to worry about long term consequences. It is an interesting look at how a dystopia can be a utopia on the surface, and how society loses any drive to better themselves when they live a decadent and scarcity free life.

Logan’s run is a flawed film, BUT, it makes you think about a lot of things, which not every film can do.

What better way to kick off give me sci-fi or give me death month than with possibly the greatest patriotic science fiction movie ever - Independence Day! Okay maybe it isn’t the greatest patriotic movie, but it has the greatest patriotic speech ever? Well maybe greatest isn’t the right adjective to use for this movie, but it remains pretty good and something I won’t turn off it is on tv. That’s good right?