Darth Vader, Sci-Fi, and Religion
Over at Exploring Our Matrix, James McGrath has a short post raising the question "should Darth Vader be forgiven if he repents?"
(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:
- Anyone reading this is assumed to be at least passingly familiar with the life and career of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader.
- 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.
- 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.
Movie Review: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Over the holidays, I had occasion to watch G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
I'll start off by saying that it is by no means the worst Action-Figure-to-Movie effort that I've seen in my life. (That "honor", such as it is, goes to Masters of the Universe from way back in 1987. That particular film had me wondering just who had what photos of Frank Langella that were so bad that he'd rather appear as Skeletor than have them released. Ah, the '80s...)
Anyhow, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (hereafter abbreviated GIJ) gives us the story of a top-secret, multi-national group of elite soldiers led by Dennis Quaid's General Hawk, and their efforts to recover some stolen nanotechnology created by James McCullen's (played by Christopher Eccleston) weapons company, M.A.R.S.
M.A.R.S. has developed the technology to weaponize nanobots - once delivered to the target, the nanobots will consume all of the buildings and vehicles in the area until a special deactivation signal is received. (I don't think the film explicitly stated that the 'bots would consume humans, but I took that implication from the exposition.)
Digression: Nanobots are awesome. This is an example of what I'm going to call The First Law of Action Movie Doomsday Weapons: When in need of a doomsday weapon, pick a bleeding-edge technology that nobody really understands. That way you can give it arbitrary capabilities and limitations depending on whatever the situation calls for.
Several warheads containing these little nasties are put in the custody of an Army escort led by Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans). The convoy is attacked by a mysterious woman (Sienna Miller's Baroness) and a bunch of what appear to be robotic soldiers armed with extremely advanced technology, and most of the soldiers are killed. Duke recognized the Baroness as his former flame, Anna, but is unable to stop her from temporarily capturing the warheads.
Digression: GIJ provides a stunning example of what I'll call The First Law of Fan Service in the character of the Baroness. Simply put, the First Law of Fan Service states that beautiful female villains will always select skin-tight, cleavage revealing outfits in which to conduct their villainy, despite the fact that such outfits generally don't seem very functional.
The attack is interrupted by the arrival of a group of action figures unusually equipped operatives, including the silent ninja Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and the laser/rocket crossbow wielding Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), who chase off the attackers and retrieve the case containing the warheads. They head back to the secret underground base of the Joes, where they meet General Hawk in person and give us more exposition. We learn a little about the history of Duke and the Baroness, but I can't get into that without revealing a key plot point.
Digression: The First Law of Secret Underground Bases is that it is not only possible but relatively routine to construct vast bases underground without anyone knowing about them. Such bases may be many levels deep, with at least one level connecting to a subterranean river. One level will be a hangar level with entry either through iris doors in the ceiling or through a convenient cliff-side cave. We also have The Second Law of Fan Service demonstrated by Scarlett - to wit: beautiful female heroes will select form-fitting but slightly less revealing than the villainess' outfits not only during their heroic activities but during their down-time.
Gripe: If you're an aspiring CGI artist, please remember that aircraft cast shadows...
With the warheads back at Joe HQ, McCullen appears via hologram to "inspect" them. In a not-particularly subtle twist, McCullen is revealed to be playing for the bad guys, and tricks the Joes into activating a homing beacon in the warhead case that allows the Baroness and the evil ninja Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) to find the Joe's base, tunnel in with an arbitrarily large number of robo-soldiers, wreak havoc in the base, injure Hawk, and steal the warheads.
Digression: The First Rule of Weapons Dealers in action movies is that they are always either the villain or in cahoots with the villain. One might object and cite Tony Stark in Iron Man, but while Stark starts out as a weapons dealer in cahoots with Obidiah Stane, he renounces that role prior to assuming the role of Iron Man.
Digression: Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes exemplify The First Rule of Ninjas: Ninjas on opposite sides of the central conflict in an action movie will previously have been the most promising students under the same ninja master. The one who ends up working with the bad guys will have endured some perceived slight or dishonor from the good ninja, and this grudge will be the nucleus of his misguided attempt to restore his honor.
The Joes track the warheads to Paris and engage in a long car/motorcycle/powered suit of armor chase through the streets, leading up to the detonation of one of the warheads and the escape of the Baroness and Storm Shadow. The mayhem in the streets attracts the attention of the Paris constabulary who detain the Joes until Hawk arrives to take custody of them. Hawk then informs the team that they're being recalled to their home countries (remember, it's a multi-national team), but gives them the latitude to follow the Baroness and Storm Shadow to the Arctic Circle first, where McCullen and the mad scientist he's working with have established a secret base under the ice.
Digression: The First Corollary to the First Law of Secret Underground Bases holds that an underwater or under-ice base is functionally equivalent to an underground base. The Second Law of Secret Underground Bases informs us that normal, real-world construction schedules and processes do not apply when building a Secret Underground Base. Such bases may be built on arbitrarily vast scales and with nigh-unimaginable complexity in as little as a few weeks, with the influx of workers and resources going completely unnoticed by anyone.
Digression: The First Law of Evil Organizations requires a minimum of one Evil Mad Scientist to occupy a high position in the organization.
Artist's Impression of a Typical Evil Mad Scientist
Most of what happens at the under-ice base serves to tie together spoilerish plot threads that I've glossed over, and sets up for a potential sequel, so I won't get into the details of the final battle.
This is one of those films that kind of surprised me. I went into it with expectations so low that I could trip over them, and I came away from it pleasantly surprised. Is it a great movie? Of course not. But it works quite well as a live-action cartoon, as do most Stephen Sommers-directed films (The Mummy, for example), so long as you don't think too much about what's going on.
If you're old enough to remember the old G.I. Joe cartoons from the '80s, it's fun to see some of those characters in live-action.
Bottom line - G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is an enjoyable diversion if you're the sort that appreciates lots of explosions, gadgets, and don't mind suspending a lot of disbelief. If you happen to have an old Snake Eyes action figure around the house, so much the better.
- Jay
Inglourious Basterds and Perspective
Last night I finally put my Christmas tree up. It's a longer process than it should be, since it's an artificial tree that needs to have each branch fluffed and shaped. The usual protocol has me putting the tree up and stringing the lights, and the next evening the kids put the ornaments up.
As part of the protocol, I park myself in front of the TV and watch a movie.
The movie this year was Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.
The film is set in a fictional version of World War II France, and consists of two parallel stories - one involving Brad Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raine and his team of Nazi killing soldiers, and the other following Melanie Laurent's Shoshanna Dreyfus on her path to avenge her family's murder at the hands of Nazi soldiers several years earlier. The threads are woven together by a third story line that I don't need to get into.
I usually enjoy Tarantino's films (although I'll admit that I've never particularly cared for Reservoir Dogs, and it took me several viewings to appreciate Pulp Fiction), largely because his characters tend to be...unconventional.
What jumped out at me in Inglourious Basterds, though, was the variety of perspectives that were explored in the film - how Tarantino took one basic situation, the Nazi occupation of France, and presented it through at least half a dozen different perspectives.
Perspectives are interesting. We (as a society and as individuals) don't always give due consideration to perspectives other than our own. It's difficult to do. For one thing, to consider things from other perspectives means considering that our own perspective might be wrong. That can be a very uncomfortable thought for a lot of people.
But I think it's crucial that we make an honest attempt to do it.
Jay
Vampires Are Not Supposed to Sparkle
Last evening, a friend of mine initiated a Facebook thread about not going to see New Moon (the second Twilight movie) at midnight.
I inadvertently hijacked the thread when I commented that vampires aren't supposed to sparkle, and that got me thinking about different literary and theatrical versions of vampires.
In light of that, I thought I'd put together a list (admittedly incomplete) of literary and film vampires, with a few comments about what makes them stand out in my mind. I don't intend for this to be exhaustive - it's based on works that I'm personally familiar with, and in many instances I'm working from the memory of things I read or watched many years ago.
I'm not going to go too far down the path of vampire mythology - there are far too many to do that in the space of one post, and in any case the typical American vampire archetype goes back to Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula.1 (The link will take you to Project Gutenberg's page for Dracula.)
Literary Vampires
Dracula, in Stoker's novel, is portrayed as a proud nobleman. He's well aware of his power and influence, and isn't slow to use either. His characterization in the novel also represents a counterpoint to repressive Victorian-era sexuality, although it's not presented anywhere near as explicitly as it would be if the book were written today. Dracula could create new vampires from his victims, but that was a fairly rare occurence.
Prior to Stoker, one of the foundational literary vampires was Lord Ruthven, in John William Polidori's 1819 short story, The Vampyre. (Again, the link goes to Project Gutenberg.) Rutheven, too, was a nobleman, and like Dracula, The Vampyre has quite a bit of sexual subtext.
Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot, written in 1975, is in many ways a reimagining of Dracula set in a small New England town. Kurt Barlow, the vampire, is powerful and arrogant, much like Dracula. 'Salem's Lot is the first book I can recall where every victim of a vampire was turned into a vampire - by the climax of the book, the entire town had been turned.
In 1976, Anne Rice started her Vampire Chronicles series with Interview With the Vampire. Rice introduced angst to the literary vampire, and made the vampire characters (mainly Lestat) the focus of the books rather than simply the villains.2
Brian Lumley's Necroscope series, which started in 1992, took a science-fiction turn with vampire Thibor Ferenczy and his descendants. Necroscope-world vampires (or wamphyri) were virtually indestructible extra-dimensional parasitic creatures that infect their hosts. This series got more and more convoluted as it went on, and vampires (as a category) gained or lost powers almost at random depending on the needs of the story, and by the time I quit reading at around the fifth book or so, the series had lost just about every shred of internal continuity or coherence.
The Southern Vampire Mysteries, by Charlaine Harris, started in 2001 with the publication of Dead Until Dark. Harris' vampires have recently made themselves known to the world at large following the development of a synthetic blood substitue. Vampires are revealed to have a complex social/political structure that has developed over thousands of years of hiding from humanity. Initially, Harris used her vampires as a metaphor for social acceptance of marginalized groups, but as she introduces more supernatural societies in later books, she seems to have shifted focus somewhat.3
Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, based on what I've heard, ratchets the angst way up and introduces sparkles to vampires. I don't have any plans to read these books. My observation is that they're insanely popular among teenage girls.
Film (and TV) Vampires
The movie and TV worlds are replete with vampires. Many of these are of literary origin, but at least as many exist only on-screen.
Count Orlock
The vampire in the 1922 silent film Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens, directed by F.W. Murnau is an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula. Max Schreck played Count Orlock, the bald, rat-like vampire. Orlock is basically a bringer of pestilence and death, and is destroyed by the rising sun at the end of the film. Orlock was played by Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's 1979 remake of the film, and in E.E. Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire, Willem Dafoe played Max Schreck playing Count Orlock in the 1922 film, the catch being that Schreck was really a vampire. Got that?
Clockwise from top left: Lugosi (1931), Lee (1958), Oldman (1992), Langella (1979)
The 1931 version of Dracula, directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the titular vampire, remains (in my mind) as the exemplar of old-school vampire films. Lugosi had played the role on stage, and brought basically the same characterization to the film. England's Hammer Films remade Dracula in 1958 with Christopher Lee in the role. A 1979 remake starred Frank Langella as the Count, and in 1992 Gary Oldman turned in an excellent interpretation.
Kurt Barlow from 'Salem's Lot (1979)
1979 saw King's 'Salem's Lot appear as a TV miniseries starring David Soul (from Starsky and Hutch) and James Mason. Barlow has been reinterpretted as an Orlock-esque monster (portrayed by Reggie Nalder), and is presented more for his shock value. ('Salem's Lot was remade in 2004, and was somewhat more true to the book's interpretation of Barlow.)
The 1980's saw some unusual twists on the vampire. David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, and Catherine Deneuve starred in The Hunger (1983), a stylish film that tried to add some depth to the vampire characters. (In my opinion it was more style than substance.) In 1985, Tobe Hooper directed Mathilda May in Lifeforce. This film could best be summarized as "sexy naked space vampire runs amok."
Vampires met music videos in 1987 with Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys, starring a pre-24 Kiefer Sutherland and a bunch of late-80's stars that haven't done a whole lot recently. This film firmly established the concept of a nest of vampires that hang around (hah!) together for companionship and support, and in so doing introduced some sympathetic aspects to vampires that usually didn't show up in movies.4
Angel and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
The 1990s gave us the first appearance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1992, starring Kristi Swanson as Buffy and Rutger Hauer as the head vampire, Lothos. This film played the concept mostly for laughs, and is mostly forgettable. Buffy didn't really come into her own until the TV series of the same name kicked off in 1997 with Sarah Michelle Gellar in the title role. The series was much truer to creator Joss Whedon's vision, and allowed Buffy's trials and tribulations to stand in for the challenges of growing up and dealing with life. It also introduced us to two of the more interesting vampires to-date: Angel (as played by David Boreanaz, now on Bones) and Spike (played by James Marsters). The detailed development of the interconnected back-stories of these two gave them much more character depth than most vampires, and the complex relationships with the other characters on the show (and later on Angel's spin-off series) have influenced subsequent characterizations of vampires on film.
1992 also gave us Innocent Blood, directed by John Landis and featuring Anne Parillaud as the vampire Marie. Innocent Blood is, in my opinion, a forgotten little gem of vampire cinema. It doesn't really add anything new to the genre, but it does feature Don Rickles as a blood sucking lawyer (hah!).
1998 marked the big-screen debut of the Marvel Comics character Blade, the half-human, half-vampire anti-hero. Wesley Snipes did a respectable job bringing Blade to life, although the sequels didn't hold up as well. Blade signalled the start of the transition of vampires from horror characters to action characters. Also released in 1998 was John Carpenter's Vampires. Thomas Ian Griffith played Valek, the original vampire created by the Catholic church in an exorcism gone awry. (The church creating vampires was the main new element here). The film is most memorable for James Woods' over-the-top characterization of Vatican-backed vampire hunter Jack Crow.
Moving into the 2000's, we've seen vampires reimagined as sexy, vinyl-clad gunslingers such as Kate Beckinsale's Selene in the Underworld series, or as Victorian superheroes (Peta Wilson's Mina Harker in 2003's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).5
This brings us up more or less to today. In 2008, HBO began adapting Charlaine Harris' books into the series True Blood. The series is enough of a departure from the continuity of the books that it deserves to be considered separately. The tension between prejudice and acceptance is much more visible in the HBO series than in the books, in my opinion. The show has also featured some interesting contrasts between the behavior of the vampires (the monsters) and that of the humans, demonstrating that morality in many cases depends on your perspective.
And then, just to be complete, we have Twilight and New Moon, wherein vampires sparkle and teenage girls swoon.
Jay
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1And even then there are some differences. Most people either forget or don't realize that in Stoker's book, vampires could walk in the sunlight without bursting into flames. They were weaker, but still formidable. And they didn't sparkle.
2ObDisclosure - I tried to read Rice's books. I really did. I just couldn't get into them. If anyone who has read them would like to add any elaboration on them, feel free.
3The biggest complaint I have about Harris' books is that she throws way too much sex into them. I have absolutely no objection to sex in books or movies so long as it serves to advance the stories, but the vast majority of the sex in The Southern Vampire Mysteries doesn't need to be there. Pre-teens and younger teenagers could get a lot out of the social acceptance themes present in these books (particularly the earlier ones), but the graphic sex knocks them right out of consideration.
4The Lost Boys is one of those films that I still can't decide if I like or not. The concept isn't bad, but the comedic elements of the film don't sit well with me.
5The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a loud mess of a film. Alan Moore's original comic book is vastly better.
Movie Review – The Breed (2001)
Sirhcton gets the blame credit for this one.
He kept pushing for me to check out Chiller, a cable network ostensibly specializing in horror films.
A few days ago, I set the DVR to record a few examples of Chiller's best offerings, and one of the results is a little slice of Heaven called The Breed (2001).
Omen #1: The program description for The Breed was actually the program description of another movie called The Breed that was made in 2006. The Breed (2006) is about genetically altered dogs attacking college kids on a deserted island. The Breed (2001) is about vampires who have recently revealed their existence to humanity and survive on synthetic blood.1
The Breed (2001) stars Adrian Paul (Duncan MacLeod from the Highlander TV series) and Ling Bai (who has been in a bunch of stuff, but probably nothing you'd recognize).
Omen #2: When the most prominent actor in a film is Adrian Paul, you need to stop and seriously consider going any further. I mean, it's hard to imagine how they cast films like The Breed (2001) without resorting to blackmail.
We open with Steven Grant (Bokeem Woodbine) and his partner, NSA agents2 searching for a missing woman. They track her to an abandoned building, where they find her hog-tied to the ceiling of an apartment, with her blood draining into a bucket. There's a shadowy figure sitting in a room at the end of the hall, which Grant and his partner attempt to subdue by emptying their guns into it. Thinking the killer is dead, Grant's partner goes in to identify him, and is suddenly attacked as the figure springs to his feet and bites the agent on the neck. Grant is flung across the room, then out the window (landing in a dumpster). As he loses consciousness, Grant sees the figure emerge from the window, and climb up the wall of the building to disappear into the night.
Omen #3: The Breed (2001) was filmed in Budapest, Hungary, as are lots of films these days. Budapest has a nice, gothic look to it. It's also apparently really, really cheap to film there. When the film makers don't even bother to cover the Hungarian-language signs on the walls, it's a big clue about their motivations. It's also amusing when all of the supposedly American supporting characters speak their lines phonetically with distinct Eastern European accents.
At this point, I was still under the impression that I was watching a movie about mutant dogs, so to say that I was confused is something of an understatement.
Grant shows up at NSA headquarters (which looks like some sort of Nazi castle), to meet with his superiors. It is here that Grant discovers that:
- Vampires exist
- They have revealed themselves to certain organizations and want to reveal themselves to the world at large
- They do not need to drink human blood since there is a synthetic blood substitute available
- Adrian Paul looks really goofy with a pencil mustache
Aaron Gray (Paul) is introduced to Grant as his new partner. He's also revealed to be a vampire - a fact that sits none too well with Grant because, you know, a vampire just killed his partner and Grant has to be all upset about it. We're also introduced to John Seward, who seems important (since we know him by name), but doesn't actually do anything but stand around looking constipated until late in the film.
The two return to the scene of the earlier crime, and we learn through some ham-handed skillfully crafted expository dialog that about 20% of humans are immune to whatever it is that turns some people into vampires, and that sunlight, while irritating, isn't fatal. I suspect the bit about sunlight was a clever plot device to avoid having to worry about day/night continuity issues. Vampires are also highly allergic to silver.
Gray takes Grant to Serenity, the vampire town, to meet with Dr. Cross, a vampire elder who is key to the whole vampire/human cooperation initiative. While in Serenity, we learn that not all vampires are pleased with the idea of living alongside humanity, and that there may be a political motivation to the killings (that's original...). Cross provides a disk with a database of known vampires. The only obvious purpose that this disk serves in the film is to show the viewer a brief biography of each new vampire that is introduced in the story line. I should point out here that The Breed (2001) is chock full of jumps and plot threads that go nowhere. I strongly suspect that the film may have been edited by this guy:
Giggles the Chimp, Film Editor Extrordanaire
The action, such as it is, moves back to NSA headquarters where Grant is introduced to Dr. Fleming, who has developed an airborne virus that affects vampires "like ebola", but is harmless to humans. This virus has been developed as a fail-safe in case the vampire/human alliance doesn't work. Nothing says "trust" like bioweapons, I always say.
Grant and Gray are called to another murder scene, this time at the apartment of one Dr. Graf Orlock. (As an aside, most of the vampire characters in The Breed (2001) are named after characters in other vampire movies. This was amusing for about five minutes.) The victim, another young woman, has been savagely maimed, and our intrepid investigators somehow figure out that the killer must have gotten into the (upper floor) apartment through the sewers. Think on that for a moment. Or don't. It'll make your head explode.
In the sewers (which look more like the inside of, say, a meat packing plant), Grant and Gray find an appointment book burning (slowly...) in a wood stove, and are attacked by the same shadowy figure that Grant encountered at the start of the film. Gray retrieves the book from the fire (allowing us to see just how bad CGI burn effects can be...), and after chasing the killer through the sewers for what seems like about a hundred years, the team returns to HQ to look at the book they recovered. They follow a lead to Lucy Westenra (Ling Bai), a vampire party girl who keeps a pet (vampire) panther3 and looks like she gets dressed by flailing around in a dark room full of fabric and wearing whatever she manages to get tangled up in. Ling Bai is also really short, so they stick her in bizarre platform boots in most of her scenes, so she stomps around like some sort of Chinese Frankenstein's Monster, speaking English with a Chinese accent around bad prosthetic fangs.
Lucy leads the investigators to a club owned by an apparently gay vampire named Boudreaux. For reasons probably related to the aforementioned editing process, she accompanies Grant and Gray, having changed into an outfit that includes a strange leather hood that gives her the appearance of wearing a pair of leather Speedos on her head. (It's moments like this where I realize that I need to find a way to get screen caps off of my DVR...) They're met at the club door by a couple of oddly attired female vampires (one is wearing a see-through body stocking and not much else. This leads to one of the more humorous bits of "editing for television" that I've seen. Rather than just trim the second or two that this woman is on camera, they chose to airbrush her chest.) Inside the club, they question Boudreaux and encounter West, who is some sort of vampire revolutionary. Coincidentally, Orlock shows up, and chases ensue - Gray goes after Orlock, Grant goes after West. Orlock flees outside and West goes into the club, which has filled up with barely dressed vampires vogue dancing in slow motion. (Note to self - add that to the list of eye bleach...)
Orlock flees in his car, hitting Gray before flipping the vehicle and getting decapitated. Gray snaps his broken bones back into position and heads back inside.
Meanwhile, Grant has chased West outside to a balcony. West leaps across a courtyard and starts scaling the wall. Grant leaps across the courtyard, almost falls, and ends up hanging from a ledge. He manages to get a few shots off at West, who falls and is impaled on a lamp post. Lucy shows up and pulls Grant to safety, and they rejoin Gray to question Boudreaux, who reveals that there is some sort of big plan that Orlock and West are involved in.
We then find ourselves back at Lucy's house. Gray is nowhere to be seen, and Grant is blocked in the house by Lucy's panther. And Lucy. Who has changed into what I think was supposed to be a sexy nightgown but looked more like the curtains from the viewing parlor of a funeral home. After a very awkward conversation, Lucy and Grant end up sleeping together. Their love scene, by the way, dethrones the one in Pathfinder as the most un-lovey love scene on film.
The next morning, Grant meets Gray at a bar (it's always happy hour somewhere), and we get Gray's backstory - he was a Polish Jew fleeing the Nazis with his family. His wife and daughter froze to death in the woods, but he was turned into a vampire by Dr. Cross. He then took his revenge on the Nazi soldiers, but was horrified by the monster he had become.
The detectives pull another name out of their asses act on another lead and track down a vampire named Dean Fusco, a lieutenant of Cross's. Fusco fancies himself to be an actor, and they find him in a condemned theater. He somewhat resembles Dom DeLuise. He's hiding from West, and somehow knows that there is some sort of smuggling action going down soon and that Lucy is somehow involved. They figure out that they need to check a dock, and this is pretty much where The Breed (2001) goes completely off the rails.
They get to the dock, and Grant calls in some backup - a SWAT team commanded by Seward. (Remember Seward? From waaaaay back at the start of the film? He still looks constipated, but at least now he gets to deliver a few lines.) Grant wants the SWAT team to stay back until he and Gray figure out what's going on. When they reach the dock, all hell breaks loose. The SWAT team starts shooting. The vampire guards start shooting. Gray starts shooting. Grant starts shooting. Lucy starts fighting. West is there. The vampires aren't smuggling guns in, they're smuggling scared vampires out. It seems that there is a lot of mistrust between humans and vampires (really?) and many vampires wanted to head for safer locales. Anyway, lots of bullets fly, everyone is shooting at everyone else, Grant and Gray each decide that the other has double crossed him. Lucy gets seriously wounded and bleeds all over Grant, and there is lots of abominable wire-fu and gun-fu on display. I think West gets killed somewhere in here.
They take Lucy to a hospital, where Cross shows up and informs Grant that she has only a 25% chance of surviving. Cross suggests that Grant get tested, since Lucy's blood may have infected him. If so, he'll turn in three days.
Grant returns to headquarters and fights with Seward (who sent in the SWAT team too early), and then gets reassigned back to his old job. (We don't know what that is. It could have been traffic cop for all I know.) His boss tells him that they've decided to release the virus, killing all the vampires, since the incident at the dock proved they can't be trusted. And oh, by the way, another girl has gone missing - the chief's daughter. (I don't think I've ever seen a movie with so many characters being introduced out of thin air to do nothing more than advance the plot a little. Were there more scenes filmed that Giggles left on the cutting room floor? Did the film makers promise to give screen time to all of their financial backers? Or were the writers just that bad?)
Grant goes to see Gray and tells him about the virus, and promises to steal a sample. Gray goes to Cross, who reveals that he knows of the virus and then seriously injures Gray, capturing him.
Dr. Fleming catches Grant trying to get a sample of the virus, and reveals the truth: The virus is actually lethal to humans (not vampires). The vampires will recover from the disease, but humans won't. Grant overpowers Fleming, but Cross shows up (damn, he's fast...) and subdues Grant. Apparently Fleming expected Cross to turn him into a vampire, but Cross has other ideas and kills Fleming.
Grant wakes up in a cell with Gray, who is injured and very hungry. Cross delivers the typical villain's monologue and reveals that he was the one who has been killing the girls, and the real truth is that he wants to infect all the humans, turn many of them into vampires, and let the rest die. Presumably the artificial blood is good enough, since Cross is basically orchestrating the elimination of the primary vampire menu item. Maybe he didn't think his plot through very well...
Anyway, Gray resists his urge to eat Grant, escapes his cell, and attacks Cross. Grant runs and finds the armory. Cross overpowers Gray and goes after Grant. Gray pursues. The three fight. Gray impales Cross with a shotgun. Grant shoves a live grenade into the wound. Cross explodes in a rain of amateur CGI flesh gobbets. The day is saved. The chief's daughter is saved. (We don't actually see her except for a brief shot at the award ceremony where the chief thanks Grant and Gray for rescuing her...)
We end with Grant going to see Lucy - it turns out that Grant is one of the 20% of humans that are immune. He thinks they can't be together because he'll grow old and die and she won't. She replies that she isn't the kind of girl who likes to do things the easy way, and gives him a smoldering look. Awwwwwww. But duty calls first and Grant and Gray have to head downtown for a new assignment.
The end.
Dammmmmmn. That was bad. Using the rating system proposed by Sirhcton, I'd have to say that this one is "only improved by pressing the STOP button." The Breed (2001) achieves heretofore unseen levels of incoherence and poor acting, augmented by shoddy camera work, bad location selection, and bargain-basement CGI. If by some cruel twist of fate you find yourself chained to a chair and forced to chose between watching The Breed (2001) and having all of your fingers broken, I'd suggest you strongly consider opting for the fingers. Broken bones will heal, but the scars of watching The Breed (2001) will remain forever.
Jay
----------
1I'm curious if Charlaine Harris watched The Breed (2001) before she wrote the first Sookie Stackhouse novel. If so, her thought process must have been something like this: "That's an interesting idea. I bet if I took the general concept of vampires using synthetic blood and announcing their presence to humanity, added some characters with a little personality, gave them some decent dialog, and developed a reasonably coherent mythology around the idea, I could write some books that would sell and generate an HBO series starring Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer."
2NSA in The Breed (2001) stands for National Security Agency, like you'd expect. But in the world of The Breed (2001), the government is some sort of socialist/fascist regime, and everything looks like it came straight out of the 1950s. There's probably some ironic message there, but I'm fairly confident in claiming that it's just coincidental.
3This could have been interesting, but they don't go anywhere with it. Probably because they couldn't figure out how to make a panther deliver cheesy dialog.
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