Unreality Companion: Terminator Genisys

In which I develop on the content of my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

So last weekend's double-feature was Terminator Genisys and Magic Mike XXL.  The better of these two movies was exactly what you would think it is.  Despite a surprisingly good first film, Magic Mike's successor was every bit the sex-pandering trash that you'd expect it to be.  And, despite the rampantly negative reviews floating around on the internet, Terminator Genysis turned out to be an exceptional lot of fun.

On the eve of mankind's final victory over Skynet, John Connor - leader of the Human resistance - preps for the real battle.  Knowing that Skynet will send a Terminator into the past in order to assassinate his mother before she births him, he sends Kyle Reese - his second in command and, secretly, his father-to-be - back to 1984 to save her.

But nothing is as it was supposed to be.  Moments before Reese leaves for the past, Skynet infects John Connor with a reconstructive virus that transforms him into a Next Gen Terminator under the machines' control.  When Reese arrives in the past, he doesn't find a helpless teenager in need of rescuing, but a battle-hardened soldier who had already survived one assassination attempt and had been prepping for his arrival for decades with the help of her own T-800.  All the while, Reese experiences memories of a lifetime he never lived - one where Skynet had not yet assumed control and Judgment Day had to happen.

I cannot express just how pumped I was for this movie going in.  While admittedly not quite at Age of Ultron or The Force Awakens levels of hype, it was still pretty high up there.  It was one of my most anticipated movies of the year, a long-in-coming sequel to two of my overall favorite movies and exactly the kind of movie that I've wanted to come out of this franchise for well over a decade now.

In these regards, the movie fully lives up to the high expectations that its premise - and excellent (if spoiler-ridden) trailer - set up for it.  It brings the franchise full circle by sending us back to the setting of the first movie.  It gives us exciting new twists on everything Skynet (both in terms of an amped up T-1000 and the newly Terminated John Connor).  It changes everything that we've ever known about the franchise in ways that were both wholly unexpected but fully realistic.

It was exciting, well written and even gave us a Sarah Connor that was a worthy successor to Linda Hamilton's take on the character.  It had everything and then some and I simply cannot understand why its received such universally negative reviews from critics across the country.  It is really that good.

Does this mean that it was a perfect movie by any means?  No, of course not.  The mid-movie time-jump to 2015 - seemingly "just because" - is an out-of-place setting change that serves as an over-written continuation to what was already an excellent action romp.  It would have been more than enough to stick with a Judgment Day-style Sarah Connor, fresh off the boat Kyle Reese and an increasingly glitchy T-800 (named Pops) duke it out against a vintage T-800 in 1984.

I also get why Steve Jobs - and, by extension, Apple-style branding - is the current go-to for tech-based villains, but it's gotten old real fast.  It was tolerable in Kingsmen because it was purely surface-level aesthetics.  It's obnoxious in Terminator because it feels like a needlessly low blow in a franchise that has bigger - and more interesting - things to worry about.

Although not quite as big an offender in this regard as Chappie, Terminator Genisys is severely overwritten.  There's enough material for two movies crammed into a single two-hour chunk of time.  We have Reese returning to a radically altered 1984 and teaming up with a shockingly martial Sarah Connor and the protective Pops, but we also have the jump to contemporary LA where a newly roboticized John Connor ensures Skynet's creation in our present.  Rather than letting the two ideas breathe in their own movies, they're crammed into a single film and rushed through as if the inevitable sequels are where it's really at.

In this regard, Terminator Genisys is like a far superior version of The Amazing Spider-Man 2.  Both are far more interesting it setting up possible sequels and spin-offs than they are in crafting the movie that they actually have to work with.  The difference between them is that Terminator Genisys still succeeds in giving us a fully realized story (even if it is overly crammed with plot points and narrative leaps), while The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was basically just an advertisement for movies that ultimately never came to be.

So although it's something of a mixed bag, Terminator Genisys is every bit the summer blockbuster that you've been waiting to see.  Sure, it's not nearly the movie that Fury Road or Jurassic World was, but few are.  It's a fun, action-packed sequel with a great premise and awesome explosions that's bound to get even more people to care about the first exceptional instalments to the franchise.

Rating:  8/10

Buy on BluRay:  It's a nothing short of a must-have for Terminator fans.

So what did you think of Terminator Genisys?  Was it better or worse than the four movies that came before it?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.

Unreality Companion: Why the X-Men Shouldn't Join the MCU

In which I expand upon the content of my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

Most of you are probably already aware about how Marvel and Fox are increasingly at each other's throats over the film rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises.  The short of it is that Marvel wants them and Fox will keep pumping out sequels, reboots and remakes for as long as it can afford to (in order to retain those films rights for the foreseeable future).  But the question that nobody ever seems to ask is "does Marvel even really need those franchises?"

Movie rights are funny things.  As long as you keep making more movies and don't want to sell them back, they're yours to keep.  That's why Sony rebooted Spider-Man after Raimi's trilogy concluded.  That's why Marvel initially couldn't make a Hulk movie (or a Daredevil series).  And that's why Fox is able to tie up two of Marvel's most iconic teams outside of the comic publisher's meta-franchise.

But when you stop and think about it, what do the Fanastic Four - or even the X-Men - bring to the table that Marvel didn't already have?  I mean, I love Wolverine as much as the next guy, but does he really need to suit up alongside Cap' and Iron Man?

The short answer is no.  While we might miss out on adaptation of Avengers vs X-Men and the full breadth of Age of Apocalypse, neither franchise really needs what the other has.  The MCU has damn-near the full breadth of Marvel's expansive roster of heroes and villains to work with, and X-Men has an obscenely wide character base to draw from as well.

And Fantastic Four?  They haven't been relevant in decades.  This is why when Marvel decided to go to war with Fox over their film rights, they canceled the Fantastic Four comic book.  While the team launched Marvel's Age of Heroes and has been historically important to the shared universe, they haven't sold especially well in years, and can't help but feel dated more than fifty later.

The only thing that Marvel would even want from them is Doctor Doom, who's about as awesome as Marvel villains come.  Guardians of the Galaxy is doing a great job of covering Marvel's cosmic canon while the Avengers are doing just fine with their terrestrial adventures.  People just aren't all that interested in watching a team in matching onesies fight the Mole Man.

While X-Men does offer a lot more than the Fantastic Four does, it's always struck me as a supremely insular franchise that never really jived well with the rest of Marvel's offerings.  In a brilliant twist on the Civil Rights Movement, mutants are feared and hated simply because they're born different.

It's insightful.  It's dramatic.  It doesn't really fit with every other super-powered character and team that they've come up with since 1961.

Why are the X-Men so reviled when the Fantastic Four are superhero celebrities?  Why do people loathe mutants when Thor gets away with doing the exact same thing?  Why are people okay with Captain America, but not with Charles Xavier?

And really, can you blame him?

For everything Spider-Man has to put up with, he really only gets ragged on by one angry guy on a soap box.  The only other guy who's in the same boat as the X-Men is Hulk, and he's an actual, factual monster who's just as likely to rip you in half as he is anything else.

The social and tonal disparity between X-Men and basically everything else has always been a cause for pause with me.  It's filled with nuanced characters, rich stories and excellent writing, but when push comes to shove, for as much as I love the franchise, X-Men simply never belonged with the rest of Marvel.

So while  Marvel misses out on any number of fantastic characters to throw into the ring with (against?) Stark & Co., They're better off on their own.  Marvel has a hard enough time trying to fit all of the characters that they actually do own the film rights to into any given phase, never mind having to worry about the literal hundreds of mutants that they would have at their disposal.

And sure, Magneto solves the perpetual "Marvel Problem" of never having an interesting villain.  Apocalypse too.  Hell, you could say the same thing about Stryker, Phoenix, Mystique and any number of X-villains.  They're all phenomenal, nuanced and incredibly interesting characters, but they simply don't fit the logic of the MCU.

Besides, Marvel's been managing just fine without them.  Say what you will about its fidelity to the comics, but Iron Man 3's twist on The Mandarin was the most memorable thing that a villain did in any superhero movie short of asking people if they wanted to know how he got his scars.  Thanos' long-game with the Infinity Stones is proving to be the best-laid conflict of any series pumping out sequels today.  Ultron was a phenomenally tragic character with surprising layers of nuance.

What's more is that the two franchises in question seem to be in remarkably good hands.  Days of Future Past was easily one of my favorite movies from last year.  Same goes for X-Men: First Class in 2011.  X-Men: Apocalypse is easily one of my most anticipated movies for next year (behind only Captain America: Civil War).  It might have taken them the better half of two decades to do so, but it looks like Fox has finally gotten a pulse on what makes the X-Men tick.

And while I still have my reservations about the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot, I think that I'm starting to come around to it.  It doesn't seem quite as grim-dark and tone-deaf as its first trailer suggested.  Hell, by DC standards, its muted color pallet and low-key lighting look downright cheery.  And although far too young for their roles, the cast is otherwise excellent.

So do you think that Marvel should reacquire the film rights to X-Men and Fantastic Four?  If so, how would you like to see the new franchises incorporated into the existing MCU?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.

Unreality Companion: Who Should Be Marvel's Spider-Man?

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

The big Marvel news that's been on everybody's mind lately - other than its rebooted universe - is who will end up playing Spider-Man in the MCU.  While some bemoan yet another Spider-Man to have to get used to, I couldn't be happier that Spidey is back where he belongs.  And since I've already covered what I want to see in the MCU's take on the character, I thought that it would behoove me to go over the increasingly narrowed field of acting candidates.

Ellar Coltrane - Let's be clear with something right off the bat.  Ellar Coltrane is not, nor has he ever been, a candidate for Peter Parker.  He lacks the relatively high profile of most of the "real" candidates.  He's never been a teen sensation, never headed up a TV series with an adoring adolescent following and hasn't been involved with anything that would bring new fans into the series.  It's basically the same reason why Ethan Hawke was passed over for the role of Doctor Strange.

That being said, he's always been my favorite choice for the role.  While he's only been involved in a single project - Richard Linklater's Boyhood - it's a doozey of a film to add to your resume.  It's a film that by all rights should have earned the nineteen-year-old an Oscar nomination.  Filmed intermittently over the course of twelve years, Coltrane didn't give just one outstanding performance, but twelve of them, every one of them carrying the weight of the film.

Asa Butterfield - Of all of the actual candidates for the role of Spider-Man, Asa Butterfield was by far my favorite.  He perfectly fit the kind of Spider-Man that  Marvel wanted: a young, early high-school dork who looks like he's been on the wrong side of a schoolyard beating more than a few times in his life.

The thing is, though, that he's not just a scruffy-looking nerd under a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.  He's actually an accomplished actor in his own right.  He got my attention as one of the best actors of his generation when he headlined as the title character in Hugo, which he subsequently confirmed by his work in Ender's Game.  He's held his own against Harrison Ford, Christopher Lee and Ben Kingsley (twice!) and has already worked with the likes of Martin Scorsese.

Tom Holland - One of the candidates still in the running for the role of Spider-Man is Tom Holland.  Although he lacks the raw talent of Coltrane and the higher profile of Butterfield, Holland is none-the-less a talented young actor who would doubtless prove to be a solid choice for the role.

Holland is best known for his work in The Impossible - an insipidly average disaster drama about the 2004 Tsunami that devastated Thailand.  But while the movie was a bit less than well-enough, Holland himself did an exceptional job as a young boy trying to reunite with his family, and that's considering that he had to act against A-list talent like Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor.  He - or, rather, his voice - also featured in last year's astoundingly good Locke, where he played Tom Hardy's son.

Charlie Rowe - I don't have much to say about this last candidate because I really haven't seen anything that he's worked in at this point.  Walking with Dinosaurs was hardly a showcase for anybody's talent, even if I can say that he wasn't bad in that.

He has the lowest profile of any of the Spider-Man potentials, having mostly been involved in TV and a few unexceptional movies.  So while he does have the look of the character (that much I can tell), it's hard to say if he'd be any good in the role or not.  Suffice it to say, through no real fault of his own, he's my least favorite choice for the role and the fact that he's one of the two finalists makes me extremely nervous.

Of the four already mentioned, I still have to side with Coltrane as my favorite.  The only real downside to him is that he's only had the one role (even if he took it on twelve different times, from twelve different stages in the boy's life), that and he's a bit older than what Marvel said that they were looking for (even if he's still considerably younger than either of the previous cinematic Spider-Men).

Butterfield is probably the safest choice.  He's proven himself to be a great actor in a wide number of roles, the most recent of which have been a bit more action-heavy.  He has the look of a really young Spider-Man who could grow naturally into the role as the character ages with him.  Why they ever decided to pass him over for the job I'll never know.

Of the two finalists, however, I'd have to go with Tom Holland.  He's simply a far more proven actor with a far higher profile to work with than Charlie Rowe.  He's an exceptionally talented young actor who very much looks the part of a young Parker.

So who would you like to see as Marvel's Spider-Man?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.

Blog Update: Unreal Surge

In which I detail upcoming changes to Filmquisition.

So you may have noticed lately that I've been a bit negligent about Unreality Companion: my article series in which I augment my weekly article for Unrealitymag.com.  It's been due to a number of factors, most of which involve the website posting the articles I'm expanding upon late and my otherwise prohibitive schedule.  This ends today, though.

I have every intention of catching up with my unpublished Unreality Companions over the course of the next week or so.  I will try to post a new one every weekday from now until I've caught up with them all (with maybe this weekend being a bit spotty, owing to a wedding that I'll be attending out of town).

To put things into perspective, the last Unreality Companion that I did was back in May when I ranked Marvel's Phase 1.  Since then, I've neglected to write one for six Unreality articles: Marvel vs Fox, the Tragedy of Ultron, Ranking the Mad Max series, What I want out of the Spectacular Spider-Man, a retrospective on Blumhouse Productions and Christopher Lee's recent death.

So expect a lot of editorials to come out over the next week or so.  You can also expect me to start doubling up on certain article series that I am likewise behind on, as well as on some news items that I've neglected to report on, but those are of a lesser priority for me.  The big one is making up for lost time with my companion articles.

So which of the six pending Unreality Companion articles are your most looking forward to me getting to and why?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.

Unreality Companion: Ranking Marvel's Phase 1

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

There are times where I find myself at the perfect crossroads of things that I want to write about and things that are timely to write about.  While it does happen with some amount of regularity, rarely do all of the cinematic stars align so perfectly as they did the other week.  I had finished reviewing all of Marvel's Phase 1, had just ranked all of Marvel's Phase 2 movies (thus far) for Unreality and had just come back from seeing Age of Ultron .  How could I resist the chance to rank all of Phase 1 as well?

6) Iron Man 2 - This is without question Marvel's worst outing to date.  That doesn't make this a bad film necessarily, just a bad one for a company with such an absurdly strong track record of churning out exceptional pieces of action cinema.  As far as action movies go, Iron Man 2 was a solid showing that was just as good as many of the typical summer blockbusters it was competing against and even quite a bit better than most.

That being said, however, this was undoubtedly the most problematic Marvel movie.  It's clear by now that nobody at Marvel expected Iron Man to be the breakout success that it became and were understandably eager to greenlight a sequel as soon as possible.  What resulted, however, was a sequel that didn't quite understand why the first movie was so great to begin with: complete with a tractionless plot and the company's two least memorable villains to date (further exacerbating the so-called "Marvel problem.").

5) Thor - While Thor certainly does have its issues, the reason why it's such a joy to watch and revisit is because of the incessently earnest emotional core of its narrative: Loki's deranged lust for acceptance within his adopted family and Thor's boundless - if troubled - love for his brother.  We don't walk away from the movie going on about Thor pounding Jotuns into the ice nor The Destroyer tearing apart Puente Antiguo.  We walk away haunted by Loki's confrontation with Odin about his Jotun heritage and Thor putting the good of the Nine Realms before his own happiness by destroying the Bifrost to save his ancestral enemies.

When taken at face value, however, the plot of Thor doesn't work as well as it's supposed to.  Perhaps that's because of the alleged behind-the-scenes friction between director Kenneth Brannagh and producer Kevin Feige (supposedly the reason why Brannagh didn't return to direct Thor: The Dark World).  The scope of the narrative is far too condensed to be believable and the Human half of the story is downright boring.  Jane isn't an especially interesting character and the only reason why we care about her is because Thor himself does.  The story does, however, get what it needs to right (Thor and Loki), and plays that dynamic up as much as possible.

4) Captain America: The First Avenger - Of all of Marvel's Phase 1 solo movies, Captain America is easily the most confident, complete and robust.  While this doesn't make it the best of them, it does make it the easiest to repeatedly revisit, even if it does lack some of the umph of the films that show up further along on this list.

Whereas other Captain Americas try to get around Cap's old-fashionedness by getting him into the 21st century as soon as the story can possibly manage it, director Joe Johnston solved this problem by making the movie at it's core an old-fashioned action movie: closer to a period drama than what we've come to think of as a superhero origin story.  It feature's Cap punching, kicking and shield-bashing his way through Nazi soldiers for almost two hours before it brings him into the 21st century: a denouement that's more tragic than reaffirming.

3) Iron Man - I'm sure that this movie's relatively low placement on this list will raise more than a few eyebrows.  Iron Man's what launched the whole "Marvel experiment" in the first place.  Most would call it the best of the Phase 1 solo movies, a few even daring to go so far as to call it the best of Phase 1.  But while it's reputation is certainly well-earned, it could never quite beat out one particular Phase 1 origin story for me.

The Iron Man franchise probably features the coolest array of cinematic hardware than any other movies around.  Robert Downey Jr. is such a phenomenal Tony Stark that it's impossible to imagine the MCU without his personal brand of jackassery.  While the third act does basically tread water until the now-iconic "I am Iron Man" line, the first two were more than good enough to carry the narrative weight for it.

2) The Incredible Hulk - I know that this is far from most people's favorite, but I just can't help myself.  Outside of The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk is the most viscerally exciting Marvel movie of its phase.  Edward Norton was basically Marvel's way of apologizing for the first Hulk movie on behalf of Universal and the significantly upped special effects sealed the deal.

Like Jaws, The Incredible Hulk understands just how valuable a tool restraint is in what essentially amounts to a big-budget monster movie.  We don't get a good look at the Hulk until the second act and don't give him anything meaningful to fight against until the third.  The rest of the movie is Banner's desperate attempts to not transform and to science himself a cure for his peculiar condition.  This makes the scenes that actually feature the Hulk that much more exciting and, and times, genuinely terrifying.

1) The Avengers - It's been argued by some that The Avengers matters only in a technical sense: as a historical footnote for why every blockbuster franchise needs to be part of a shared universe these days.  The Avengers, these people would argue, is nothing but a fireworks show: a party thrown in its own honor with no more weight behind it than any number of the vapid, cartoonish action movies that came before it.  These people couldn't be any more misguided about its merit.

A movie doesn't need to be deep to be exceptional, nor does it have to be "important" to be meaningful.  The Avengers is "just" a blockbuster, true.  It has no deeper message than "friendship is magic" and only a comically rendered 9/11 metaphor for a social conscience (most of which wasn't even apparent until Captain America: The Winter Soldier's release).  That, however, doesn't make its battles any less exciting, its characters any less deep nor its stakes any less real.  The Avengers, in short, is really that good.

So what is your favorite Phase 1 movie?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.

Unreality Companion: Why I'm Not Worried about Suicide Squad

In which I expand upon the content of my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

This might seem like something of a contradiction given my lingering doubts over Batman vs Superman, but I am still excited for a lot of projects that are coming out of the DCCU.  Seriously.  They can't all be directed by Zack Snyder, which means that they can't all be over-the-top, needlessly dark versions of DC's pantheon of Superheroes.  Murphy's Law dictates that some of these have to feel like they're supposed to feel.

The project that I'm most excited for right now is actually Suicide Squad: DC's companion piece to next year's Dawn of Justice.  It features a team of C and D-list supervillains - including Harley Quinn, Deadshot and Captain Boomerang  - conscripted by the US government as deniable assets in exchange for reduced prison terms.  And no, I'm not joking about this.  It's going to be awesome.

But why am I more excited about a no-name property of admittedly low-grade Batman villains than the two titans of DC duking it out for the first time on the big screen?  Well, you already know my concerns about Batman vs Superman.  It's hilariously too dark (both tonally and aesthetically), it completely ignores the context of the two fighting in the first place (irreconcilable political ideologies between old friends) and absolutely no part of it strikes me as being even half of a Superman movie.  It took an awesome premise and seems to be doing nearly everything wrong with it.

Can you guess what part of the trailer actually was awesome though?  Every single shot with Batman straight up worked in a way that it never has for Superman, a fact that I was quick to address in my Unreality article:

Ben Affleck has the grim, brooding look of a haunted man trying (and failing) nightly to somehow undo his parents fate.  Jeremy Irons' voice over as Alfred comes off as the perfect cross between Gotham's Sean Pertwee and Michael's Caine's "some men want to watch the world burn" speech from The Dark Knight.  This may very well be the best version of the Batman costume ever put to film, and that's not even touching on how awesome-looking the robotic version is.

The one thing that DC has always held over Marvel was the absurd quality of their villains.  Marvel struggles with their every antagonist: only occasionally hitting one out of the park.  DC, however, specializes in them, and no property more than Batman.  His rogue gallery is so strong that even D-listers like King Shark and Deadshot are better than most Marvel efforts.  This makes Suicide Squad everything that you love about DC with none of the baggage.

Furthermore, the company tapped who is perhaps the perfect director for this exact project: David Ayer.  Ayer has made a career of dark, unromanticised, realistically shot action movies.  I saw Fury after he became attached to the project and it did nothing but confirm in every shot and scene why Ayer was perfect for the movie.

Say what you will about how lackluster a movie Focus was, but I got everything out of it that I wanted: confirmation that Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn) and Will Smith (Deadshot) were going to be awesome together.  The rest of the movie was a non-issue.  These two had an absolutely absurd amount of chemistry together, which given the semi-romantic / sexual nature of their Suicide Squad hookup, was an absolute must for them.  I'm not ashamed to admit that I saw this movie solely for the sneak peak into Suicide Squad that it offered.

And let's not forget Jared Leto's Joker.  While we admittedly don't have much to go off of, what has been leaked so far has been nothing short of amazing.  He might not be quite as edgy and dark as Heath Ledger's take on the character, but it's the perfect marriage of Ledger's galvanic menace and Nicholson's absurd antics: realized in who is possibly the most unquestionably perfect actor for the job.

The icing on the cake is that we already have the perfect template for this movie, which I doubt will be strayed from very far - Batman: Assault on Arkham.  If all we get is a live-action remake of that movie, I'll consider myself happy.  If it manages to address the few issues that I took with it, however, it's definitely going to be a movie to beat in 2016.

So what movie in the DC Cinematic Universe are you most excited to see?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.

Unreality Companion: Time Travelling for Fun and Profit

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

So this week's Unreality article left me with a lot of different directions to go with for its companion piece, most of which dealt with the tedious nuts and bolts of its time travelling narrative.  But with as excited as I am for Terminator Genisys, I wanted to do something fun, if a little tangential.  And what fun is time travel without a few good paradoxes thrown into the mix?

Although there are a lot to choose from, my favorite has always been the Ontological Paradox, marginally better known as the Bootstrap Paradox.  This is the paradox where something comes into existence through time travel without any logical origin.  It's what happens if you travel back in time to give yourself blueprints for a time machine, built one using them, then travel back in time to give yourself the blueprints all over again.  The only justification for its existence is that it was fatalistically necessitated to exist, so where did the blueprints actually come from?

Ontological - if a bit technical a phrase - at least makes sense on its face.  Ontology is the study of origins and existence.  But why is it alternatively known as the Bootstrap Paradox?  This term actually comes from the very phrase that you're probably thinking of - to pull oneself up by his or her bootstraps - which was used in the Robert Heinlein's story "By His Bootstraps."  Given that that's what popularized the scenario in the first place, the name stuck.

So where have we seen this before?  It's actually really popular, given just how mind-bendingly fun the idea is and how it highlights the inherent complications of time travel as a concept.  Its appearance in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is actually what introduced me to the scenario.

At one point in the game, you (in the future) go to a windmill that's chaotically spinning out of control.  Its proprietor rages on about a child who stormed in year previous and played the song (where he had learned it from).  He teaches you the song, at which point you can go back in time and, as a child in the past, play the song at the windmill, exactly in the manner that the man described to you.  The song, logically, should not exist.

Most versions of this paradox, however, are inherently seedier: involving characters travelling back in time in order to impregnate relatives of theirs (often with themselves).  This is exactly how Futurama's Fry ended up impregnating his grandmother with his father.  Later on, they even address his family's inbreeding by revealing that Fry lacks the Delta Brainwave (which determines the intelligence of all animals and robots and even some plants).

This particular scenario is taken to its logical extreme in Predestination, an adaptation of another Heinlen story: " - All You Zombies -."  The story follows a temporal agent who travels back in time to recruit his replacement: a post-op hermaphrodite whose daughter was kidnapped years before.  What starts out as a time travel mystery with an especially strong focus on its character's back story, however, proves to be the trippiest movie to come around in years.

All of the main characters in the story are Ethan Hawke's character at different stages of his life.  He travels back in time (as the temporal agent) to hook up his father (the post-op recruit) with his mother (his pre-op self), who ultimately gives birth to himself.  He then abducts the child, starting the whole cycle over again.  The time-jumping unibomber that Hawke is tracking also turns out to be him (near the end of his life) and I'm still not convinced that Hawke's boss isn't also him (after his retirement from the force, but before he goes rogue in his old age).

And the story's title, "-All You Zombies-?"  It's actually a line from the story.  The protagonist (sole character?) thinks to himself that "I know where I came from - but where did all you zombies come from?"  As the middle section of the line, it represents the character's narrative: with neither a beginning nor an end.

So what is you favorite time travel paradox in fiction?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.

Unreality Companion: The Wasted Cinematic Potential of Easter

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

My Unreality article for last week (never mind that it was actually posted yesterday) got me to thinking about the notable deficit of Easter movies out there.  While there actually are fair number to work with, it hardly puts up the same numbers as other holidays, especially Christmas.  This seems like such a waste, since Easter is probably the next most filmable holiday out there.

Wrong bunny!

I mean, Easter and Christmas are basically the same thing when you stop to think about it.  Both have religious and secular aspects that are easily exploitable with the right audience.  Both have complicated non-secular mythologies that strongly appeal to young children.  Both of them even cross over with Jewish holidays, ensuring maximum audience coverage.

A movie that's inclined to appeal to the fundie crowd can pursue the Jesus narrative: his teachings, persecution and eventual execution.  Lord knows that there's enough spiritual movie-goers to fill a theater, when you stop to consider how mind-bogglingly well The Passion of the Christ did a few years ago, or how movies like Do You Believe? and God's Not Dead keep cropping up despite their lack of a genuinely mainstream audience.

Similarly, a movie can aggressively gun for families by forsaking the Jesus narrative for an Easter Bunny one.  But whereas Christmas movies are more firmly entrenched in established iconography, Easter is more loosely defined, leaving far more of itself open to creative interpretation.  Your protagonist can be anything from a saccharine hare pooping out Jelly Beans to a badass Rabbit from down under hurling boomerangs and egg-shaped bombs.

While this does mean that there's less social investment in the mainstream Easter narrative, there's a lot more room to experiment with it: a lot more angles to exploit and a lot more versions that are likely to find a niche audience.  Don't forget that Rise of the Guardians was primarily an Easter story, nor that movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Cool Hand Luke and Gran Torino feature obvious Christ stand-ins in obviously non-religious narratives.  Easter is so loosely defined (compared to the likes of Christmas and Thanksgiving) that it has a lot more freedom to explore these kinds of non-traditional narratives.

And don't forget that Easter double dips with Passover, bringing a whole slew of different stories into its seasonal fold.  The most obvious of these is, of course, the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, for which cinephiles already have several decades-spanning versions to choose from.  The problem is, though, that there isn't one that meets at that perfect cross-section of live action, contemporary and good.

The best of them, The Prince of Egypt, is an animated movie largely targeted towards children.  And while adults like myself - especially those that grew up with the Dreamworks film - continue to love it, it's painfully obvious that it's no longer meant for us.  There's a much darker, much more deeply political narrative underneath its secular dressings and emotional coatings.

Although The Ten Commandments is widely considered to be the best of the live action versions, its narrative was built around the spectacle of the Plagues.  Given the kinds of computer-generated marvels audiences today are used to, the film can't help but feel more than just a little antiquated and underwhelming.  Pair that by failing to measure up to The Prince of Egypt's emotional core, and it just isn't quite the movie that it used to be.

And then there's Exodus: Gods and Kings.  Although it nails the Plagues, the movie's all flash and no substance: failing to tap into the social, political or emotional underpinnings of its narrative.  And really, why bother when you have so many action-packed sequences and set pieces to work with?  (don't answer that, it was rhetorical).

So what do you want to see out of an Easter (or Passover) themed movie?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.

Unreality Companion: Cinderella (1950)

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

As you might imagine, Cinderella was never my favorite Disney movie growing up.  I had nothing against to, but it really didn't speak to my demographic: boys.  When it really comes down to it, Cinderella was female wish fulfilment involving an overworked girl who gets a night off, a nice outfit and gets to go to a dance with the boy that she likes.  That kind of story just doesn't appeal to a little boy who'd rather watch The Lion King or Dragon Ball Z.

But I'm not that little boy anymore.  I'm more open to traditionally "girly" things that I was as a child.  After all, I loved the new Cinderella movie that hit theaters last week (my Unreality article this week), so why should I still be so standoffish toward this one?  What's the real difference between the two movies when you really get down to it?

Narratively, there's not much to separate the two movies.  In the wake of her father's death, a kind-hearted young girl is turned into a slave in her own home by her mean-spirited stepmother and stepsisters.  When cruelly denied the opportunity to go to a ball at the palace, her fairy godmother uses magic to transform her ragged clothes into a spectacular gown and her animal friends into her escorts for the evening.  Forewarned that the magic would only last until midnight, she was forced to hurriedly flee from the ball, leaving a glass slipper as the only clue to her identity, resulting in a widespread manhunt for the mysterious maiden who stole the heart of the prince.

As you can see, I can use the exact same summary for both films and absolutely nothing is out of place.  The stories are identical, but the manners in which they're told are fundamentally different.  Cinderella (2015) is a historical drama: complete with bribes, political back dealings and an emphasis on matters of the state over matters of the heart (my favorite line being "lose heart and gain wisdom").  Cinderella (1950), however, is a pure, unadulterated fairy tail: complete with a storybook opening and all the magic that mid-century Disney could provide.

While the updated version's charms will most likely be lost on its youngest viewers (who in all honesty just want to see a princess in a pretty dress marry the prince), the animated version is perfect for that exact demographic.  It's brightly colored, briskly paced and prefers to keep the focus on the fun animal antics and supernatural enchantment rather than the behind the scenes wheeling and dealing of a pressed monarchy and the doldrum life of an abused stepsister.  The emphasis is placed on plot, rather than character, and that should suit children just fine.

Rather than singling out Cinderella's mistreatment, Disney opted to keep the story light and cut away to the happy antics of Cinderella's talking animal friends.  Instead of showing the titular character struggling through her chores, they show mice and birds while they sing and sew.  Jaq and Gus slink through the walls to secure ribbons for the dress.  And their attempts to free Cinderella from the attic when the Archduke comes to call with the missing glass slipper are oddly reminiscent of Prince Charming's rescue of Sleeping Beauty.

Now that's not to say that the animated version is all sunshine and happiness, just that Disney knew well enough to keep the camera where the action was.  Cinderella's attempts to get into the carriage with her step family are shockingly brutal, even by today's standards.  The sisters viciously slash at and savage, and watching the protagonist half-naked and understandably hysterical almost made me think that I was watching a different kind of movie altogether.  But the appearance of the fairy godmother immediately following that incident, with her rhyming dialog and up-tempo singing, keeps it from getting too dark for children.

When everything is said and done, Cinderella is a textbook Disney movie.  It has a prince, a princess, a conniving villain, memorable songs and a happy ending with just the right amount of magic thrown into the mix.  Although I personally think that it pales against the Kenneth Branagh version, it holds up remarkably well on its own merits and is aimed at slightly younger viewers.  There is a reason why it's been the go-to Cinderella for the last 65 years.

Rating:  7/10

Worth Buying:  Yes, especially if you have children.

So which version of Cinderella is your favorite?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.

Unreality Companion: The 10 Best Animated Princesses

In which I expand on the content from my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

In honor of yesterday's release of Cinderella, this week's Unreality article was a rundown of the five best and most memorable live-action princesses.  Thanks to the twitter-fueled inspiration from Lindsay Ellis (aka, The Nostalgia Chick), it turned into something more than an unthinking Cinderella fluff piece.  And for that, I am incredibly grateful.

I naturally felt that an appropriate companion piece for a list of live-action princesses was a list of animated ones.  What I found most surprising about the final product, however, was how few Disney princesses there were.  Now don't get me wrong, half of the entries on this list are Disney-related (more, depending on if you count movies that they distributed), but going into this I expected only one - maybe two - non-Disney inclusions to make the list because of how ubiquitous their branding of strong female characters of royal birth are.

Now, there are some obvious omissions that I want to address before we get into this.  Frozen's Elsa is not included.  Why?  Because for the vast majority of the story she is Queen Elsa, and we're looking for women who are not yet a chief autocrat (at least for most of their screen time).  Also not included are Mulan and Esmerelda: who, while admirable enough, are not nobility.  Giselle is also absent despite her high ranking on the live-action list.  This is a judgment call: half because she is only animated for a small stretch at the outset and half because I wanted to acknowledge as many different women as possible between these two lists.

10) Rapanzel from Tangled - Rapunzel is one of the Giselle's of this list.  She's the wide-eyed, naive, happy-go-lucky girl who finally got to sneak out of the house with that neighborhood tough that her parents don't approve of.  If that was all that there was to her character, though, she wouldn't have made it onto this list over so many deserving heroines.  She earned her spot on this list.

It's not so much about what she starts her journey off as, but what she ends up becoming by the end.  And by the end, she is a confident, adventurous and thoroughly capable woman who is willing to sacrifice everything for what she knows in her heart is right.  It makes for an interesting parallel to a good number of real world women, when you stop and think about it.

9) Kaguya from The Tale of the Princess Kaguya - One of the things that I mentioned on the live-action list was that the women on the list had agency within their own story: they had the power to choose who they would become, what they would do and how they would act within the context of their narratives.  Why then, does Kaguya, who is defined entirely by her lack of control with what happens around her, make the list over so many others?

Although Kaguya herself is born into a social position that affords her no control over what happens to her - whether or not she moves with her parents to the capital, learns the skills of a noble lady, changes her appearance to suit her new social standing or ultimately leaves her parents for the Moon - she does what she can with the small degree of control that she does have.  She breaks the rules on the Moon to be reborn as a human on Earth.  When forced to choose one of four men to marry, she gives each of them an impossible task that she knows will leave her unwed.  When they arrive with forgeries of their supposed conquests, she has the foresight and nerve to disprove them in front of everybody.  When she becomes the unwanted target of the Emperor's advances, she coldly rebuffs them despite the deadly consequences of doing so.  And although she is forced to forget all of her earthly adventures and return to the moon, it is only when she calls the moonfolk down that they ever interfere with her terrestrial life.

8) Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time - While I cannot say to be an especially big fan of the show, I have seen enough of it to know that I am a fan of Princess Bubblegum.  Any more conventional of a show would have had her be nothing more than a romantic end-game for Finn: a seemingly unobtainable prize who would doubtless succumb to him given enough seasons to mull the opportunity over.  Thankfully for us - and for her - Adventure Time is anything but conventional.

Although perhaps due to being a closet lesbian (no, seriously, that's a thing), Bubblegum rebuffs the advances of every suitor that comes to call on her, choosing to devote herself to her subjects and her kingdom instead of a lover.  More than just generically intelligent, she is a scientist with an avid thirst for knowledge, making her into a more narrowly focused version of Belle.  And while most of the women on this list are resistant to blatant sexualization, the animation style of Adventure Time, and Bubblegum's practical lab coats, actively work against taking her in as an engendered object: forcing audiences to see her as a person before anything else.

7) Ariel from The Little Mermaid - Although I didn't want to believe it when I first heard the argument, it's true.  Ariel has no narrative arc in the film she acts as the title character in.  She is the same person at the beginning of the film as she is at the end; it's her father that grows and develops as a character.

That being said, however, this list is not exclusive to dynamic characters.  If you were a strong, well-developed character at the beginning of the story, why must you change by the end?  Although her entire character smacks of a privileged young girl wanting to "slum it" with the humans, whose youthful impulses cause her to make some really,  really stupid decisions, she is never the less a bold character who's willing to disobey her father and give up everything she has in order to live the life that she so desperately wants.  She's not stupid; she knows the gravity of what she'll sacrifice for legs and a vagina, but she goes through with it anyway, because that's the choice that she has made for herself.

6) Merida from Brave - If you paid attention to the live-action list, I bemoaned on a number of occasions the obnoxious trend of female characters overcompensating for the historic weakness of their characters.  Every would-be heroine has to be a muscle-bound warrior (who will invariably know Kung Fu, for whatever reason) regardless of the context of their story and character.  The Book of Life's Maria was doing so well until she busted out the ninja moves.

Merida's tomboyish demeanor, however, makes sense within her narrative.  Her prowess at archery feels natural to her character.  She's not some ass-kicking super-heroine, but a very realistic character with a particular set of skills often relegated to the male sphere.  And despite the best efforts of the movie's marketing to suggest otherwise, she is not defined by her archery.  Rather, it's one of many aspects to her character that make her more than a feminist statement.

5) San from Princess Mononoke - Similar to Merida, San's skill in combat makes sense with her character.  Raised by a gigantic Wolf god in the wilderness as part of her litter, it only makes sense that this half-feral girl turned into an exceptionally strong fighter: fast, lithe and thoroughly deadly.

She is as much a child of two worlds as Spock was: an ugly yet beautiful amalgamation of human civility and canine ferocity - belonging nowhere, and fully aware of that fact.  She's more than capable of leading raids against heavily armed human convoys and villages with nothing more than her siblings and a knife to protect her, while also willing to engage in reasoned diplomacy with the Gods of the Forest.  And although she is saved by Ashitaka from Okkoto's blind fury, she gives and good as she takes, and ultimately chooses to return to the forest despite her human heritage and feelings.

4) Relena Peacecraft from Gundam Wing - It would be easy to dismiss Relena as one of the many obvious romantic pairings of the male protagonists, but that would force you to ignore huge swaths of the show in which she plays an integral part.  And yes, although she is officially raised to the role of Queen Relena, she spends most of her time in the series outside of her predestined matriarchal role.

Relena is more than just a romantic certainty for the show's least humane character.  She is herself an intelligent, diplomatic and strong willed girl who picks up the pieces of her life following her father's assassination and becomes one of the most influential characters on the show.  Her steely glare belies the presuppositions concerning her sex, and her steadfast marshaling for peace ultimately leads to the rehabilitation of Heero and the political resolution of the series.

3) Anna from Frozen - Anna is this list's second Giselle, although not quite for the same reason as Rapunzel.  While it's true that both are a certain combination of naive, optimistic and spunky, Anna possesses these qualities more as a desperate foil to her icy sister than anything else.  And, like Giselle, she is the instrument of the film's meta-fictive subtext: bringing to light all of the inherent head-scratching decisions of the princesses of decades past.

But while previous generations of princesses happily succumbed to conventions of their narratives, Anna does not.  She doesn't end up marrying the prince that she was instantly willing to engage to (albeit because he was a murderous villain who was trying to kill her for her throne) and appears to be taking her second romance with Kristoff at a far more reasonable pace.  Despite only rarely leaving the palace grounds (and never since her parents' deaths), she instantly stepped up to the plate to head into the frozen wilderness to search for her sister when the kingdom needed her to.  And in the ensuring adventure with Kristoff and Olaf, she proved capable of handling herself against wolves, ice monsters and even her super-powered sister.

2) Tiana from The Princess and the Frog - This working class princess is so close to being my favorite that it actually hurts.  Although not as thoroughly educated as my number one choice, she is the most dedicated and hardest working of all the ladies on this list: to a fault, even.

Raised in what soon became a single-parent household, in a setting that was viciously cruel to her race, she stubbornly worked toward her dream of opening her own restaurant.  She saved every last scrap of change from multiple jobs over what was evidently a long number of years, formulated a sound business plan and even scouted potential locations for where to erect her restaurant.  What she lacks for in class and education she more than makes up for in gumption and tenacity.

1) Belle from Beauty and the Beast - When it comes to animated princesses - Disney or otherwise - was there ever any doubt that Belle would top the list?  An independent girl trapped in a traditional French village, she is scorned for her avid fascination with literature and for not taking more interest in pursuits more "suitable" for her sex (ie, Gaston).  She proves to be more than capable of helping her father in his workshop, tactfully rebuffs Gaston's approaches and is instantly willing to run off into the woods when she suspects that her father is in danger.

Like many of the women on this list, she is readily willing to sacrifice everything that she holds dear - her freedom, her family and the life she knew before - for what she knows in her heart is right.  She verbally holds her own with the Beast, even with the very real possibility that she's risking physical abuse by doing so, but it not so stubborn that she refuses to see the goodness in him when he allows it to come out.

So what is your favorite Princess from movies or tv (animated or otherwise)?

Join the Filmquisition on Twitter (@Filmquisition) or by subscribing to this blog.

Ask questions or share your thoughts in the comments section below.