I haven't died since my last post.

In August.

Of last year.

Nor was I raptured in October.  Harold Camping was wrong again.

I have, however, been a victim of a busy schedule and probably some degree of overall burnout.

Anyway, new year - new goals, which include more writing, less me (and possibly a new bike...), and a few other things that are long overdue.

Let's start with the first.

For Christmas, I found myself the owner of a new Kindle Fire.  I fully accept that the Fire is, out of the box, basically an Amazon Vending Machine.  I'm good with that.  It's got potential, and I like the form factor better than the iPad.

I'd gotten my mom the DVDs of the Swedish versions of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  I'd watched them last year, and Mom had been reading the books, so we ended up more or less swapping.  (NB - I haven't seen the new American version of the first film, so any comparisons I make between the books and the films will refer to the Swedish productions.)

What I'd like to do here is capture some of my thoughts on the series without spoiling too many important plot points.  Thus this won't be a full-on review but rather some loosely connected thoughts and observations.  Bear with me while I try to re-engage the writing cogs.

I suspect that most people are familiar with the basic outline of the books - Swedish investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist finds himself drawn into an increasingly complex web of conspiracies when he's asked to help investigate a decades-old mystery and makes the acquaintance of hacker Lisbeth Salander and her aforementioned tattoo.

The first thing to note is that the original Swedish title of the book - Män som hatar kvinno - translates as Men Who Hate Women.  That proves to be the thread that ties the entire series together, and indeed the thread that has defined most of Salander's life.

(Larsson witnessed a rape when he was young, and never forgave himself for failing to help the victim.  The theme of the trilogy is derived from that event.)

In telling Salander's story of victimization - initially at the hands of her father and later at the hands of nearly every authority figure she encounters - Larsson also addresses issues of gender inequality in the workplace, in government, and in the perceptions of the population as a whole.

Lisbeth's brilliant intellect and single-minded thirst for revenge is set against her tiny, doll-like physique.  Her refusal to conform to social norms is used in the second and third books to attack her in the press and in the courtroom.¹

Annika, Blomkvist's sister (later Salander's lawyer) draws on similarities between her youthful behavior and Lisbeth's to point out the double standards at work. Erika Berger, Blomkvist's married lover (and a very shrewd businesswoman) finds herself under attack because of her sexual habits. Female police inspectors in the story are looked down on by their male counterparts.

An interesting thing to notice is that Blomkvist (in the books - they leave out most of this in the movies) is portrayed as quite the player.  During the course of the books, Blomkvist carries on extended affairs with:

• Erika Berger - his married lover who he has been with off and on for 20 year or so.
• Cecilia Vanger - a woman who he investigates in connection with a decades-old possible murder.
• Lisbeth Salander - who seduces him during the investigation of the Vanger case, and with whom he has a fairly lengthy relationship.
• Harriet Vanger - Cecilia's long-lost cousin.
• Monica Figuerola - a special police investigator helping to work out the conspiracy surrounding Salander's father.

I'm not sure if Blomkvist is written this way in order to serve as an example within the story of a man who can relate to women as equals, or if he's written as a typical Swedish male and I'm simply trying to view Swedish attitudes about sex through an American lens, or if there's something else going on.  The end result is that Blomkvist is clearly not a white-hat good guy, but is instead somewhat ethically suspect.  Ordinarily, I tend to like characters with some moral ambiguity, since it makes them more interesting, but I've got an issue with this sort of thing.²

There are a few other interesting characters spread across the books.  One of the most interesting, in my opinion, is Alexander Zalachenko.  Zalachenko, a Russian assassin who defects to Sweden in the 1970's, is Lisbeth's father.  The Swedish authorities recognize the value of the information Zalachenko can provide, and consequently give him a long leash, turning a blind eye to his violent habits and criminal endeavors.  After the fall of the Soviet Union, Zalachenko's value diminishes, but it's far too late to rein him in.  His activities form the nucleus of the conspiracies against Salander, but it's clear that the Swedish authorities who cleaned up after him and failed to control him are at least as culpable as he is.  What makes him interesting is that he's not just evil for the sake of being evil.  His actions seem consistent within the limits of his own self-interest.  He's aware enough to manipulate others into doing what he needs to be done, he thinks through the consequences of his actions, and he needs a motivation to do things beyond simply causing problems for a hero to solve.³

Overall, I enjoyed the books.  Having already seen the movies, I knew generally what to expect, but there was enough new and expanded material to keep me interested, especially the more detailed insight into Lisbeth's character.  The nuggets of Swedish political history that are sprinkled through the books give them some grounding in actual events, which is a nice touch.  Parts can be difficult to read - the assault on Salander in the first book, and some of the graphic descriptions of crimes throughout leave little to the imagination - but such scenes are important to advancing the plot.

As a set of interconnected mysteries, the books work very well, and I highly recommend them on the strength of that alone.  If you happen to find topics of social justice and the treatment of women in different layers of society are more your thing, you'll find a good helping of those in here, too.

-Jay
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¹In some ways reminiscent of the way women like Monica Lewinsky and Casey Anthony have been portrayed in the media. Guilt or innocence often seems secondary to digging up lurid personal details.

²I suppose it's worth mentioning that all of Blomkvist's liasons are consensual, and none of his partners have an expectation of long-term monogamy. Nevertheless, his characterization reminds me a bit too much of people who I know who think with their penises.

³Writing convincing villains is hard.  Too often you end up with a 2-dimensional character that exists solely for the purpose of doing bad things.  Like Darth Vader.  He was nothing but a glorified errand boy.  When George Lucas tried to give Vader some depth in the prequel trilogy, all he really succeeded in doing was establishing that Vader was a whiny, arrogant errand boy.  Or consider the typical characterization of the devil, who seems to turn up for no reason other than to function as an agent of evil.  That's a topic for another day.

Through some odd coincidence, I've recently had the opportunity to be on both sides of the offended/not offended table.

a couple of weeks back, I rented a copy of a movie that's likely to become a cult favorite - Hobo with a Shotgun.

I'd initially planned to write a review of it, figuring that Rutger Hauer as a shotgun-wielding hobo trying to clean up a corrupt town might be good for some Badgering.

The first, I don't know, 20 minutes were pretty well what I expected.  Then it brought in some elements that seemed maybe a bit over the top, and ultimately went down some paths that I found to be grossly unnecessary and just vile.¹

While I ultimately did finish Hobo, it came very close to earning a place on my list of Films That I Couldn't Force Myself To Sit Through.  That list currently has one entry.²

Now, as it happened, fresh off of my encounter with Hobo, there was some mandatory training at work.

We get a lot of mandatory training, including training on avoiding and preventing sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace.  I'd been through this training a few weeks back, but some friends in another department were in a later session.  There are some videos that go along with the training, and they're fairly graphic in content and language.

My session showed one of the three.  The other two were "suggested", which I interpreted as meaning "optional", so I took the "don't watch them" option.

My friends saw a different one in their session, and chose to watch the others at their desks.

Now, the video they saw in their session was, according to them, useful and appropriate.  I have no reason to doubt them on that.

The video that they watched at their desks that I didn't see, they both found inappropriately graphic - to the extent that someone watching similar material at work outside of the context of official training could well have been written up for it.  Again, I have no reason to doubt them on that.

The video that all three of us  saw is the interesting one.  When I watched it, I thought that it was somewhat raw and had some crude language in it, but didn't find it unusually shocking.

They did, and they told me about it quite clearly.³

I'm somewhat ashamed to say that my knee-jerk reaction to their concerns was to think "it didn't really bother me much, so it shouldn't bother them."

I hope that didn't come out in my initial response to them, because if it did, I was a complete assclown.

The fact of the matter is that whether I found the video offensive or not is completely immaterial to whether or not they did.  That point took a few minutes to sink in, but part of the reason that it finally did was because my reaction to Hobo was still fresh in my mind.  I don't get to declare my perspective to be the correct one simply because it happens to be mine.

As it turns out, the question of whether or not someone finds a particular video (for example)⁴ offensive isn't even the interesting question.  Why someone finds a particular video offensive is more intriguing because discussion of those reasons offers opportunities for people to learn from one another.

It can be a tricky discussion to have, though, because of the all-too-common view that we have some right to not be offended, and if I dare question your offense, I'm guilty of violating that right.  Such discussions can easily collapse into arguments and personal attacks.

But you have no more right to not be offended than you have a right to drive around in a brand new red Corvette.  Neither do I.  Neither does anyone else.  That doesn't mean that I have a right to go out of my way to offend you just for the sport of it, or that crudeness and vulgarity should be the norm.

I think that deliberate offensiveness can serve a purpose - witness the cigarette warnings used in Canada - because offensive things can stick in your head whereas milder approaches might not.  I also think that it's sometimes a good idea to seek out things that you find offensive and try to understand the other perspective.⁵

Now, the thing that I'm having trouble with is this:  Given that certain things offend me (or you), just how much effort should I put into avoiding those things?  Should I go out of my way to avoid them?  Should I accept that some level of offensiveness is just a part of life and deal with it?  Should I develop a thicker skin?  What's an acceptable daily allowance of offense?

Feedback wanted!

-Jay
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¹It was suggested to me by a colleague that perhaps it was necessary to make the villains in the film extra-reprehensible in order to make a shotgun-toting vigilante vagrant into a more sympathetic character. That's a good point.

²As distinct from the very long list of Films That I Have No Desire To Sit Through Again.  That list includes some excellent films, such as The Exorcist, and some not-so-excellent films, such as anything directed by Uwe Boll.

³If there's one thing I can usually count on these two for, it's brutal honesty.

⁴Or word.  Profanity can be a fun topic to discuss.  Odds are that you use a somewhat different vocabulary when you're by yourself vice with a group of people, and a different vocabulary if you're in a social situation vice a business setting.

⁵Politics and religion tend to be the heavy hitters in this scenario.  Remember that understanding another perspective doesn't obligate you to agree with it.

It didn't take long for my classmates to suggest alternatives.  One of those was Speed Racer, the American dub of the Japanese series Mahha GoGoGo.

My mom objected to shows like this and the old Spider-Man cartoon most vocally on the grounds of the excessive violence, which served only to increase my desire to see them.  Forbidden fruit and all that.

Speed Racer, to my young eyes, was all about the car - the Mach 5.

This was gonna be my first car...

Speed Racer and the Mach 5 might be claimed as a source of inspiration for many vehicle-themed shows that later followed - Knight Rider, for example.

So, a few years back when the Wachowski Brothers, still riding the cachet they'd built with The Matrix¹ and its sequels, got attached to a live-action version of Speed Racer, I was intrigued.

The film tanked at the box office when it was released in 2008, and drew generally negative reviews.  I picked up the DVD about a year ago at Target for the princely sum of $5, but it gathered dust on the shelf until last night, when a combination of insomnia and lack of anything better to do led me to pop open a beer and throw Speed Racer into the player.

I'll say up front that not even reviewing films like Mega Shark Vs. Crocosaurus could have prepared me for the Wachowski Brothers' take on Speed Racer.

Let's begin.

We meet a young Speed Racer in school, unable to concentrate on his work.  Constantly caught up in daydreams about racing, he's considered an outsider by his classmates and a poor student by his teacher.  We come to learn that his father builds race cars, and his brother Rex drives them.  These aren't just any race cars, either.  They're impossibly high-performance machines that race on tracks that look more like fancy Hot-Wheels setups:

Not your father's race track

In Speed Racer's world, physics doesn't seem to have much use.  Cars spin, flip, drift around turns, spring over other cars, and travel at speeds approaching 500 MPH.

Speed's brother, Rex, is a very talented racer, but has a fallout with their father, Pops (a horribly under-utilized John Goodman), and leaves home on a dark and stormy night.

Shortly after, a racing accident kills Rex, who was living under accusations of cheating.  The Racer family is crushed.  Mom (played by Susan Sarandon, who spends most of her scenes looking like she's trying to find an escape from the set) takes Rex's death particularly hard, but provides the emotional glue that holds the family together.  (Ms. Sarandon was given possibly the most well-written dialog in the entire film.  Nevertheless, one must wonder just what sort of leverage the Wachowski's had on her to get her into this thing.)

Speed grows up (portrayed by Emile Hirsch)  to become a fine racer in his own right, and after dramatically winning a local race, is approached by Royalton (Roger Allam) to join his stable of racers.  The Racer family, long an independent racing team, is suspicious of Royalton's offer, but goes with him to visit his headquarters, accompanied by Speed's long-time girlfriend, Trixie² (Christina Ricci).

After the initial visit, Speed and Trixie discuss Royalton's offer and Speed's future.

Trixie and Speed

The Wachowski's aren't subtle.  Anyone who can't figure out that Royalton isn't one of the good guys is either dead or asleep (which, by this point in the film wouldn't be out of the question.)  We can tell because his eyebrows have a sort of villainous arch to them.

All he's missing is a waxed mustache...

Really, they could have made it a little less obvious.  Anyhow, when Speed declines Royalton's offer of indentured servitude employment, Royalton tells Speed that the Racer family name won't even have any cache on a late night infomercial, let alone in the racing world.  (Apparently the sport of auto racing in the reality of Speed Racer is little more than a front for corporate manipulation of stock prices, and the winners of every major race are negotiated beforehand.)

Sure enough, before you know it, things have gone bad for the family.

Enter the mysterious RacEr X and (in what has to be one of the most ridiculous names ever) Inspector Detector of the CIB (or something - it's a group that investigates corruption in the racing business).

Racer X (left, duh.) and Inspector Detector

They have a proposal for Speed - team up with RacEr X and some other driver who we were introduced to a few minutes ago that I didn't bother to mention to win a big road race that will lead the third driver to give up a file he has on corrupt drivers and team owners and put people like Royalton with funky eyebrows out of business.  (You'll note that Inspector Detector is clearly a good guy - nary an arched eyebrow in sight.)

Speed and Trixie decide to accept the offer against the wishes of Speed's parents, and head to the race under cover of a skiing trip.

The bad guys put a bounty on Speed's team, and automotive hijinks ensue as the various drivers deploy whatever dirty tricks they have at their disposal to win.

Some dramatic tension unfolds as the race goes through the same cave that Speed's brother, Rex was killed in - a stretch of road that RacEr X seems unusually familiar with.

Speed and company ultimately prevail and win the race, only to discover that the third driver really didn't have a file on all the corrupt players, and was simply using Speed and RacEr X to win the race and boost his father's stock price.

Disillusioned, Speed heads home, but has finally used his keen senses of observation and logic to almost figure out that RacEr X showed up shortly after Rex's death, and that Rex's body was unrecognizably burned, and that RacEr X drives like Rex and knows Speed's moves!  OMG! RacEr X must BE Rex!

Speed soon confronts the mysterious masked man about it, who removes his hood to prove to Speed that he isn't his brother, but knows that his brother would be proud of the man Speed has become.  (Speed, demonstrating that he's not the sharpest tool in the garage, appears never to have heard of plastic surgery...)

The third driver's sister shows up with an invitation for Speed to participate in the Grand Prix, which is his life's dream.  The family has less than two days to rebuild Speed's car and get to the race, which we know they'll do for no other reason than that this would be a very bizarre way to end the movie.

The Grand Prix race, as presented by the Wachowski's is an eye-scorching, ear-splitting eruption of garish color and noise:

Really, the whole movie looks like this...

Basically, if you've ever played a Mario Kart game, the Grand Prix is Rainbow Road with the volume turned full-up on the TV.  The long and the short of it is that Speed wins, the Racer family regains its lost honor, and the corrupt businessmen like Royalton are exposed for the wretched villainous scum they truly are.

Meh.

This was a very difficult movie to watch for a number of reasons.

First off, the characters were uniformly uninteresting - even the leads.  John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, and Christina Ricci are all talented, but they aren't really given anything to work with here.  Emile Hirsch seemed to be asleep most of the time, even in the "intense" racing scenes, and it went downhill from there.  Even the Mega Shark films have something to their characters that makes them less of a chore to watch.

Second, as the screenshot of the Grand Prix should illustrate, the visual style of the film seemed designed mainly to make the viewer's eyes bleed.  I understand the challenges in making a live-action film from a cartoon.  Trying to keep the original visual style probably won't work, but neither will going with a fully real-world approach.  Nevertheless, the source material for Speed Racer would have allowed a much more realistic approach that might have made the film less exhausting to endure.

Third, the characters were all different from how they "should" have been.  In the cartoon, Speed was more confident, Trixie was less aggressive, Racer X more edgy.  Here, we have a Speed who can't seem to look anyone in the eye, Trixie exuding a smoldering sexuality that seems out-of-place (I think that's really more just Ricci...), and Racer X who never lives up to his potential.  This wasn't Speed Racer so much as something that superficially resembled Speed Racer.

Fourth, and finally, by the end of the film, nothing had really changed.  The family still thinks Rex is dead.  Pops still builds his own cars without any sponsorship.  Speed is still racing, and the racing world, now that its most corrupt players have been rooted out, is the honorable world that Speed and his family believed it to be at the start of the film.

They're all right back where they started, and I'm out five bucks.

-Jay

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¹As visually innovative as that film was at the time, it just doesn't grab me much now for some reason .  And the sequels always seemed unnecessary to me.

²In the original cartoon, it was easy to come to the conclusion that Trixie was Speed's sister, especially if you were watching the show at six or seven years old.  Even when I watched most of the series a few years back, their relationship still seemed fairly low-key.  Christina Ricci, however, brings a more aggressive Trixie to the screen.  It's a PG-rated movie, so she doesn't go overboard with it, but still...

I wouldn't find this nearly as funny if I hadn't been a nearly fanatical watcher of both Star Trek and The A-Team as a kid, and recently watched the big-screen remake of The A-Team (which was much better than I personally expected...)

-Jay

Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus.

Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus

I'm thinking that the Mega Shark might be the American answer to Godzilla.  Or not.

MSvC, as I'll subsequently abbreviate the title,  stands unique among films in that it pits Steve Urkel, The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, some dude that kinda looks like Pierce Brosnan but isn't, and some actress I've never heard of against a pair of poorly rendered monsters.

Jaleel White Will Never Live This Down...

Steve Urkel plays  U.S. Navy Lieutenant Terry McCormick who specializes in sharks.  He's on the USS Gibson (a nod to Debbie Gibson's role in the original MSvGO), trying to confirm the death of the Mega Shark, when it shows up out of nowhere and sinks the ship (possibly a commentary on the state of Gibson's career...).  McCormick loses his girlfriend in the carnage, and is the only survivor of the attack.  McCormick has developed some sort of sonic widget that can either attract or repel sharks, depending on what the screenwriter needs it to do at any given point in time.

Not Pierce Brosnan plays Nigel Putnam, a soldier of fortune in Africa who specializes in ghost hunting.

At First Glance, He Might Fool You. Then He Speaks...

Or killing strange animals.  Or something.   Putnam gets into the act when some random tall, blond lawyer lady approaches him in a bar in the Congo and asks him to kill whatever it is that's been eating the workers at a mine nearby.  They fly into the area, and the lawyer lady (inexplicably dressed in a short, tight dress and heels despite being in the jungle...) gets eaten by a giant crocodile (Crocosaurus, duh).  The croc also tries to eat Putnam, but somehow he manages to tranquillize the thing from inside its mouth, and it spits him out and falls asleep.  I was wondering why he didn't try to rescue the lawyer lady at that point, since she was swallowed whole and probably hadn't been digested yet.  Maybe he just doesn't care much for lawyers.

The actress I've never heard of (and I'm using the term "actress" kind of loosely) shows up at McCormick's debriefing, and offers him a chance at some closure by joining a team that is trying to hunt down and kill the shark.  This is Special Agent Hutchinson.    She looks very severe, and speaks in short, clipped sentences, and may actually have been carved out of a block of wood.

That Look On Her Face - It's Like A Mask!

About halfway through the film, she takes off her suit jacket and spends the rest of the film in a tight tank top.  This, I suspect, is a strong hint of why she's in the movie at all.  I imagine that somewhere in development, someone realized that the movie failed to meet the SyFy Channel's MCR (minimum cleavage requirement), so they added the character of Hutchinson to cover that.

Anyway, Hutchinson works for Admiral Calvin, played by The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager.  Calvin's main motivation for killing the shark appears to be so that he can smoke the most expensive cigar made.  Personally, I don't get it, but by the time they introduced that plot point, I was willing to go along with whatever they said.

This Movie Really Needed A Doctor. A Script Doctor...

Back to Putnam.  He manages to somehow get the sleeping croc onto a freight ship, along with some eggs.  (Eggs?  Where did eggs come from?  There weren't any eggs before.  It's like when the development staff realized they were low on cleavage, they also decided to add in some extra random plot points because the plot wasn't already convoluted enough.)  For some inane reason, Putnam wants to take the croc and its eggs to the U.S.  Why?  Really, why?  Does he want to corner the market on croc-skin accessories for the ladies?  Didn't he see King Kong?   Doesn't he know that bringing giant, vicious creatures to a densely populated city is a sure way to send said city to hell in a handbasket?  Whatever the reason, the shark begins to attack the boat. (nit pick:  both the shark and the croc tend to randomly change scale throughout the film.  At one point, we're told that the croc is 1500 feet long.  The croc is slightly longer than the shark.  The shark, early on, sinks a U.S. Navy Battleship, which is ~900 feet long.  The shark is clearly much shorter than the ship.  Yet the dorsal fin of the shark is shown to rise out of the water higher than the mast antennas on the battleship.  It's like the monsters are made of Expand-o-Foam.)  During the attack, the croc wakes up and escapes.  The boat sinks, and Putnam barely escapes.  He washes ashore and heads to a bar, where he meets Hutchinson, who recruits him to help with the burgeoning creature eradication effort.

Back on Admiral Calvin's aircraft carrier, we learn that McCormick and Putnam know each other from back in their Peace Corps days.  Or something.  It's really not well-explained, and by that point in the movie, I was finding myself wishing that the cast would break into a Bollywood-style musical number or something because everyone was so tense and serious.

The rest of the film is spent on a confusing trans-oceanic relay race trying to get ahead of the croc and the shark.  Why is the shark after the croc?  Well....

So those eggs that randomly turned up a while back?  As it happens, giant sharks are attracted to the smell of giant crocodile eggs (I mean, who wouldn't be?), and the giant crocodile just happens to have some "evolutionary adaptation" that enables it  to lay gajillions of eggs whenever the plot needs it to.  (giant pet rock: ham-handledly abusing evolution in order to give some magical characteristic or ability to an organism, even a monstrous one, is one of the reasons that a lot of people don't accept evolution.   I certainly don't expect a movie like this to get science right, but when they don't bother to try to explain anything else, but throw evolution under the bus, it just ticks me off.)

Anyway, yeah.  Sharks like eggs, and the croc has been cruising all over the oceans laying eggs.  Oceans.  Plural.  Somehow these giant creatures are also endowed with warp drive, because they go from Florida to California to Hawaii in the space of what seems like minutes.  And Admiral Calvin's carrier seems to have the same capabilities, because it just happens to be wherever the monsters show up.   I'm sure there's a deleted scene that explains that.  They probably cut to get the cleavage ratio up.

Right.  Well, McCormick, Putnam, and Hutchinson spend a lot of time in this adorable little 4-rotor helicopter, chasing the critters around and coming up with ineffective ways to try to kill them, including:

• Missiles
• Bombs
• Harsh Language
• Nuclear Subs (EPIC FAIL:  The shark swallows the submarine.  Whole.)
• Glaring Menacingly
• Trapping Them In The Panama Canal And Blowing It Up (Leads to random shark-on-land scene as it chomps its way back to the water, like some weird gray toothy Pac-Man.)

The Canal Scheme doesn't work, although it does manage to get the shark and the croc engaged in tooth to tail combat, where again all sense of consistency of scale is sacrificed in the interest of extra beer money.

They take the fight to Hawaii (I think.  Hell, by this point in the movie, they could have been on Mars for all the sense it made), where the croc eggs are starting to hatch.  A lucky slap of the croc's tail knocks the Urkelcopter out of the sky, injuring everyone and giving McCormick flashbacks of the shark attack that killed his lady-love.  McCormick and Putnam, with a renewed sense of urgency, come up with the Greatest Freakin' Plan Yet To Kill The Giant Monsters!

1. Take an inflatable motor boat out to where the monsters are fighting in the ocean
2. Drop McCormick's Amazing Sound Generator into the water, tuned to "Create Volcanic Eruption"
3. Lure the shark, croc, and half a gajillion baby crocs to the site of the impending eruption
4. Get the hell out

What could possibly go wrong with that?

Meanwhile, off camera, Hutchinson has regained consciousness and gotten the Urkelcopter back in the air, and she arrives just as McCormick and Putnam beach their motor boat.  They jump in the aircraft and get off the ground just as the volcanic eruption/nuclear explosion (remember, the shark ate a nuclear sub...) goes off, crisping all the critters in the blast.

Hutchinson finally cracks a smile (and it looked genuinely painful) as she reports that the shark and the croc are toast, and then flies off into the sunset.

Hokey smokes.

I never, in a million years, would have guessed that I'd watch a movie of which I can honestly say that Steve Urkel's acting was the unequivocal high point of the film.

Really.

-Jay

Apparently Eric Roberts hasn't had much to do lately.  My  best info is that Sharktopus will grace our screens in September.  I know I'll be watching.

Now, as if this wasn't enough, SyFy has also seen fit to give us Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.   Here's a preview:

Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, based on the preview, seems like not much more than an opportunity to get 80's singers Debbie Gibson and Tiffany onto the screen at the same time.  (Gibson, if you recall, was the female lead in Mega Shark.)  If they can find a way to get a cameo by Kylie Minogue, they'd have a trifecta.

I'll probably watch this, too - I'm particularly impressed by its sharply written dialogue.

It's apparently going to grace us with its presence in 2011.

So many bad movies.  So little time...

-Jay

The Car was, for reasons I still can't fully explain, a film that captured my imagination from the start - probably because of my parents' unequivocal refusal to take me to see it.  I can recall finding a novelization of the movie in the book rack at the local grocery store, where I read probably half of the story over the course of a few weeks.  The writing, as is typical of movie novelizations, was fairly bland and not horrifying in the least, but the parental ban persisted.

At some point, I found someone who had actually seen the movie - the girl who lived next door to us and who occasionally watched my brother and me.  She talked the movie up, as she did every movie she saw, but her stellar recommendation, alas, did not sway the folks.

Then Mom and Dad took us to see Star Wars, and The Car was largely forgotten until it turned up on TV many years later, after which I largely forgot about it again until I was casting about for a movie to review.

And so I bring to you my review of the 1977 death-on-wheels cheese-fest known as The Car.

The Car opens with a quote from Anton La Vey¹:

"Oh great brothers of the night, who rideth out upon the hot winds of hell, who dwelleth in the Devil's lair; move and appear."

Apart from serving as an example of why Anton La Vey will not be remembered as one of the 20^th Century's great writers, this quote gives us some insight into what we're about to experience.

Dawn breaks across the vast expanse of the desert. A cloud of dust rises in the distance, something dark and sinister at the front. This is our first look at The Car. (Trivia - The Car in The Car was designed by George Barris, the same customizer who built the Batmobile for the Batman series in the '60's.)  Cut to a pair of cyclists on a mountain pass, resplendent in their mid-1970's fashion.

Your Parents Dressed Like This.

The young woman, Suzie, challenges her guy, Pete, to a race through the tunnel up ahead. They pedal off into the darkness, unaware of the cruel twist of fate about to befall them.

We see, through the red-tinted windshield of The Car, the opening of the tunnel, as The Car enters shortly after the couple. The pair emerge from the far end of the tunnel, and work their way down the switchback road as The Car gains on them, stalking them like some...big, black, metallic stalking thing.  With wheels.

Our cycling couple looks back as The Car bears down on them, first pinning Suzie between its door and a rock wall on the roadside before sending her over the side, then knocking Pete off of a high bridge over a desert riverbed, all the while blaring its horn in a grisly staccato.

After lingering on the scene of Suzie's demise, we cut over to meet Sheriff's Deputy Wade Parent (James Brolin, AKA Mr. Barbra Streisand). Wade, resplendent in his 70's hair and immaculately groomed mustache, is the divorced parent of two young girls.

This Mustache Deserves A Line In The Credits

Wade's mustache is dating Lauren (Kathleen Lloyd, later a regular on Magnum, P.I., where she co-starred with Tom Selleck's mustache), a teacher at the girls' school. Lauren is quite anxious to be accepted by the girls. She leaves to get ready for work, while Wade's mustache starts its morning routine and get the girls ready for school.

Meanwhile, somewhere across town,² a hitch-hiking French horn player is greeting the dawn with some pastoral melodies, outside of the home of Amos and Bertha. Amos is, we quickly discover, an abusive sonofabitch with a volatile temper who happens to own an explosives business. Bertha honestly serves no real purpose in the story other than to get yelled at by Amos and give a little bit of background to the character of Ev, the aged sheriff who we'll meet in a bit.

Amos, unimpressed with the orchestral stylings of the hitch-hiker, sends him on his way. Cue the distant cloud of dust that we should recognize by now. As The Car approaches, our errant troubador imagines the driver to be a beautiful young woman who will ferry him off to a tropical beach somewhere. Little does he know...

The Car, barely slowing down, swerves to hit him. He narrowly gets out of the way, and angrily shouts at his prospective ride, which has screeched to a halt a short distance away. He gives The Car the finger, which apparently offends the thing, as it begins to back up, gaining speed quickly, slamming into the confused minstrel before grinding back and forth over him for good measure. The Car speeds off into the distance, its horn blaring victoriously.

Wade's mustache gets the call as he's taking the girls to school on his motorcycle that there has been a disturbance at Amos' place. After presumably dropping the girls off, he heads over, and arrives just as the Coroner shows up to claim the body. With a shovel. We get a description of The Car - big and black, low roof, no plates - and we meet Ev, the sheriff who worked with Wade's late father.

A quick cut back to the sheriff's station and we see the entire force getting put on alert for The Car, then we cut over to the local school. Wade's mustache's lady Lauren is a music teacher there, and is working with the marching band for the upcoming parade (here we have an example of the technique of foreshadowing, masterfully used by the director).

In a character moment that never really goes anywhere, the principal pulls Lauren aside to ask her about a drawing that one of the students made of Lauren teaching in the nude. The principal asks if Lauren thinks it's healthy for 13 year-old boys to imagine their teachers naked. Lauren replies that it is. There's probably some extensive social commentary to make here, but before we get that chance, Wade's mustache and fellow deputy Luke (Ronny Cox) show up to visit their ladies. Lauren and another teacher, Margie, briefly visit with the men, and we learn that Luke is a recovering alcoholic who has been dry for a claimed 2 years.  (The only reason for mentioning a character's alcoholism and his time on the wagon is because he's going to fall off that wagon at a crucial point in the movie.

A call comes in telling Wade's mustache and Luke to head out to the site of the bike attacks earlier in the film. At the scene we find that Suzie was the daughter of the local doctor, Dr. Pullbrook, and that she was last seen with Pete Keil. Luke doesn't believe that Pete could have been involved, since Pete was "in his Bible class" and had told him that he was going for a job interview.³

Back at the station, Ev is trying to convince Bertha to press charges against Amos.  She won't, and leaves with their son.  Ev remarks that he knew Bertha in High School, which makes for some odd math - Ev (and Amos) look older than dirt.  Bertha looks nearly as old as the dirt, but her son looks to be maybe 10.

Luke goes to check the "armaments locker", making a side trip to the trunk of his patrol car where he's stashed a bottle of booze that he takes a couple of long hits from.

Sheriff Ev, meanwhile, gets much the same idea and invites Wade's mustache to the bar across the street.  Ev walks outside and notices, in order, Amos yelling at Bertha as she gets into the truck, The Car parked down the street, and The Car up close and personal as it springs to action and pastes Ev in the middle of the street, narrowly missing Amos.

As the lately overworked coroner shows up to claim the body, Amos is taken into custody, claiming he can blow The Car sky high and identifying it as the same vehicle that hamburgered the hitch-hiker earlier in the film.

We also get some dialog in Navajo as Chas, the Navajo deputy talks with an elderly Navajo woman who got a close look at The Car before it ran down Ev.  He translates her account as a description of The Car.  It's obvious there's more, though.

The next morning, in a flurry of activity, a call comes into the station from the school principal who wants to know if the planned parade practice can go on.  It's decided that the practice should wait until the afternoon, and a deputy will be assigned to supervise, and we find out what Chas didn't say as Donna, the Navajo dispatcher, tells Wade's mustache that the old woman claimed that there was no driver in The Car!  Wade's  mustache decides that the parade practice needs to be called off, and tells Luke to call the principal.  Just then, a call comes in that a fisherman has discovered Pete's body (the biker from the start of the film.  Remember him?) has been found under the bridge.  Wade's mustache leaves to investigate, and Luke sits at the table looking bleary-eyed and drunk.

At the parade grounds, which looks to double as maybe a rodeo ring and a dirt race track, the band is warming up.  Lauren, a vision in shiny polyester, leads the kids in their valiant efforts at music-making.  A disposable deputy shows up, and climbs to a platform overlooking the area, completely missing the tell-tale glare of The Car's windshield in the distance.  As The Car grows nearer, the wind kicks up, dust blows, and the horses get upset.  The Car's horn blares like the trumpets of the Valkyries as they swoop in to claim the spirits of fallen Viking warriors, sending everyone running for the cliffs.⁴

The Car gains quickly, and despite being distracted by some noble-but-not-too-bright guys on horses catches up to the fleeing crowd. Unable to make it to the cliffs, the group takes refuge in a conveniently located cemetery, partially protected by a knee-high stone wall. The Car can't enter! It tries a couple of times, but can come no closer than the gate. Lauren decides to distract The Car with taunts, so that Margie can make a dash for the deputy's car and call for help.

Neener, Neener, Neener! You Can't Get Me!!

Margie makes it to safety and radios for help.  Wade's mustache heads for the parade grounds, and the rest of the deputies begin to converge on the area.  As the sirens grow near, The Car takes off.  Wade's mustache tells Lauren to take the girls home.

The action shifts to Ray, a deputy covering one of the desert roads.  He sees The Car speeding towards him, and readies his shotgun.  The Car stops a few yards short of Ray, who unloads his shotgun at it to no effect.  The Car turns and races away, with Ray in hot pursuit.  The deputies mobilize, and Ray chases The Car up a road leading to the top of a mesa, where he expects to trap it.  Unfortunately, The Car manages to turn around and trap Ray in his car at the edge of the road, where it pushes him over the side (nicely invoking the cliche of the exploding car in the process).

The Car blasts back down the road, and comes face-to-face with two police cars on the road.  In perhaps the best stunt of the entire film, The Car turns sideways and puts itself into a barrel roll over the police cars, killing the occupants (off-camera), and continuing on its way.

That Was Totally Wicked!!!

(Trivia - this stunt is edited in at least some of the TV versions of The Car,  including the one that I saw years ago.  The edit, if I remember correctly, isn't very well done, and leaves a glaring continuity gap later regarding the number of dead cops.)

Wade's mustache nears the scene, and he lays his bike down to block The Car.  The Car stops short, and Wade's mustache takes a few shots at it.  He approaches The Car slowly from the side.  The window lowers slightly.  The door pops open.  As Wade's mustache reaches for the door, it slams open, knocking him to the ground, dazed.  The Car's engine revs loudly, and it appears to vanish!

Wade's mustache awakens in the hospital, being patched up by Dr. Pullbrook (Suzie's father).  The deputies show up.  Notes  are compared - The Car was undamaged by everything that happened to it.  They speculate on bulletproof glass and self-sealing tires.  At least 6 cops have been killed.  No driver has been seen.  The kids are at home with Margie.  They call, and tell Wade's mustache that Lauren "cussed out" The Car.  Lauren leaves to get her things, accompanied by Chas.  She's going to watch the girls.  Wade's mustache calls Luke in and asks why the parade practice wasn't canceled.  He realizes that Luke is hitting the sauce again.

Chas drives Lauren to her house.  On the way, he passes his trailer, concerned for his family.  Lauren tells him to drop her off, go check on his loved ones, and come back in half an hour.  As Chas heads home, we see that The Car has been waiting, dark, in the woods on the way to Lauren's.  With Lauren left alone, The Car makes its move.

The wind picks up.  Lauren, quick on the uptake, realizes that The Car is near, and runs inside.  (Trivia - in her living room is a cheesy, partially completed painting of Wade and his 'stache.  She calls Wade's mustache, fearfully telling him that she can hear the engine of The Car.   Through the window, we see the approaching headlights of The Car - two glowing predatory eyes growing larger by the moment.  Lauren looks up just in time to see The Car launch itself through the wall at her.  It drives through the house, horn sounding triumphantly, and takes off down the road into the darkness.

During the cleanup, Wade's mustache becomes facial hair on a mission.  The Car must be destroyed!  Luke, questionably sober, declares that he knows why The Car couldn't enter the cemetery - it was hallowed ground.  It sought revenge on Lauren because she cursed it, and Wade's mustache is next.

The plan that develops involves having Amos and a bunch of the deputies plant explosives around the rim of a box canyon outside of town (recall that Amos is the local dynamite monger), and Wade's 'stache leading The Car in where it can be buried under tons of rock.⁵

That evening, Wade's mustache makes sure his girls are asleep, then he goes into his garage to do some tuning on his bike.  As he's working, he notices that he's not alone in his garage - The Car is in there with him! ZOMG!!  And it got in past the locked door and everything!  The Car begins gunning its engine, filling the garage with exhaust!  Wade's mustache makes a break for it, diving out a window and starting his motorcycle - the chase is on!

The Car chases Wade's 'stache through the streets of Santa Ynez, before getting out into the open desert.  They head to the canyon ahead of schedule.  Amos and company haven't finished laying the explosives, so Wade's mustache plays a game of vehicular tag with The Car to stall for time.

He soon loses his bike, so Wade's mustache starts up a rope that Luke has tossed over the side.  The Car withdraws and heads up the road to the top of the canyon, where Amos and the deputies are almost finished.  Wade's mustache gets to the top, and he and Luke move away from the edge to lure The Car.

As it crests the top of the canyon, The Car charges full speed for Wade's mustache and Luke.  They wait until the last instant, and dive out of the way.  The Car, unable to stop, launches over the edge, horn honking as it plummets to the canyon floor.  Amos pushes the plunger on the detonator, and something like eleventy thousand pounds of dynamite drop the canyon wall onto The Car.  A column of fire bursts skyward, accompanied by an unearthly howl.  The survivors see a monstrous face appear briefly in the flames before they dissipate.

Demon? Snake? Burning Cat?

The sun rises over the distant hills, and it appears that The Car has been defeated!

Except...

As the credits roll, we see a wheel's-eye view of The Car (another Car?) driving through the streets of a large city.  The evil continues, and nothing but the lack of a budget for a sequel can stop it!

And there you have it.  30-some-odd years haven't really diminished the cheese-factor of The Car.  That said, as far as cult-favorite films go, The Car isn't nearly as bad as some others, and it's milder than a lot of stuff that ends up on network TV these days.  If you're looking for a flick for a weird movie night, this might be your thing.

-Jay
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¹La Vey declared himself to be the head of the Church of Satan, though his version of "satanism" seems more akin to any of a number of new-age philosophies than anything else. Meh.

²A note on geography. Our story is set in the town of Santa Ynez, Utah. Santa Ynez is uniquely situated so that every point in town is roughly two minutes from every other point in town. Further, we have mountain passes, canyons, mesas, and large flat expanses of plains that are two minutes from each other, yet totally invisible from within various points of the town.

³Take note of this. Luke is supposed to be the spiritual one. We know this because of his reference to his Bible class and because of the cross he wears on a chain that conspicuously pops out of his shirt a couple of times.  Also, the scene showing Suzie's body is probably the single most graphic scene in the entire film, and it is basically the actress laying on the ground in some weeds with some technicolor blood smeared on her.  It's interesting that 1977's PG-rated movies are less violent than most modern TV crime dramas.

⁴I'm not exactly sure why anyone would think it would be a good idea to run maybe a quarter-mile across an open plain to the foot of some cliffs while being pursued by a driverless car that has already killed several people, but what do I know?

⁵OK. So by this point, we've got a pretty clear picture that The Car is some sort of vehicular embodiment of evil. (The Car is not original in this concept, by the way. In 1974, there was a TV movie called Killdozer! featuring a murderous piece of construction equipment.  The car motif was used, arguably to better effect, by Stephen King in his 1983 novel Christine.)  Now, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, but if I were some sort of evil spirit or demon or whatever, and I wanted to inhabit something murderous, I think I'd go for something more maneuverable, like, I don't know, a velociraptor or something.  Maybe a giant robot crab...

Zombies as a concept can be seen as metaphors for a lot of things, from mindless consumerism to religious fanaticism to political zeal.

They're also versatile - they don't have the limitations of, say, werewolves or vampires, and they don't require much in the way of backstory to get the narrative going.¹

Perhaps most of all, they're kind of fun.²

So, I was quite intrigued when I learned of the 2009 Norwegian film, Død Snø (Dead Snow, in English - I'll refer to it by its English title from now on.)

Dead Snow features a Norwegian cast and crew.  I'm going to assume that neither of my readers is familiar enough with Norwegian film to be interested in who played what role, so I'll skip the part where I run through the actors and get straight to the story.  (I'll caveat this review with the admission that I watched the film several weeks ago, so bits may be slightly out-of-order, much like the fresh entrails of a victim of a zombie attack.  Consider it a feature of the article and not a flaw.)

We øpen øn a yøung wøman being chased thrøugh the snøwy wøøds øf Nørway at night.  Thrøugh the trees, we catch fleeting glimpses øf her pursuer.  She thinks she's løst him, and støps tø løøk arøund.  We can almøst feel her relief, when her attacker springs up øut of nøwhere like a brain-eating jack-in-the-bøx and ends the hunt.³

Cut to the rest of our characters:

The guys: Martin, Roy, Vegard and Erlend are heading to their rendezvous point with their ladyfriends for a weekend in a remote mountain cabin.

The girls: Hanna, Liv, and Chris, are in their car.  A fourth girl, Sara, is meeting the group at the cabin after having skied cross-country from wherever she started.

The group meets at the base of the mountain.  One of the guys, Vegard I think, heads up to the cabin on a snowmobile, and the others follow on foot.  We discover that Sara's family owns the cabin.

"Cabin", by the way, may be too generous of a term.  I've actually seen hamster cages that are more roomy than this "cabin", and the hamster cages at least have the luxurious perks of the little exercise wheel and a water bottle.  And sunflower seeds...

Our intrepid group appears to have packed for the weekend by bringing a CD boombox, some extra socks, and a case of beer.

After some snowcapades, it finally occurs to the group that Sara hasn't shown up yet, but nobody really seems concerned.  (Gripe:  if my girlfriend was skiing cross-country to meet me at a cabin, and wasn't there when she was supposed to be, I'd like to think I'd be quicker to start searching.  Our little bunch here appears to think it's perfectly reasonable to show up a day or two late...)

Cut to later in the evening, the group has returned to their spacious accommodations.  One of the ladies excuses herself to visit the outhouse.  Yes.  Outhouse.  In the frozen hill country of Norway.  Brrrrrrrrrr!

She catches fleeting glimpses of something moving around outside, and gets back in as fast as she can.  Soon there is a knock at the door.

Enter The Drifter.  I don't think he was given a name.  We'll call him Sven.  Sven looks like he's spent most of the last several years roaming around the woods waiting for someone to show up at the cabin so he can invite himself in for a cup of coffee and a smoke.

He sits down with the group, and tells them of the accursed history of the area.  Seems that back in World War II, a group of Nazi soldiers led by an officer named Herzog set up shop in the area.  When things went bad for the Nazis and it became clear they were going to lose, Herzog's group stole all the gold and valuables from the locals and fled into the hills, where they disappeared.  Neither the Nazis nor the plundered treasure was ever found.

Ever since, stories have been told about evil lurking in the hills, an evil which must not be disturbed!!!!!

Sorry.  Anyway, the group dismisses Sven as a nutcase, and he goes on his way into the night.

Our group of victims intrepid vacationers opens up a trap door in the floor to retrieve their beer, and we  catch a glimpse of a mysterious box with some sort of eerie yellowish fog wafting out of the keyhole.  The fog is there, I think, just to let us know that the box is important, since otherwise we might miss that important plot point.

From this point on, things get odder.  We revisit Sven, the drifter, making camp out in the snow in a small tent.  He hears a noise, and is promptly attacked, field dressed, and snacked upon by one of our evil Nazi zombies.  Maybe they got ticked at Sven for making them look bad in the story he told to the folks in the cabin, or maybe the zombie just got a craving for some entrails, I don't know.

The next morning, Vegard heads out on the snowmobile to hunt for Sara - a search that eventually leads him to Sven's gore-splattered campsite and what's left of Sven.⁴

Vegard presses on, and eventually falls through the snow into a cave and is knocked unconscious.

The others spend their day with more snowy frolicking, and once again return to the cabin for an evening of quality bonding time. They discover the mysterious box under the floor and open it to find the Nazi plunder. In a plot device apparently cribbed straight from inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean, the zombies are attracted to the treasure.  In fact, when I saw the scene, my first thought was "Holy crap!  I bet that the treasure somehow drives the zombies, not unlike the way that the Aztec gold drove the crew of the Black Pearl to seek out every last coin!"

One of the guys (by this point I'd largely stopped trying to keep track of the names) heads to the outhouse, and is followed by Chris (the non-blond woman without the dreadlocks).  The two share a tender romantic interlude in the outhouse.⁵

Loverboy heads back into the cabin, while Chris stays behind to freshen up, whereupon she is beset by what we now know to be a Nazi zombie.

Chris fares poorly in this encounter.

The others soon realize that she hasn't returned, and begin a search, only to find themselves under siege by a group of zombies wielding Chris' now-detached head.  Amazing zombie action ensues, culminating with Loverboy literally going to pieces as the zombies pull him through a window.  (Zombies dragging someone through a window and pulling them apart is a must-have event in any self-respecting zombie film.)

He makes a torch and looks around, discovering various Nazi artifacts - flags, machine guns, potato-masher grenades, Sara's head, and such. He soon discovers the zombies.

Madcap zombie mayhem ensues, complete with a zombie-hanging-by-the-entrails bit that made me bust a gut laughing.⁶

Feeling all manly, Vegard attaches a machine gun to his snowmobile and heads back for the cabin.

Our other expendables have decided that their best shot at survival is for the women to go for help and the remaining guys to distract the zombies.

In alternating scenes, the women head towards what they believe to be civilization only to end up chased through the woods while the guys go all Spartan on the undead with a variety of hatches, axes , chainsaws, and maybe a board with a rusty nail in it.  Vegard shows up with his pimped out snowmobile and joins in the fun briefly before getting torn to bits, and the cabin burns to the ground.

The blond woman ends up getting taken down by the zombies, but before she can be completely devoured, she manages to arm a grenade on her consumer's belt, finishing them both off in a ball of fire.  The dreadlock girl manages to get away for the moment, after we learn that zombies can climb trees, and that sometimes the makeup effects folks cut corners.

The guys, meanwhile, aren't doing any better, largely because the pack of zombies seems to be nigh-endless.  Dreadlock girl finds her way back to the guys, where her guy mistakes her for a zombie and breaks up with her the hard way.

Herzog (the commander of the Nazis in the area, remember?) finally shows up.  He looks none too pleased that his minions haven't completely defeated the warm bodies yet...

...so he summons the rest (seriously, just how many Nazi zombies can there possibly be in one forest?)...

...who proceed to chase the last two survivors down the mountain, where we lose one to disembowelment via tree.  Herzog retrieves a piece of the treasure from the body, and our lone survivor finally makes the connection and heads back to the site of the cabin.  He sifts through the rubble and finds the box just as Herzog and his posse show up.

He returns the box to Herzog (who seems satisfied), and flees down the mountain.

As he digs out his keys to start the car, a single gold coin falls to the floor of the car.  He reaches down and picks it up, just in time to see Herzog's fist come through the window.

What a craptacular way to end a weekend getaway.

Let this be a lesson to anyone who ever finds a hidden box of treasure - make damn sure there aren't any zombies around before you open the box.

I'll give Dead Snow 3 half-eaten brains out of 5.

-Jay
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¹Of the classic zombie films made before roughly 2000, Romero's 1968 Night of The Living Dead remains, in my opinion, the definitive zombie film.  In the more recent batch, I have to give the nod to Shaun of the Dead (2004), although I also like Zombieland (2009), in particular Woody Harrelson's scene-chewing Tallahassee.

²I have a weird idea of fun...

³Honestly. I can deal with the jack-in-the-box bit if the monster is chasing the victim through, say, a cluttered building, or maybe a cornfield. At night. But the woods here aren't very dense, it's in bright moonlight, and the ground is covered in snow. Unless she's being chased by a vicious white rabbit, she should be able to spot whatever is following her. Do Norwegian zombies tunnel through the snow or something?

⁴Point of note: We often think of cinematic zombies as brainovores. However, close review of zombie films reveals that many, perhaps most, zombies are equally as fond of entrails. I propose the name cerebroentrailovore to address this particular dietary preference.

⁵If I never again have to watch a love scene set in an outhouse, I won't complain a bit...

⁶Yes. I made that joke. It's my blog, so I can do that.

Yeah.  Sharktopus.  The mutant love-child of Mega Shark and Giant Octopus, no doubt. 

This proves conclusively that any concept can be sold as a film given the right circumstances.

Look for this blockbuster to show up sometime in 2010, with a review here to follow.  In the meanwhile, I'll leave readers with this little gem of concept art:

It Needs Little Shark Heads On The Tentacles...

(James often writes about the relationships between science fiction and religion, and with good reason - there are almost endless opportunities to compare and contrast our notions of religion with those in various sci-fi milieus, and sci-fi gives us a mechanism to explore moral and ethical issues in ways we can't readily do in real life.)     

I think it's a very interesting question, particularly when you start peeling away the layers. 

As the question is posed, I interpret it as asking "can someone be so wicked that forgiveness is impossible"?  (If I'm misinterpreting, hopefully James will let me know.)

James poses some discussion-prompting questions as follow-ups:  Should Vader have stood trial?  Been executed?  Set free?

Before I go any further, I need to lay out a few assumptions:

1. Anyone reading this is assumed to be at least passingly familiar with the life and career of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader.
2. For purposes of this post, the Star Wars canon is taken to be the six theatrical films and the Cartoon Network series Clone Wars.  This is mainly because I'm unfamiliar with the materials that make up the expanded canon. 
3. Han shot first.

Now, if we take the original question, "should Darth Vader be forgiven if he repents?" and attempt to answer it from a familiar Christian perspective, the answer would probably be a fairly straightforward "yes".  But that's a boring answer.

To go deeper, we need to look at the follow-ups. 

I grew up Catholic.  A prominent feature of Catholicism is the sacrament of Reconciliation.  It used to be called Confession, which always suggested to me something along the lines of the Spanish Inquisition, complete with tongue pincers and thumbscrews.  The basic Catholic Reconciliation scenario involves a one-to-one chat with a priest, wherein the congregant 'fesses up to his transgressions, the priest says a little prayer and gives the repentant congregant some sort of assignment (such as ten Hail Marys) to perform whilst reflecting upon his sins.¹

The sinner is then declared to be right with God, and can go along his merry way.²

Except that's really not all there is to it. 

There remains the often significant matter of getting right with the folks that were on the bad end of the transgression.  It's becoming more common for priests to include some sort of restitution clause in the post-confession assignment, encouraging people to take personal responsibility for their actions and deal with the consequences of them.

That's where James' other questions come into play.

In the Star Wars mythology, Darth Vader was either directly responsible for or complicit in the deaths of millions, if not billions of people.  He tortured his daughter, maimed his son, encased a guy in metal, and dispatched minions to kill cute, fuzzy little spear-wielding teddy bears.³

If we had someone with that sort of rap sheet in custody, I don't think anyone would try to argue that he should be released - he just has too much to answer for even if he is genuinely remorseful.   I suppose one could argue that he was insane, or "just following orders", but neither of those excuses seem sufficient to let him go free. 

The bottom line is that if we took Darth Vader and dropped him into our world, he could be forgiven for his sins in the religious sense of the term, but that he would still have to accept the secular consequences of his crime - in other words he'd spend the rest of his life in jail or perhaps face execution.⁴

Now, let's look at things from within the Star Wars universe. 

The first thing to consider is that within the Star Wars universe, at least as I've defined the canon for this post, religion doesn't seem to involve anything comparable to a Christian concept of God.  The only mention I can recall is that C-3PO "thanks the maker" on occasion, but since he's a robot, "maker" could just as easily refer to the person who put him together as it could to God. 

The religion, such as it is, of the Star Wars universe appears to be centered on the Force.  The Force, though, seems to be more of an energy field or kind of magic that people seek to understand and control rather than something that people regard as an object of worship.  The Force also seems to lack any sort of agency or intent - it's just kinda there, waiting to be used by people lucky enough to have a high midichlorian count.⁵

The Force, in other words, is morally neutral, and its energy/magic can be brought to bear for good or ill, depending on the intent of the user.  Morality in the Star Wars universe appears to depend not upon some extrinsic objective standard, but rather on that which maintains order and harmony within society.

This makes the question of Vader's repentance and forgiveness more complicated.  Vader didn't "sin" in the sense that he transgressed against the will of the Force and made the Force upset.  Rather, his "sin" was that he elected to use the power of the Force for his own selfish reasons rather than for the betterment of his society as a whole.  In this context, "redemption" means "turning away from the dark side" and using the power for unselfish reasons, and doesn't carry the connotation of "making the Force" happy or otherwise placating it. 

In a similar vein, the Force can't "forgive" Vader.  The Force itself doesn't care how it is used - at the heart of the matter it's just a resource to be utilized.  "Forgiveness" for Vader must be sought from those he hurt - Luke, Leia, all the Jedi younglings he killed, and so on.  Luke forgives him, but there isn't any opportunity for anyone else to.⁶

This leads us to whether Vader would have spent the rest of his life in prison (or faced execution) had he survived.  I think that the situation remains the same as it was when we were considering his fate in our world - he still has an obscene amount of blood on his hands, and he still has an almost unimaginable debt to pay to society.  I don't think there's any compelling reason to absolve him of the responsibility for his actions - that obligation remains regardless of the nature of any possible afterlife. 

From here, it might be interesting to consider the philosophical ramifications  we'd be faced with if we were to encounter a race of intelligent aliens.  I'll take up that topic in a future post.

 -Jay

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¹Many parishes these days have communal services where the intimidating one-on-one chat with the priest is replaced by the priest delivering some prayers and a short homily to the gathered congregants, who personally reflect on their sins. The one-on-one part is then offered as an option. It always seemed to me that the one-on-one approach harkened back to medieval days. It's not much of a stretch to see how a priest who knew the details of the dark affairs of the nobility could use that knowledge as leverage.  Anyway...

²No, there's no sarcasm in this statement. Really. None.

³No sarcasm here, either.  By the way, I always found the responses of Luke and Leia to the knowledge of their paternity to be bizarre.  Luke's response in Episode V seemed remarkably short-lived.  Leia never really even gave any visible response at all.  I would think that learning that your father was one of the most despicable, evil murderers in the galaxy might be more traumatic...

⁴Not much different than any other jailhouse conversion, really.  Personally, I've always found it repulsive that some doctrines claim that someone like, say, Jeffrey Dahmer can be "saved" in prison, while the people that he raped, murdered, and mutilated might not be.

⁵Midichlorians (along with Jar-Jar Binks and Anakin Skywalker as a whiny brat) are a prime example of why George Lucas should not be allowed to write movies anymore. It's not that endosymbiosis is a bad concept in and of itself, but its use here essentially turns the Jedi into accidents of birth rather than dedicated warriors who achieved their skills through years of study and practice.

⁶We don't know, based on the films, whether ordinary people have any sort of consciousness or soul that persists after death, so we don't know if Vader could seek their forgiveness after he died. We are told that the ability of the Jedi to appear as "Force Ghosts" is something that they only recently figured out how to do, so we have a precedent for a concept of soul, but I don't think we have warrant to conclude that Vader could posthumously communicate with all of the people that he was responsible for killing.