Film Review: True Lies

(In Memory of Jon Landu, whose collaboration with James Cameron started after True Lies. Gone too soon at the tender age of 63.)

July, fifteenth, 2024 marks the thirtieth anniversary of True Lies. Some of us here at miHoYo’s country of origin do treasure this one for it was the very first film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that ever graced the big screens here. As the dog days of summer came earlier than excepted this July, the “Bond spoof” seems like a perfect one to watch in an air-conditioned room.

Both Cameron and Schwarzenegger said that it was the latter who got the chance to remake a French comedy titled La Totale then invited the former to lead this particular wacko party. And it would be fair to say that the tech savvy hipster named James Cameron got a little copped up for this one. During a 2003 audio commentary for Terminator 2, big JC admitted that his brother (Not this brother though, a younger one named David.) pointed out mistakes in that one, noticeably how no grenade launcher can blow up metal door. Well, if you want to get military hardware right, sometimes bow to the military entertainment complex is the only way to go. Who knows, they might give 2 jet fighters in return.

Omega (man led) Sector

Harry (Arnie Schwarzenegger) is an agent working for Omega Sector. Just as he zeroing in on a plot to nuke American cities, he found his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) seeing some guy (Bill Paxton on his third collaboration with a follow “schmuck under Roger Corman”). As he pulled resource to tracking his wife, Harry soon found that the enemies were closing more dangerously…

Plotwise, True Lies is basically Goldfinger through and through. However, with writer-director James Cameron’s attention to technical details, the definitive Bond flick might as well be Austin Powers next to the 1994 summer blockbuster. Take the opening of “tuxedo under wet suit” for example.

While Sean Connery as Jame Bond had the whole package under, Schwarzenegger’s Harry only had the shirt and the bow-tie after the diving suit was taken off. Shoulder holster plus Glock, dinner jacket and likely cologne had to be applied later. Gentleman spy always adjust his outfit to perfection, but in Harry’s case, he just got to adjust since he was literally just out of the water.

This fictional agency sign was designed by Ron Cobb. Seeing Mr. Cobb’s name in True Lies’ end credits is like seeing an old friend after reading behind-the-scene books on Alien and Aliens. The man had also collaborated with Cameron on 1989’s Abyss and was known to bring eligibility to er, science fictional bullshit. Cobb got a dark sense of humor when it comes to design signs such as this. Too bad Ridley Scott and crew did not focus much on those in Alien. At least, Cameron gave us a couple of seconds to laugh at “the last line of defense”. Speak of Omega, here is Omega Man himself.

Charlton Heston as Spencer Trilby was the only character who got namedropped in this one’s opening credits. Mr. Heston was both a bona fide action cinema legend and an Oscar baiting charm for Cameron. You all just got to watch Ben-Hur if just for that chariot race. This old man had already taken part in one of the best high speed chase scenes ever put on film before Schwarzenegger was a teenager.

Stunts seemed to be what James Cameron mostly think about for True Lies. There is of course the money-shot with just the stunt performers pictured above. It’s not like Ms. Curtis were not in some dangerous just not that dangerous shots herself. They really do not make it like that anymore. Speak of which.

I looked up the possibility on this one with the help from video by an Uploader called Neo Cat on BiliBili. Turns out not only is this very possible but Imperial Japanese Army had a flamethrower with blanks with igniters just so it could throw flame in extreme cold (Guess the crazy buggers had plan to invade Russia during WWII. ). You just got to hand it to the practical effects of yesteryear: if something could be caught on film in-camera, that’s because it happened for real by hook or crook. Why an all-done-in-digital media form like video game thought it can ever “catch up” with film is a ridiculous motion to say the very least.

2 Kings and 1 Queen of comedy

In the newly taped behind-the-scene feature Fear Is Not an Option, Cameron admitted that he was worrying about the comedy part of True Lies. (Though I personally found Harry going close-quarter-combat on fools in the third act very comedic especially with that bit too loud neck snapping sound and just how Looney-toon the whole thing feels.) The only solution was to cast the right actors and let them cook. Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton and Jamie Lee Curtis were the right people and cook they did.

Tom Arnold played Harry’s partner Gib. It’s funny to hear Cameron going “Arnold and Tom Arnold” did this or that. Mr. Arnold did know that he was playing a cop for laughs in True Lies. Take the scene after Harry discovered Helen’s secret for example.

Yep, that’s your jurisdiction, officer.

Guess there is “no harm” in bending the rule and enjoy your job.

Er, I know you are cheering up your work partner and more or less friend up, but damn!

You just cannot stop acting like you were shoving a hand-cuffed suspect into your car, huh, copper? Mr. Arnold was given leeway and used it well by the look of things. In many, he is the nagging wife more than Helen, mostly because Harry cannot afford ignoring his nagging for the job’s sake…

Ah, Bill Paxton as Simmon after Harry fantasizing after killing him with just one punch. This bloody scene came just after Simmon comparing Helen’s ass to 10-year-old boy. Guess stealing another man’s wife is one thing, sexualizing the underaged is quite another. Cameron was known to let Paxton cook, the most famous example being the line “Game over, man! Game over!” in Aliens. The layers of used car salesman playing spies then the loser who pissed his pants sure requires a lot out of the actor.

One cannot help but think Paxton might have asked for this himself since during his 2 collaborations with Cameron before, the characters were killed off without much on-screen satisfaction. That punk just got pushed into a fence by the Terminator and he was just gone. Hudson was pulled down by the bunch of Xenomorph but how was he gone? Eaten right there and then or only vaporized after the terraforming machine blown up? Well, how about killed by Schwarzenegger with bare hand yet again even if it’s just in a dream. Paxton might point at his death scene in 1990‘s Navy Seals and want his fellow schmuck under Roger Corman to give him at least that much.

In 1996’s Scream, a lad yelled “When do we see Jamie Lee’s breasts?” during a Halloween watch party. Given the time frame, it’s possible to imagine he had the scene pictured above in mind: the dynamic trio of Jamies Lee Curtis and her pair of titties, and how juicy it would have been with Ms. Curtis that young in John Carpenter’s early thriller. “Begging for buttermilk” indeed, huh, straight gents? Thought it would be fair to say that Helen was being a mom with strange men more in True Lies, even with Simmon. “Dance sexy”? Sure, but that’s it. Come upon me? Oh, fuck off, pig, that’s for the hubby only!

Cameron claimed that he watched A Fish Called Wanda through on tape from three to five in the morning and stock to his gun on casting Ms. Curtis. Wanda in that flick was no mom, but both she and Helen are pretty women who managed to have agency and dignity in comedies even with their tits partially out. I got to admit, the agency shown by the pole dance scene was not felt until I saw it being cut out on the 132 instead of 141 minutes long version available on streaming services in miHoYo’s country of origin now. Strap and lie on bed, yeah, that lady was robbed in more than one way. Not that the cut makes the film seem less sensible, just one less character moment.

Parent called “Liberty”

True Lies and the Avatar flicks have this one thing in common: their titles were lent to video games that didn’t knock anyone’s socks off. But True Lies did have fortune to be out way before polygonal extravaganzas took over for interactive entertainment, so one “masterpiece” did steal from it oh so shamelessly.

Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty sure blew up a lot of ski…I mean knocked off a lot of socks when it came out on PS2 in 2001. I played it for the first time five years later and was not impressed. I was reading a novel that put a non-English speaker's name on a Hugo rocket at the same time to be fair, and it’s not like Hideo Kojima’s name would appear on any trophy for science fiction writing with that copy and paste shit load from Wiki pages approach. So, allow me to talk vision.

The Plant chapter of MGS2 took loads of vision cues from 1996’s the Rock. But for the Raiden seeing a newly cut hole on the underwater fence bit, it must be taken from True Lies’ opening with the cool spy commando actually cutting a hole with a torch. Then there is the boss fight of “Harrier, Chopper and Stinger”. While it’s Harrier vs. Chopper and Stinger in the game, it was Harrier and Chopper vs. Stinger in the movie.

The US Marine Corps were asked to provide those jets for filming and it was real instead just looks real. Guess there is another limitation of gameiness in MGS2: Raiden would have been navel lint way before he could get a shot off. Say what you want about Half-life and Call of Duty series, at least their chases before player getting rocket launchers make more sense and seem more real than what Konami employees envisioned as arena boss fights.

Harry blowing shit up in a Harrier sure takes one back to Aliens or Rambo: First Blood Part 2 where heroes’ final rampages were enhanced by heavier hardware. Personally, I think when the Wachowskis envisioned to add some more Hollywood flavor into the Matrix, True Lies’ final action scene was their reference point with aircraft flying between high-rises. And Joel Sliver would happily give Cameron and crew the finger for he achieved the almost same thrill with much less money.

Feeling both old and young…

As I typed away with this one on a relatively slow day at the office, I could not help but think about my father. The man showed me both True Lies and Kindergarten Cop on VHS when I was a five-year-old still in kindergarten and now I am older than him at that time. Did he think about his five-year-old self at that time? Probably not, his generation at his neck of wood did not have much a childhood to think about, unlike the corner of city my mom grew up in.

It's funny to think that my five-year-old self managed to sit through the R-rated True Lies without a fuzz, while the PG-13 rated Kindergarten Cop seemed bit more scary. In both flicks, the stoic hero played by Schwarzenegger had to tough it out with the mantle and face off some bit comedically deranged villain. But Mr. John Kimble was facing his devil in an invaded school and got shot in the leg while Agent Harry was a bulldozer through some Looney-tune bullshit. Makes one wonder if MPAA employees did, do or will know what’s suitable to show kids, doesn’t it?

Film business back in the mid 1990s felt exciting and sadly it was still more exciting back then than it’s now. Talents both in front of and behind the scene would make up new and more entertaining stuff for the big screen. Nowadays, we only have declining brands. “James Cameron” is just one of those. But the man was getting old, so much so that I personally would not except his closer to eighty ass to pull off another summer blockbuster after his plan for Avatar would be done. The news of Cameron’s producer Landu’s passing breaking out in the middle of writing this sure drive the point home. Well, I better wrap this up before a blog on a comedy gets any lower. Anyway, this film is great fun in term of both action and comedy, but not for the more sensitive lasses, lads and rest out there. 30 years ain’t short, so take what holds up and ignore what doesn’t, would you kindly.

Flim review: Blade Runner 2049

25 years is a funny period of time to think about. Look at the last quarter century I lived through, internet is all I can think of. The bloody thing was still a novelty accessible through desktops I barely used back in 1999. Now it engulfs everything including the bank account my livelihood depends on and is accessible through this tricky thing we call “smart phone”. As for the 25 years to come, personally I would consider anything other than nuclear winter in radiated wasteland a win. But Blader Runner 2049 disagrees and says there might always be something worse…

The French-Canadian Connection

Allow me to start with the shocking and seemingly click baiting result: film director Denis Villeneuve and his Dune flicks had made me hate cinema. It’s because of both something he said and the unsavory type his last flick dragged into the cinema.

Back in October, 2021, Mr. Villeneuve compared watching film to “driving a speedboat”. How rich does this man have to be to forget that big office box numbers require schmucks who cannot even afford to see such vehicle? I mean as despicable as Christopher Nolan was regarding Tenet’s only theatrical release at some height of a plague, his naked reasoning of “I want my fucking money!” I get. Villeneuve’s “one of you” act just fell on its face.

I guess you did not have someone nosey behind you in that speedboat, V-man. In March, 2024, I had to shush a motherfucker behind me watching Dune Part 2. (One schmuck is allowed to despise another on basis of behavior.) Doesn’t help that the “savior of cinema” for many is merely Matrix remade in the image of Lawrene of Arabia. To paraphrase the late Anthony Bourdain: I like those flicks, what’s wrong with you mixing them up like that?

However, with Sicario, Villeneuve seemed to be the right choice for a Blade Runner sequel. In the 2015 thriller, Emily Blunt as Kate Macer does not carry a badge for the anti-narcotic death squad, she is their badge just so people would not rise their eye brows after those commando assassins made their killing on US soil. So, Villeneuve got the sad cop who cannot do much part of Blade Runner covered there.

Villeneuve was not only a more experienced feature director than Ridley Scott during the production of Blade Runner, he is also more clearly a science fiction reader. No, I do not mean the yet-to-be-made Rendezvous with Rama and Villeneuve’s tendency to adapt double winners of Hugo plus Nebula. But rather how the Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang turned into Arrival. The original story only contains the learn process of an alien language and a letter to a doomed child. The movie has genuine friendly alien visitor and ill shit caused by self-proclaimed XCOM nutjobs among homo sapiens. Something likely lifted by from Calculating God, a novel written by truly Canada’s very own Robert J Sawyer. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J K Rowling (Just using her name, so sit down trans folks.) took the Hugo rocket that book was nominated for, by the way.

Villeneuve claimed that he felt pressure making Blade Runner 2049 for he had to stick to a blueprint. But if you ask me, he lacks vision of his own even when he was in charge if those 2 Dune movies are anything to go by. So, let’s take a look at what blueprint he was not too willing to follow is, shall we?

Do “Skin-jobs” Dream of Electric Joi? Yeah, this one does.

Blade Runner 2049’s on-screen words are small, like one-has-to-narrow-their-eyes-in-the-cinema kind of small. Yet none is smaller than “Based on characters from the novel”, just before “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philp K Dick” in the end credits. It’s as if to say that this is not a sequel to Blade Runner but rather than another adaption of the PKD novel.

In some ways it’s. Many elements absent in the 1982 original were added into the 2017 sequel. Like the desolation of the world. The 1982 flick showed a city mixing many types of cultures from different times and space, a mixture one certainly Hideo Kojima would love to live in. The 2017 flick depicts a world 3 decades after Earth’s ecosystem collapsed, where the city streets are mostly empty. The male lead is more or less “married” in this one, if one can call a nice-to-look-at hologram interface of a smart home “spouse”. Or, maybe “pet” is more fitting since this one character would be killed or destroyed by a corporate Replicant woman just like the real sheep Deckard only made the down payment for is killed by Racheal in the book.

Ryan Gosling plays K, a Replicant hunting other deemed hazardous Replicants. In the first scene, K was tasked to kill Sapper Morton played by David Batista (This long-ass movie sure likes to “abuse” its all-star cast as in the likes of Batista and Wood Harris only gets one scene each) and survives being pounded through a concrete wall. K did the job and found a grave near the “retired” Replicant’s home. The deceased and buried turned out to be none other than Racheal from the 1982 original as a search for her child kicked the 2017 film off.

K would seem like the driver Gosling played in 2011’s Drive, a stoic who keeps quiet until he commits acts of violence. However, K is a man of even fewer words since the driver is making a monologue regarding his terms of employment in the opening of Drive while K basically talks only when spoken to. It’s a shame that Blade Runner 2049 does not have voice-over narration. For one thing Gosling’s seething voice was wasted. For another, Gosling provided a comedic voice-over in Shane Black’s Nice Guy, so I for one would love to hear him do a dramatic one. But the weight of 1982’s Blade Runner just dragged its sequel out of the more interesting possibilities.

2010s certainly lacks the club scenes of the 1980s. So, K’s off-time is spent with Joi, a pretty lady interface of his smart home. A house wife’s duty as cook and dancer for her husband is pretty obvious with this one. And oh, she paid for a warm body just so her hubby can have a shag, real thoughtful.

A Song of Bums and Ovens

Replicants giving birth is a fact both supporters and oppressors of those artificial people long for in this one. Their supporters see the face as a symbol for their personhood while their oppressor like Jared Leto’s Mr. Wallace just consider it as one way to increase their number with less efforts. Geeze, this is not a piece of science fiction look forward with awe, but rather than a farce set in a wasteland so the audience can feel better about themselves.

For the second highest billing before the title card, Harrison Ford appears in this one for way too late, 105 minutes into a 164-minute-long flicks. One might have a better time with Terminator, Predator or Robocop with that amount than waiting for a pissed off Mr. Ford appear. To be fair though, Ford’s impatience shown on screen does help to sell the story. K was a uninvited guest to his “man cave” in the future deserted Vegas. The long They Live style farcical fight between Deckard and K more or less puts book’s Deckard mis-venture in a fake police station on the screen. Then Wallace goons showed up and dragged Deckard around, so I guess Ford played the damsel part in the one rather convincing.

Wallace goons are mainly faceless except for a lass called Luv. Again, she kicks K in ways Ridley Scott once envisioned Roy Batty “Bruce Lee” kicking Rick Deckard before the late Rutger Hauer told that limey no. Luv always thought herself as the best Replicant before K drown her in the Pacific (Another thing the one stole from Drive I might add). Some real Old Testament “For I am a jealous God” bullshit for this one keeping destroying Wallace products, in this Baptist’s humble option.

Villeneuve claimed that he would not be around to adapt Frank Herbert’s fourth Dune novel, God Emperor of Dune. Now I had read that rather particular novel, I think Denny boy here did that sand worm human hybrid looking out for humanity bullshit in Jared Leto (More or less the namesake of the aforementioned Dune’s God Emperor, if we can say that jokingly) as Wallace here already. The man wants humanity to own the stars. Though the fictional Leto is at least aware of new technology for space travel while the character played by actor Leto does not seem to be. Wallace only cares about a large enough workforce. Oh, how I miss Dave Peoples, the co-writer of the 1982 original, His gibberish at least put some science fiction feeling into the Scott flick.

Not the good kind of speechless

As I turned Blade Runner 2049 off during the end credits, I felt “speechless”. Not Lance Henriksen being so impressed by Aliens that he cannot say a word to James Cameron kind of speechless. But I set out to review this film yet its 164 minutes long (credits included) run time give me fuck all to think and write about kind of speechless.

Granted the 2017 sequel does have more plot and a central mystery the 1982 original lacks. It might be a more enjoyable movie if it’s around 120 minutes long or less. Sicario and Arrival work fine within that restrain. Whatever fine flavor Blade Runner 2049 could have left in my mouth is truly lost in it run time like tears in rain. People wonder why Blade Runner as franchise does not succeed as much, I am more baffled by how it is still not dead yet in a time when its neon city landscape became part of space opera and other subgenre within sci-fi.

(Fin)

Flim review: Blade Runner (1982)

As the heat pauses to rise yet the rain continues to fall for days here in the city hosting miHoYo global headquarters, I started to look for film suitable for raining nights. So, 1982’s Blade Runner came up. This year’s August will mark two full decades since my first view of the film. It also had been five years since the film turned from near future to alternative history. Why not watch it again now I had read 3 Greek Tragedies by Euripides? And then give its equally flopped sequel another look past that post-Trump blues in a later date.

The Angolo-American Connection

It would be fair to say that Ridley Scott had a complicated relationship with science fiction. Many would call him one of the most influential directors worked in the genre, which yours truly and the likes of Dan O’Bannon would see him not as a sci-fi guy. When James Cameron put together that show for AMC during the early year of Trump administration, one of the interviews was with Scott. Again, in print but not on air, Scott said that he liked H G Wells as a young lad but never able to enjoy Issac Asimov. The point will be discussed farther below.

Ridley Scott’s trouble in LA with this one would be somewhat mirrored by James Cameron’s trouble in Pinewood with Aliens. Even with a shared language, foreign directors are handful. The obstacle was not in language alone. Scott thought and still think he was smart to “only” litter the Bradbury set where the light would be, yet the crew still thought that was meaningless labor. And that bullshit about whether Rick Deckard played Harrison Ford? I really do not give a rat’s ass, neither does the 2017 sequel after all.

Hardly the foundation of future noir

1982’s Blade Runner is a movie better with supplements. I did not actually start to enjoy watching it until I was 26 years old and just finished reading Do Androids Dream of Electrical Sheep by Phillp K Dick. So, it’s more of a seeing what’s kept and what’s cut out from the book kind of enjoyment, much like reading Future Noir or watching the Dangerous Days documentary to see which parts of script did they cut out during shooting.

Funny thing is, the PKD novel is actually closer to farce in tone. I would even call it a parody since I read it right after Cave of Steel by Issac Asimov. And the fact that neither director Ridley Scott and nor co-writer Hampton Francher had read Asimov is obvious at this front. Those 2 gentlemen thought they were blazing new trails with a film noir with future setting while Cave of Stell blended science fiction and noir detective story together decades before Blade Runner was made.

Asimov himself did not use this N word in French, he just called those “detective stories”. Given they were written in the 1950s, I say such French word does apply there. And that’s even before we get to the plot of those novels. Cave of Steel and its sequel Naked Sun feature one meat-bag cop from Earth and a robot made in another human colony partnering in homicide investigations. Due to the delicate situations they find themselves in, the 2 would identify the killers but could not go public with the knowledge. Thus, keeping it a secret between them and the readers. If that’s not noir, then what is?

Of course, the “parody” is not without its merits. It’s not like it didn’t add anything. PKD is a paranoia through and through, even his praise for Blade Runner’s visual effect is seeded in that paranoia saying that it was as if his brain was hardwired and the vision was just taken out. The vibe would be picked up by the likes of William Gibson thus made Cyberpunk into a more or less real thing.

More “little person” than cop

The late Rutger Hauer really spoke for many of us in the audience before any of us got to see this film. He referred to Rick Deckard played by Harrison Ford as “that fucker” during his on-set discussion with director Ridley Scott. The scene is one of the last in the film both in terms of chronology and shooting schedule, where Roy Batty played by Mr. Hauer picked Deckard up before the latter was about to fall to his death.

Deckard is a typical Greek soldier outside the wall of Troy, a barbarian at the gate by the order of state he is forced to serve. One of those faceless menace hurting and exploiting the titular Trojan Women in Euripides’ play. The 2 situation Deckard did his job of “retiring” Replicants, he shot 2 unarmed women. Granted those 2 women did try to kill with bare hands before and in case of Pris, the last 2 shots can almost be seen as mercy killing. Still, Deckard is certainly among the scum of scums in the pantheon of noir anti-heroes, many of who do not actually have body-count.

If that’s how Deckard treats his enemies, his friend is not treated by him any better. The love interest Racheal saved Deckard life by shooting Leon and what’s her reward? Practically getting raped by Deckard. Shitheads imagined by Japanese creators such as EVA’s Shinji Ikari and NieR Automata’s 9S certainly got an ancestor in Deckard.

On the other hand, the Replicant leader Roy Batty is a tragedy hero more worthy of sympathy. He is much like Euripides’ Bacch and Meada combined, with the former’s playfulness and the latte’s self-awareness (Saying “I’ve done questionable things” before doing a couple of more, like killing his maker because the maker cannot prolong his life.). Well, the film’s co-writer David Peoples and Mr. Hauer at least gave the guy the fitting dying speech after all.

Deep Real

2004 was a time 3 years too early for me to see Blade Runner. On the personal level, I was only 14. Had I waited 3 years, I would have watched it for the first time with Final Cut. But alas. I think I liked the voice-over. But that was probably because I watched with Mandarin dub with no flag like this screenshot shows.

Blade Runner before its final cut should be taught in text book as the wrong way to do voice-over. 8 minutes into the movie and a switch of point-of-view later, Deckard started to moan about no ads for killers like him. It’s beyond jarring. R Scott did state Apocalypse Now as an example of good voice-over narration and I agree completely. Martin Sheen delivered one of the best open lines (“Saigon. Shit! I’m still only in Saigon.”) merely 4 minutes in and no switching pov. Well, there are certainly good reasons why Sheen was cast in the 2 Mass Effect sequel instead of Ford, one fellow AP cast member of his.

The Final Cut being made in 2007 was partially due to technology. Like some painstaking process would inspire Deep Fake of these days. With an “And” crediting in the opening, Joanna Cassidy was back to act in some reshoot. Full make-up, partially costumed and acting in front of green screen so her face instead of a stun double’s is seen during Zorah’s painfully beautiful death scene.

Other noticeable changes include one Ford Jr. coming in to do lib sync for dad and new “matte painting” for Batty’s death scene. This version is not just definitive, it’s also the only version streaming here in miHoYo’s country of origin while the older versions were lost in time like tears in rain unless one’s willing to track down home media release. But it’s a good way to see this film with seal of prove from Ridley Scott, so really no loss there.

Homages from writers

In Three-body, I’ve seen things most people wouldn’t believe. World torn in halves by power behind tides while its oceans boiled in larva. I’ve seen sun coronas consuming one planet after another like arms waving in the air without any ruth nor care. Yet those moments are merely waterdrops in the face of universe. All will be lost in despair like rain in sea.

---- Lines from the Three-body Problem show in Chinese, practically Shen Yufei’s final words written for the show. Translated from Chinese to English by yours truly.

The Chinese language adaption of the Three-body Problem likes to have end credits fuckery. So, it’s only safe to click “next episode” when a sexy male voice starts to sing “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe” in English. As if that homage to Blade Runner is not enough, the writers had to do this: by episode 16 of the show’s 26 episodes “Anniversary (Just without no ads actually.)” cut, someone made the monologue above shortly before she shot herself in the head.

The character Shen Yufei can be seen as the first line of defense against an alien invasion. As she desperately trying to get that hubby of hers to solve the titular three-body problem so the aliens can stay put in their home system of 3 stars. Even though official XCOM treats her as an enemy within. Something that book burning routine (I was mad at Troy back in 2004. Now I had read Iliad and browsed IMDB, I am just mad at David Benioff. There is no book too old or too new this motherfucker’s budget-saving screen-writing type would not butcher, no matter the source material came to existence 20 centuries or years ago.) over at Netflix burnt out completely. She is a homicide victim without famous final words whatsoever in the book, so I guess it’s nice to give her some additional monologue after three-body problem proved insolvable through maths. Of course, in typical “Chinaman outdoing Yankee by hook or crook” fashion, everything got to be bigger. Celestial bodies instead of starships, sea shallowing rain instead of rain washing away tears.

Much like Ridley Scott helmed Alien before it, Blade Runner is beloved among science fiction novelists after it. The aforementioned Chinese screen writers’ handiwork is merely a recent example of a long tradition. Legend has it that William Gibson almost gave up on his Hugo rocket catching novel Neuromancer because how close his vision of a Sprawl was to the ever-raining night city of Los Angeles. Then again, this American turned Canadian is known to like R Scott’s early works. 1979’s Alien was where Gibson get the idea of “high tech low life” from.

7 years after Blade Runner flopped in the box office, a man named Dan Simmons put a space opera novel titled Hyperion, also got him a Hugo rocket for Best Novel. In this book, Simmons envisioned a spacefaring civilization known as human Hegemony and its World Web. Interstellar travel can be as easy as stepping through portals called Farcasters.

The noir detective chapter of the book is about a lady detective falling in love with android man. This chapter also have an action scene than can only called an interstellar foot chase. The lady detective chasing a suspect through one Farcaster after another, in part as the author’s way to show readers what kinds of worlds are in the World Web. When I read it in 2016, I imagined it more like foot chase scenes in Bourne films with John Powell soundtrack playing in the background. But came to think about it, Simmon might be expanding on the Deckard chasing Zorah scene in Blade Runner, with no music just different noises on busy streets of all those human colonies.

Then there is Hideo Kojima, who somehow found time to write and publish a review of this flick’s final cut during the death march to finish Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of Patriots. MGS4 and Snatcher both feature gun totting man wears a brown trench coat, but I want to dig too little deeper. Starting with this line I can always recall, when Byrant talks about Zorah.

The obvious place to go with this is of course MGS4’s rogue gallery dubbed the Beauty and Beast squad. But allow me to go farther back. This line is undoubtedly a one-liner. The kind of one-liner featured only in 1998’s Metal Gear Solid, as Colonel Roy Campbell would crack wise about each member of Foxhound. Too bad neither MGS2’s Dead Cell nor MGS3’s Cobra Unit got the same treatment. This rewatch made me realize that there is a one-liner behind on Leon. No, calling Roy Batty “Probably the leader” is too little of wise-cracking.

Across 3 languages I can read and 3 different media forms, Blade Runner’s finger prints can be seen when one starts to look for those. Ultimately, I am still a naysayer regarding the film, but I got to admit that it is influential. I just would recommend the influenced over the influencer. I certainly enjoyed anime series Psycho-pass more. That show has a clown fuck serial killer calling his motive as he hates the Philp K Dick story society he lives in. The Expanse will be another one, with its opening crawl closer to Blade Runner than Star Wars.

(To be concluded in Quarter Century into A Future)

Film review: Klute

Late June in Shanghai is usually a time when raining days and rising heat conspire to make the city feeling like a swamp. June 2024 is no exception. So, paranoia about the lousy weather calls for watching a paranoia flick. I looked at my shelf, seeing the Criterion release of Klute and thought there might be no better time to watch it again with “in memory of the older and better Sutherland” on the top.

As we are trained to think in the legal profession: no one really commits the act of dying, death just happens to the deceased. So, at the “tender” age of 88, death happened to the Canadian actor (Don’t look at me, that’s what wiki search bar and IMDB say.) Donald Sutherland. And the information just cannot be shut out as I was informed just by opening a browser window in the office on Friday.

While I had seen his son Kiefer as the embodiment of THAT Bush era US jingoism for almost 200 hours, I can count the number of seeing senior with only one hand. Watched the Palme d’or winning M*A*S*H back before my freshman year in college, but old Don’s performance is about the last thing I can recall from that great farce. He certainly was lively in Dirty Dozen, too bad that one only let the characters of Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson and one drill sergeant live. And in the subject of this review, while playing the titular character, he didn’t get the top billing and rightfully so one might add.

Those who “weaved” before

Jane Fonda who played Bree Daniels is the one getting top billing in Klute. She won Best Actress at the Academy Award with this role. I mean a woman finds a second to checking her watch while moaning during sex is giving an Oscar worthy performance.

Sigourney Weaver was cast in Alien partially because a real small sample group found her possessing the film star quality of Jane Fonda. Funny enough those 2 actors were born 12 years apart from each other yet both weeks after historical events for here in miHoYo’s country of origin. Weaver was born in October, 1949, weeks after PRC announced itself, while the Fonda in question was born in December, 1937, weeks after Chiang’s ROC lost its old capital to the Japanese invaders and the horror stories regarding occupation were still going on. Of course nothing can be done with a director.

Klute’s director Alan J Pakula had been a producer of well-liked drama flicks like To Kill A Mocking Bird before he started to direct. As far as a potential sophomore slump goes, Klute is a very impressive piece of work and did pave ways for Pakula’s late flicks. For one thing the 1971 flick would be seen as the first in a thematical tiro known as Pakula’s Paranoia Trilogy, with Parallax View and All the President’s Men. The former being an action-packed horror film that engulfs the audience in its nightmare about a Murder Incorprated and the latter is just peak 1970s cinema if you are into “all talk no action for the talk is the action”.

Here in miHoYo’s country of origin, Pakula is more known for his 1982 “Oscar bait” (Pakula himself was taped saying how he found all those awards meaningless.) Sophie’s Choice, which got Meryl Streep hers from the Academy. It’s said that Streep acting her tits off, figuratively speaking, telling the audience what happened is more effective than flashbacks. It’s very funny, because Klute, clocked in 36 minutes shorter than Sophie’s Choice is all telling and no showing. It does work with the talents involved.

Ms. Fonda as Bree Daniels is an actor working as a call girl for a living. The film does not judge her for that since her acting training does enhance her efficiency as a sex worker. For a client does have the need through only watch and no touch approach, something not all sex workers can provide. Interestingly enough, it also makes her into an unreliable narrator not just to the audience but also herself. Her most open moments involve her spilling her guts to her shrink, sometime the film would show her visually standing across the shrink while other times her talking to the shrink serves as voice-over narration. Yet open does not mean real here, because there are moments when her feelings might get in the way of her getting hold of reality.

Another interesting visual choice is that Bree does not look as traditional attractive when she talks to her shrink through lighting. Jane Fonda is undoubtedly one of the most pointed to example as traditional attractive woman, and the film she stars in, even those in her later years, would just light the hell out of that pretty face of hers. Those shrink section, on the other hand, cast shadows on her face to make it less desirable.

Head and tail of a “little island” designated “573”

Klute is a talking heavy picture by the standard of any time. Which raised the question: why its praise should be sung in front of video game players? Well, the flick got the video game feeling with Don Sutherland played the stoic throughout when nearly everyone else was figuratively acting one or more of their body parts off. Another thing would be Hideo Kojima in short. The longer version: things sold as “A Hideo Kojima Game” under Konami began and ended with imitations of this flick.

Hideo Kojima jokingly said that where there should be water in his body there is cinema being a man thrived through taking inspiration from the media form. It would be fair to ignore his top lists of movies and search for his likely secret sauce. Klute was likely one of ingredients in that sauce.

For one thing, its plot summary was just stolen for Policenauts. D Sutherland as John Klute is a private investigator and a friend of family to a rich man named Tom Gruneman. 6 months after Mr. Gruneman went missing, the missing man’s colleague Peter Cable hired Klute to work on the case. The only clue Klute has is a call girl in New York named Bree Daniels, who might or might not have entertained the missing man before.

Since this is a Hollywood script, Klute and Bree became romantically involved. To be fair to this film, Klute being the more naïve part of the pairing does make it less uncomfortable. They shag for the first time because Bree wants to trade a “party” with Klute for the wiretap tapes the man had on her. After Klute gave up the tapes without touching her, she initiate the er intercourse. To her it’s standard process by the end of day: always get the john to pay before he can get his dick wet.

Then Bree helps Klute to navigate the underbelly of New York city. Soon comes the kicker, Klute’s client Cable is the killer all long. The missing person is long gone. Cable is a sadist known among sex workers in New York. Once he escalated to killing one, and his colleague happened to witness the foul pay. So, Cable went for the dollar after the cent. In many ways, Policenauts plus many video games before and after it ate very well on that twist. Can’t blame them, how better can you say “Game over, man! Game over!” than “The task giver is hostile. Go get them!”? Klute is lucky to make the realization without Cable knowing so he has option in the movie, while Jonathan Ingram was caught with his figurative pants down and cerebral dick out in Policenauts.

Cable in Klute is a particular sicko, as he would record some of his dirty deeds with a portable tape recorder. Which comes to the last “Hideo Kojima Game” Konami put out, I would call it MGSV in general. The shorter Ground Zeroes has one absolutely disgusting sexual abuse of underaged people on tape, while the too-long-for-its-own-good Phantom Pain has a tape of Dr. Strangelove making her will before she ran out of breath. I wonder if they are both inspired by the tape on Klute. It records Cable getting a woman with drug addiction lying down before killing her. The deceased could have pointed him out to the cops. Any of you hard-hitting journalists got the guts to ask Kojima about that for me? Anyone?

And of course, the film got much better visual presentation. Jane Fonda almost crying her eyes out listening to the terrifying type must be another reason why she got an Oscar for this one. Charle Cioffi playing Cable talking to his next potential victim in a tone as if he is putting up a defense in the court of law is deliciously twisted. What do MGSV have visually? Probably the commando barely played by Sutherland Junior during an operation’s downtime.

High-tech, low-life for real

This plot light yet vibe heavy flick can be summed up as detective, dame and killer interacting with technology available to them. Yours truly showed Klute with gun and flashlight, the detective can be often seen on phone and tape recorder. Bree was looking at a watch for the hustles in her life depend on it. The killer Cable uses small for its era tape recorder to keep his boat afloat. If Cyberpunk is a science fiction subgenre all about noir meets tech, then I say even the tech part got precedence.

Then there is the film’s impact on this modern era beyond any Cyberpunk writers’ wildest imagination. This flick’s “if you tell well enough, you don’t have to show” tendency is something so-called Prestige Drama started to pick in the 2010s. Characters sitting down and just spilling their guts about their life story or some deeds they did? The Wire on HBO did not use that as a rut in the aughts, but Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones did, both started and ended in the teens. Netflix’s Marvel series used this to a ridiculous degree. Pakula flicks are only feature length so it’s fine. Dozen hours long seasons on the other hand, doing so would be going again their name, they are called “shows” by us common folks, should we call them “tells” instead?

Start from the top

As far as writing about a movie while thinking about the late Donald Sutherland goes, Klute is not the best one to pick. A Chinese comedy back in 2001 (Shortly before Junior started to become THAT Bush era’s poster boy for his Leviathan.) in which Sutherland Sr. played one film director almost died and wanted to turn his funeral into a farce should be more fitting. Still, as someone who wrote about one of the last thrillers of 1970s, it just felt tempting to write about one of the decade’s earliest flicks. The result is bit more “gamer brained” than I excepted. So what are you all waiting for, my fellow video game player? Try it, if you are interested.

Film review: Terminator 2 Judgment Day

1991’s Terminator 2 Judgment Day is one of the best action movies ever made by more than one metric. Yours truly can never run out of excuses to watch it and the 40^th anniversary of its predecessor is good as any. There is not much myth to bust regarding this one’s inception, but I got my speculation.

After 1989’s Abyss became its lukewarm self, it was likely that James Cameron needed a safe bet to be his next project. Then that “safe bet” became the most expansive to make flick of its day. There were the then new (Not mention expansive and slow to render.) digital effect and loads of stunt work. But with peak Arnold Schwarzenegger on board to play the good guy and a solid foundation to expand on, Judgment Day turned out to be a sure bet. That being said, it’s still a heavier film in terms of subject matter than any post-911 escape can manage.

Nuclear weapon, machine intelligence and time travel

In James Camreon’s Story of Science Fiction, not the tv show but its companion book, the titular Canadian film director voiced his concern for the then current unchecked development of machine intelligence, comparing it to the 1930s’ excitement regarding energy generated by nuclear fission (The one that led to atomic bombs.). Those words were printed in 2018 during US’ Trump administration.

However, when one looks at Judgement Day, one can clearly see that Cameron was thinking about the deadly cocktail of machine intelligence and nuclear weapon way back when another Republican (Namely Bush, but not that Bush.) was US president. Linda Hamilton as Sarach Connor mentioned the fusion bomb to Dyson, the head of developing Skynet chip, for crying out loud.

What’s funny in the scene is that both Ms. Connor and Mr. Dyson saw the inherent benefit of “thinking machine”. The former saw it in action as a guardian and considered it the only piece of sanity she can get in an insane world created by time travel. The latter merely envisioned a world where hazardous jobs like airline pilot can do away with inherent human vices. Then both agreed that global thermal nuclear holocaust is not worth it.

With the nuclear holocaust only mentioned in the 1984 original, the nightmarish (In more than one sense of the word) image of mushroom cloud in the middle of one city was not shown until the 1991 sequel. The different types of terror of war shown in those 2 movies still feel very real to us in the year 2024: first one showed us those forced into fighting a war suffering the business ends of Hunter-killers aka drones (Funny how Cameron quoting Putin’s focus on AI to more than one guest of that show,); then there is the nuclear fire too dreadful to imagine.

This paragraph was written on Father’s Day (CST being the time zone), so it might turn into a roast, figuratively only, of my old man. He introduced Schwarzenegger flicks to me when I was still in kindergarten. I remember sitting through True Lies with the man after he told me about the Rocket Man being fired bit. He wrongly assumed that a movie with heavy subject matter like Judgment Day was suitable for a first-grader. So, he asked me to see this then only Terminator sequel with him. After we got to Connor’s nightmare where the screenshot below was taken, I begged him to turn the movie off.

The Terminator and them Alien flicks never registered in my mind as horror films when I saw those in my middle to late teens. But seeing a nuclear holocaust depicted THIS graphically and personally after some other shit as a six-year-old, traumatized would be an understatement. I did not watch this one through until 7 years later, after Terminator 3 came out and flopped. That third act sure blew that teenager away.

“Other shit” of course involves this movie’s shape-shifting assassin bot. First, they disguised as someone and just stabbed another meatbag through the throat.

Then they can hide in plain sight. When I was 6, my parents moved to a new place with a chess board looking floor more or less like this one. So, I was dreadful of something rising from that piece of floor and stab me in the eyes!

Machine intelligence had likely become a genie incapable of going back to the bottle by the mid to late 2010s. But in the fictional 1994 of Judgment Day, delaying the genie coming out of the bottle was still possible. The Sarah Connor character was supposed to blow up a Cyberdine facility in the first movie in one early draft. Then 6 million us dollar budget and 107 minutes run time both ran out. So, she could only be back to sequel for that unfinished business.

In contrast to Sigourney Weaver only went to the range with Cameron once before she had to fire a gun on set for Aliens, Hamiliton went through serious weapon training before Judgement Day, and it did show on screen. This is a woman handling machine into benefits against machine as hazard.

No, I haven’t forgotten the time travel in this deadly cocktail. But since it’s still science fiction instead of technological reality, let’s hope that this particular genie will never come out of its fucking bottle…

Armed Assholes

James Cameron is unmistakenly a hippy. Not only do pistol fires sound like they do with real life silencers on in his flicks, profound distrust towards armed service is always present as well. I used to think that this hipster trend began in 2009’s Avatar, where heroic tree huggers fight against an evil industrialized war machine. But in fact, all his pre-Titanic action movies said “Fuck cops” at one volume or another.

In the Terminator, cops still bantered in gutter humor with the woman they were supposed to protect present. In Aliens, they space marine lads chitchatted mostly about getting their dicks wet at breakfast (The lack of female input in that flick’s script is obvious with them space marine lasses only chitchatting about Ripley. Men and women mingle with each other well enough though.). The Abyss’ Navy Seal squad prioritizing recovering and arming a nuclear warhead is the closest thing that “Disney fairy tale” (Just look at who composed that flick’s music.) has to an act of villainy. Then there is the “playing everything for farce” True Lies, where that “everything” includes a secret agent abusing his power to stalk his own wife.

Judgment Day somehow topped them all. There is of course the SWAT gunning black man without warning scene. Before that, police uniform made the ultimate cover for a sinister shape shifting assassin. And Cameron seemed to realize his original vision of casting someone striking the balance of slimness and bulkiness for the killing machine in Robert Patrick as T-1000. Not to mention what a better actor Patrick was than Schwarzenegger.

Cast members of this movie, namely Patrick and Hamiliton both went through rigid training for this one. Patrick needed to run without visibly taking breath. And he certainly nailed the killing machine vibe. Just look at him checking out a chrome coated mannequin suspiciously. Liquid metal usually led to some toilet humor. No, not how they got through bars while the gun they carried did not. One bit after that.

Both Cameron flicks contain 3 major action set-pieces: the first encounter between assassin and bodyguard; some indoor mayhem; and the third act rollercoaster ride of almost constant high. The first encounter between assassin and bodyguard is one point where those first 2 Terminator flicks differ.

The first flick made with “only” 6 mil while the second almost a hundred mil, of course there will be differences. Take the “killing machine getting up after being pumped with buck shots” bit for example. The 1984 original sticks to close-ups of the machine’s hand and face moving while the 1991 sequel took the wider angle and had help from digital effect.

Funny enough though, it was always Schwarzenegger’s stunt double through a piece of big enough glass in profile shots then hit the ground in over-the-shoulder shots before shots focusing on Schwarzenegger’s. Maybe times of day and places signal the money spent.

As a “Chinaman” with a Bachelor of Art degree in the Japanese language major, T-1000’s actions in this movie’s final chase begin with a Chinese proverb and almost end with a Japanese figure of speech. “Ru Hu Tian Yi” translated into “Like a tiger learnt to fly” and pounce better, fitting they getting a helicopter for the chase. “Oni Ni kanabon” translated into “Troll armed with (long) metal stick” can describe how T-1000 seemingly shut down T-800 with a, well, long metal stick. Of course, I still consider them melting as the best on screen monster death, bar none.

With the assassin upgraded, the bodyguard was upgraded to a certain degree. The Schwarzenegger bot is back as a hero, or “assassin turned bodyguard”, whose best defend being predicting enemy’s offend and sidestep or charge head-on accordingly. Those machines would trade blows, bullets, vehicle crashes and even lies (Machines built for warfare require the capacity for deception.) to complete their assigned tasks.

The direct-to-video fourth collaboration between Biehn and Cameron among other things

Cameron benefited from home media release both as a consumer and a manufacturer of sort. A Fish Called Wanda is a comedy out in theatres when he was still literally digging that Abyss to dive into, so he only watched it later on VHS tape to cement his decision of casting Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies. Almost all his science fiction flicks got extended cuts in home media releases, usually marketed at the version he intended. Judgement Day is an odd duck as in he never advocated it as the “Director’s Cut” the way Special Editions of Aliens and Abyss are.

In some ways Judgement Day’s 150 minutes long Special Edition is a “Writer’s Cut”. As Cameron half-jokingly told co-writer Willam Wisher in that 2003 commentary track, the scenes cut out of the theatrical release were mostly written by Wisher. There is this dream scene featuring Micheal Biehn.

This dream sequence might remind Cameron of his “early days” in Hollywood, as his early draft of Aliens would have other crew members of Nostromo back to haunt Ripley in a bad dream. Biehn was certainly on the downward trajectory with Cameron since Aliens, Corporal Hicks is the one with first confirmed kill of the dickhead monsters and he got into a pool of acid to protect Ripley. Then Coffe died for his wrongdoing in the Abyss. Now in their last collaboration to date still (After more than 3 decades.), Biehn was not seen in the cinema. Didn’t help with that line “On your feet, solider!” since it was only said by Connor herself in the first movie.

Bridging scene like before T-1000 just driving into a nut house to get Sarah Connor. Clearly cut out for pacing reason. Still, them uniforms can cover up some real shit. There is also a comedic subplot involving T-800 learns to blend in. Fun stuff.

In 2000, an even longer cut dubbed Extended Edition were released on DVD. Clocked at 155 minutes, this cut has one additional scene and an alternative ending. That ending is the book end of this article. The other scene showing T-1000 touching John Connor’s room in his frost home to get information and I dare anyone who gets to reboot Alien show a scene where the dickhead monster takes the world around it in with a similar manner.

The End, for good

Science fiction stories with Ouroboros like loop usually end with the serpent choked on its own tail. It’s just what should be done since End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. As an Asimov acolyte (Just listen to Bioship in Aliens), Cameron did envision an ending for Judgement Day that would have ended the loop for good through Schwarzenegger’s character sacrificing themselves. But he seemed to have a problem with aging make-up applied to his then next ex-wife.

Of course, lines about if machines can learn to value human life, then we are not doomed after all were kept, but the visual got switched to a road in the night to symbolize uncertainty, After that, 4 lousy for different reasons sequels came out, with 2003’s Rise of Machine provoking some sentiment as one of “last” R-rated blockbusters. The current trend of “thinking machine” is made in their corporate overlord’s image, aka ever growing no matter the human cost. This franchise certainly fit into that mold, ironically enough. We truly need creators who care enough about all kinds of price people might pay to end something for good.

(Fin)

Film review: The Terminator

The year 2024 does have one round number anniversary of its own to celebrate: 1984’s Terminator will be 40 years old by October, 2024. “40 years” is actually an uncanny number to think about with this one, as one line in the movie says that life-like cyborgs like the titular killing machine will not appear for about another 40 years. The line was said in fictional May, 1984 while I’m writing in real life June, 2024. Not too sure about human looking cyborgs among us but machine intelligence cable of deception is very real. See Deep Fake.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to start with a myth busting: made with 6 million us dollars in 1984, the Terminator was a low budget flick, but it ain’t that cheap. For starters, 6 mil is probably more than anything we schmucks will ever see in our bank accounts. Then there is a tale regarding Roger Corman: Terminator co-writer and producer Gale Anne Gurd turned to her old boss for the 6 million. Corman made his former protégé an offer of 2 million. No deal, so she turned to another former associate of Corman working at Orion Pictures, the studio ended up bankrolling the endeavor.

Orion would offer 6 million on one condition: their boy Arnold Schwarzenegger to be cast in the picture. The rest, more or less, is history. A movie made in 1984 with 6 million was a far cry from “the most expansive pictures” records Jame Cameron would keep breaking later into this career. The number was low compared to 10 million and more spent on flicks like Alien or the first Indiana Jones adventure. But it was still higher than any budget Hurd and Camreon had managed before. Luckily, they did make the most out of it.

Director

The year 2019 did have its attempt at celebrating the Terminator’s 35^th anniversary. It’s subtitled Dark Fate. Hyped as “the third Terminator flick with James Cameron’s involvement”, it turned out to be just another terrible sequel made in the 21^st century. It’s funny, while the first 2 and only good Terminator films were directed by James Cameron, co-writers contributed much as well. So, I guess there is no surprise that a Skynet with serial number filed off sequel into which post-Avatar Cameron had input on the script front, turned out lousy.

Back to the 1984 flick. It’s clearly a bodyguard versus assassin action thriller with a time travel bend. “Body guard versus assassin” is a winning formula for action flicks, just look at those 2 Chris Hemsworth action vehicles on Netflix. James Cameron once called a 1978 flick titled the Driver and its kinetic car chases in nigh city Los Angeles as inspiration. As for the time travel bit, Robert Heinlein’s All You Zombies, a twistedly plotted tale about “Go fuck yourself thus give birth to yourself”, played a big part according to Cameron himself. Of course, that story’s Ouroboros paradox regarding time travel also had more radical (Or expanded in spirit closer to the Heinlein short story) showcases such as Dark and Bodies on Netlfix, so the Terminator’s “son of a time traveler will save mankind” final reveal is weak sauce in comparison. Cameron cutting out the “Skynet would be built on tech from future” bit did not help either.

I had to respectfully disagree with former Giantbomb staff member Brad Shoemaker’s statement that the Terminator is a slasher flick. This is high-octane action through and through. When the leading lad and lass are forced to flee from the killer, car stunts are involved more often than not. Matt, the bit player who happened to date the leading lass’ roommate, was killed by the Terminator in a fashion involving stunt performers threw themselves around a room and against lots of objects. Let’s take a look at the killer.

Killer

Legend has it that neither Cameron nor Schwarzenegger was happy the first time they met. The actor was auditing for the protector part he was not too interested in and the director was just seeing the studio’s boy out of obligation, Then Schwarzenegger goofed and started to talk about how he thought the killer part should be played. Your truly can only imagine Cameron grinning ear to ear signaling “Oh, so now you are interested, motherfucker?” while Schwarzenegger admitted that he internally went “Ah, shit!” recognizing that he got the killer part. Thus, the process to make a sliver screen icon began.

Schwarzenegger was far from Cameron’s first pick for the titular Terminator, Lance Henriksen was. Given that Robert Patrick in Judgment Day and Gabriel Luna in Dark Fate are both more Henriksen than Schwarzenegger, I dare say Cameron never let his original idea go. Schwarzenegger is one Greek god looking motherfucker, not exactly ideal infiltrator in a not all that well-fed human population while the smaller frames of Henriksen, Patrick and Luna are more stealthy. But Orion’s boy was a professional and had good ideas. Schwarzenegger with all focus and no eye brew is more of a horror monster than H R Ginger’s dickhead monster and the queen dickhead Cameron would go on to create combined.

The Terminator being a killing machine knowledgeable in other killing machines, aka modern in 1984 fire arms is another aspect making it more terrifying than other slashers. In many ways, before 1985 put high body-count on the column of heroism, the Terminator’s police station shootout is more of a horror set-piece. I personally found Cameron being quite particular there. The leading lass is told that there were 30 cops there, and the final body count seemed to be exactly that many Only 11 deaths can be seen, first one being crushed to death by a car then the rest gunned down. Depends on the 16 assault rifle bursts, 2 shotgun blasts heard plus the fact that the Terminator turned its guns on a cop named Vukovich played by Henriksen, all 30 were accounted for. Well, maybe except that poor bastard our cuffed protector knocked out.

Protector

Micheal Biehn as Kyle Reese “was” on the cover of 1987’s Metal Gear. Given Reese’ sneaking, thieving, stalking and no killing way in the Terminator, he fits as the poster boy of the world’s first stealth action game. Science fiction writer Harlon Ellison was credited in the 1984 flick after he won a court case against Orion. Ellison thought the Terminator was ripping off his story titled Solider From Tomorrow, and I laughed my ass off after learning this. A Chinese title that can be translated back into English as “Solider From Future” was what I knew Terminator by. Guess that would have made Kyle Reese the titular character instead of the iconic killing machine.

Biehn was often told that there is something shady in his eyes. Personally, I think he is good looking enough of a guy, at least back then. Still, wearing that coat in May days of Los Angeles will raise eye brews. So much so that the lass he was assigned to protect called the cops not because she saw a tall killing machine charging at her but because she saw his supposed protector skulking behind her. And for the Ouroboros loop to work in this story, Reese was bound to become a kidnapper (I mean the way he laid ground rules for the lass sounds like a kidnapper. Not to mention the cops were cuffing him as a kidnap suspect during his time of being detained.) and probably a rapist…Fortunately, that sex scene was with the lass’ consent.

Biehn stated that his performance as Kyle Reese was based on studying Polish resistance during World War II, which does give the character a more survivor than killer vibe. Reese does not drop one body in the whole flick. The closet he got to was blowing the Terminator skeleton in half during a suicide attack. But then the woman he was assigned to protect had to finish off the machine monster by herself. Other than fruitlessly pumping led into the Terminator, Reese’s actions make him look like a pretty good thief. Stealing clothes and weapons because he cannot take anything with him during the time travel. Then he evades armed cops rather effortlessly. The flashback regarding his parts in the future warfare involves more evading from the Hunter-killer drones (A fate many poor Russian sods conscripted by the Putin admiration now face in Ukraine.), then he could not gun down one single Terminator. Funny how John McClane were considered a whimp in the first Die Hard while Reese was forced to run from anything he cannot kill.

Survivor

Imagine Leon S Kennedy dies during the final boss fight of Resident Evil 4, just as the final boss pulling out another invisible life bar out of its ass. Now playing as Ashley Graham, you have to pick up that rocket launcher, finish the boss off and maybe Ada Wong offers a ride home. Well, Sarah Conner played by Linda Hamilton went through something closer to that by the end of the Terminator. The lass is tougher than she looks as she shouted “On your foot, solider” into a wounded Reese’ ear.

It's very odd that the older Connor in Dark Fate would assume the new lass in Dark Fate would only give birth to the future human resistance leader rather than being a lead on her own. Cameron wrote Connor as someone ready to smother Skynet in its cradle in the first movie, did not have enough budget to shoot those scenes and saved it for a sequel.

In many ways, Connor was the one seeing and feeling Cameron’s nightmare that inspired this film. For Reese, Terminator’s metal frame in the fire is just one among many killing machines he had seen. For Connor, that’s the nightmarish unknown vision people of her time had.

As the R rated series, only this first installment has sexual contents. The story has an Ouroboros loop to close and Kyle Reese being the father of Connor’s unborn son is the only way to go. The sex scene before the final action set-piece with a gentle piano stroke version of the Terminator theme playing sure impressed my 15 years old when I first saw the movie. It’s likely that Bioware inserted sex scene before final missions of Mass Effect trilogy in the image of Terminator. Space travel is still time consuming in those games’ faster-than-light era, before the final fights always seem like a good time to shag.

The End, for now

Clocked at 107 minutes, the Terminator is undoubtedly the shortest Cameron flick and arguably his best. His efforts for the rest of the 1980s, Aliens and the Abyss are considered by some as too long for different reasons. But his 1984 flick sure convinced enough people that he can make a bigger, better sequel featuring Weaver and the dickhead monsters. Watching this one alone 2 years before I am supposed certainly made me go “Ah, so this is why Cameron is considered such hot shit.” In many ways, 2009 was worst possible year for Avatar to come out: for Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 reminding one of the leaner meaner style of Cameron making the Terminator, and it sure can mop the floor with a long-winded post-Titanic Cameron.

(To be concluded…)

Movie review: Aliens

Two Jane Fondas in one

The 2 covers of books on Alien movies’ production by the late J W Rinzler seem very similar to each other as far as your truly is considered. Both feature Ripley fully suited up in process of killing dickhead monsters. The difference being the vacuum suit in Alien is for defense while the power loader in Aliens is for offense. Sigourney Weaver certainly played the role with slightly more confidence here.

“Pretty woman holding a big gun” was a key factor in Ms. Weaver’s casting as Ripley from the very beginning. Ridley Scott wanted her for the role and had to shoot some screen test footage of her to persuade Alan Ladd, who was in charge at Fox. Those screen test included how well she looks holding a flame thrower. Ladd was not too sure, so he showed footage to women working at his office. The reception was positive as they compared young Sigourney to Jane Fonda.

The comparison those women made is interesting to say the very least. I have seen this particular Ms. Fonda in 2 flicks before 1979: 1968’s Barbarella and 1971’s Klute. The former is a sex comedy starring Fonda as its titular space hero, the latter won her an Oscar. Ripley in Aliens can be seen as combination of those 2, she fits the “space hero” archetype and the role got Weaver a nomination of Academy Award.

By the time James Cameron made this bigger sequel, Ripley’s big gun got bigger. Well, not so much as the “Ripley is back with an ‘army’” outline since that “army” or those marines were taken off the board soon enough. Just a futuristic assault rifle taped to a flame thrower when she is ready to pile up bodies in the third act. Her final battle of the film involved exoskeleton. 1992’s third Alien depowering her just did not make any sense. And I wonder if I would dive into those action orientated magical girl anime if I didn’t enjoy Aliens. Of course, female leads as those have, they are all created by men. And reaction to this man from Canada can be baffling.

Lining up for Cameron flick in “pre-historical” times

James Cameron is a man known for breaking box office records before those damned brands took over in the last decade. Even here in miHoYo’s country of origin, I recall seeing people lining up for flicks he helmed in 2 separate occasions.

The first time was in spring, 1998 when Titanic was the hot shit. I typed “miHoYo’s country of origin” instead of “the city hosing miHoYo global headquarters” is because I saw lines in 2 cities. On a weekend trip my parents took me to Wuxi, a nearby city of Shanghai, there was a long line of people in front of a cinema for the sinking ship movie.

The second time was in early, 2010. The time can be seen as “pre-historical” in 2 aspects: one being that Shanghai was one year away from hosting miHoYo global headquarters; the other being that the city had only one IMAX screen (More would be up by the time of Inception’s release later that year.). So, the long lines formed before it for screenings of Avatar. Of course, Avatar: Way of Water was released at tail end of Covid lockdown here, plus the trend of online ticket sales over the last decade, so no one lined up for that.

Aliens was very much the flick that pinned James Cameron on the map. Myth has it that it was the very first R-rated flick ever got 100 million us dollars in box office. But like what was said about the city of Rome, its success was about riding the tide rather than making its own trend.

Art of action

As Cinemassacre’s James Rolfe once pointed out, the plot of Aliens is very similar to the giant ants classic, Them! From sole survivor being a little girl to the roast of a bug nest. However, what the 1986 flick does stand out with its enteritic set pieces and the monsters having more on-camera movement than the 1979 original. This is a archetypical 1980s Hollywood action flick.

It would be fair to say that “archetypical 1980s Hollywood action flicks” did not appear until the year 1985, with Rambo: First Blood Part 2 in May and Commando in October. Those are famous or infamous for their high body counts. Though the bodies do not really pile up until the third acts. Rambo was co-written by Cameron, but the similarity between Commando and Aliens are more striking.

For starters, Ripley and Colonel John Matrix, as action lead, are both loving parenting figures. Their little girls were taken and they are willing to kill to get her back. Now, there is a rabbit hole regarding Reagan era welfare cut to go down, but yours truly would step down simply because I ain’t no yank. Both characters would strip down for good reasons (Ripley took off her jacket so she can wear that belt with grenades, while Matrix needs to get out of some dirty clothes he went through swamp in.) before suit up for the final battle(s).

The final battle, though, is bit more like Rambo in terms of the hardware involved. Commando ends with two well, commandoes having a knife fight, while Rambo has a chase between 2 armed to their teeth helicopters. Aliens’ antagonist, the Xenomorph Queen is one big mother. So big that Ripley cannot get into a fist fight with her without hardware assistance. In this case, a man-shaped forklift called Power Loader. It’s already funny that cast members playing marines in this film read more of Starship Troopers by Robert A Heinlein than Paul Verhoeven, who would direct the 1997 movie with the same name. Then Aliens did power armor all right 11 years before power armor was cut out of the ST movie.

Speak of did it before, it’s funny to hear Robert Rodriguez boasting about he threw action figure around as pre-visualization (“Pre-viz” for short.) for that Mandalorian episode he directed. More than a quarter century before that, Aliens got pre-viz done with Cameron just taping around uncolored models. While the stunt where marines getting blown up can only be filmed with stunt performers, stunts involving heavy machinery in Aliens were almost all filmed with miniature models. Producer Ms. Hurd would proudly claim that Fox executive thought those are shot with real set.

Number game

Ironically, this unnumbered sequel actually brought several numbers into the so-called Alien franchise for Fox. No, the 57 years after Alien is not among those yours truly consider important. I mean O’Bannon once envisioned the sequel tease for something set 250 years after the first one, so no big deal. The first one would be labelling the planetoid with Xenomorph egges “LV-426”, since the franchise’ new owner Disney celebrated April, the Twenty-sixth as “Alien Day”. Storyteller wannabe sure love using “lore” for branding. Then there is this bit of retcon.

Oh, how I want to nail YOKO TARO to a wall like Emil’s sister in the first NieR for this. Cameron gave Ash from the first one a couple of numbers. And how far into the future are those films can only be deduced from throwaway line: 2179, putting the first on in 2122. “Alien over Aliens” people can claimed their preferred 1979 flick as the one contributing all they like, it’s the 1986 sequel those corporate type refer to when it comes to continuity.

Tastes like chicken

The 137 minutes long theatrical cut and the 154 minutes long “Special Edition” are both fine if you ask me. My first view of the flick was with the latter while the former brought in millions for Fox and got Ms. Weaver an Oscar nomination. Though the way theatrical cut left something off-screen while only referred those in dialogue is smarter.

As someone who started gaming with PC in the last couple of years in the twentieth century, yours truly very much stepped into a nest Aliens made. From console ports like Resident Evil/Biohazard series to built-for-the-platform Star Craft and Half-life, the 1986 flick had sunk its long teeth into the interactive media and left a bite too deep to heal from. I am rather surprised that my view of it did not diminish my enjoyment of Mass Effect. Oh, well, this science fiction series set in space does need beef up its interstellar geo-political landscape game. But then again, if Star Wars lost that edge under Disney, then a series just about dickhead monsters would not stand a chance. Oh, well, at least its first 2 installments are good, heh?

(the End)

Movie review: Alien

Corman Connection

2024 marks the forty-fifty anniversary of Alien. It’s bit surreal to think that this influential flick is almost half a century old. But then again, several of its cast (Like John Hurt) and staff (Like co-writer Dan O’Bannon and one among several designers H.R Giger.) members are no longer with us. A producer who almost got on board also past recently as the time of writing. I am of course talking about the (in)famous “Schlock Maestro”, Roger Corman. Yours truly mainly would love to thank him for this anime his “Women in Prison” flicks inspired.

Much like the Matrix, Alien’s round number anniversary back in 2019 was more celebrated. The 4K release pictured above came out back then. Unlike Aliens’ “Ultimate Collector’s Edition” in 2024, Alien 4K release was rather light with only 2 commentary tracks as its behind-the-scene special feature. Yours truly suspect that it was to make way for coffee table book the Making of Alien back then.

2019 also saw the release of 95 minutes long documentary Memory: The Origins of Alien. Corman was interviewed for this feature, in which he claimed that he declined Dan O’Bannon’s script and suggested that they deserved a bigger budget than he was able to cough up. The rest, as they say, is history. This marks Corman’s connection to the 1979 original. His connection to the 1986 sequel is no weaker, as that flick’s writer-director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd both started their career in film making under him.

As May gives away to June in 2024, it’s high time for me to have my say regarding the influential science fiction flicks in both release and chronological order. I am not going to call the 1979 flick a “horror” flick and I got reasons for it. That would be good as any place to start.

The relative weak sauce

As the bodies drifted, their blood boiled in the vacuum and their inner organs were vomited out, until they turned into strange blobs surrounded by crystalline clouds made from the liquid they exuded.

-----The Three-body Problem, written by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu

As I mentioned before, Mr. Cixin Liu introduced my teenaged self to the world of horror. The passage above from Three-body Problem did come up in my mind in the recent couple of years, mainly because neither the Chinese nor the English language adaption did the bit probably bloody. Perhaps it’s just the bigger picture they focused on? Either way, I read the passage in Simplified/Standard Chinese back when I was 16, more than a full year before my first view of Alien. So, how could I think of the Chestburster scene other than “This is weak sauce”? That bloody day people had on set in early August 1978 aside.

Of course, back in the late 1970s days, Chestburster scene was seen as Alien’s money shot. So much so that “Ash being a robot, and his head will be smashed in” was a twist added for the third act having a similarly shocking horror imagery. The so-called birth scene is still not showed fully on Chinese stream service like Bilbili.

Maybe I just listened to Scott Adkins and his stunt performing buddies (Excluding Gareth Evans, of course. He is just a demanding dickhead of a director), Brett’s death in the hand of adult Alien being cut short is disappointing. They even put the Alien tail going up between his legs footage before Ms. Lambert’s death. Scott can claim he took the show less let audience imagine the rest route all he wants, I just think the long build-up and short pay-off approach are the signs of weak sauce.

Minutes, not hours

I abandoned the Alien game subtitled Isolation only 104 minutes in. It nearly bored me to death before the iconic dickhead monster can be properly introduced. Billed as “finally a good video game based on the right Alien movie” by many, this first-person horror game felt off to me from the very beginning. No jump button in first person action game feels off and the so-called “puzzles” honestly felt insulting. Not to mention the save system. The game asked me “would you kindly sneak around those 4 assholes with guns?” and I replied “Certainly not”.

The 1979 movie is mostly about 6 homo sapiens and 1 meat-bag of a different kind (Ash the fleshy robot, not Jones the orange cat. Or I would have typed “fur ball”) putting up with each other. The director Ridley Scott kept saying that sole survivor Ripley was only alone for the last 17 minutes of the film. So how dare Creative Assemble call Ripley Jr.’s 17 hours long journey as a lone survivor faithful to the 1979 flick while the film was obviously sold on its ensemble cast. At least, in Japan.

This poster featuring all 7 ensemble members was hard to come by on the internet, so yours truly just took a picture of it off 2019’s Making of Alien book. The iconic dickhead monster is nowhere to be seen here. So, from far to close and left to right, let’s see the 7 “little Indians” shall we?

Kane played by John Hurt, whose face was hugged by Facehugger and chest from where Chestburster burst out of. Being the first one to bite the dust, Hurt sure was the Sean Bean before Bean himself got such reputation: the Name people got for a show whose characters are usually doomed to be killed off. Hurt played Caligula in BBC’s I, Claudia, a show covering the life story of the fourth Roman Emperor. Caligula was the third Roman Emperor so take a wild guess what happened to him. Hint would be an A word and it’s not “abdication”.

Ash played by Ian Holm, “a god damned robot” that is arguably the real horror monster of this film. Funny enough, the sexual undertone of Ash choking Ripely with a rolled up magazine did not hit me, until I saw the scene with those nude photos blurred out on Bilibili…

Parker played by Yaphet Kotto, the man who almost barbecued the dickhead monster. But instead, his death reveals the monster’s rather nasty bird-like eat habit: just one bite and left the mess around.

Lambert played by Veronica Cartwright, the scared shitless Ms. “Leg It”. With the theatrical cut on Bilibili shaving off several bloody seconds from the Chestburster scene, Lambert’s blood-chilling scream made her death with the most “on-screen” one even though it’s not visible to audience and Ripley. Her arms dangling is not pleasant to watch either.

Brett played by Harry Dean Stanton, aka the very bottom member of Nostromo and the first victim of the adult dickhead monster. The late Mr. Stanton humbly claimed that he was yet able to play “scared” in Alien’s audio commentary. Personally, I think the face he make before death is suitable for the occasion given that the doomed man clearly does not know what the actual fuck he was looking at.

Captain Dallas played by Tom Skerritt, the first actor cast for the flick. Dallas, by all means and purposes, was set up as one of those usual space hero with that raven beard. I would love to think he putting himself between Ripley and the dead Facehugger is a sign of his heroism, rather than the sexual relationship he and Ripley have in some early draft of the movie’s script.

Dallas’ heroism comes to a sudden end when he takes a wrong turn in the air duct and gets got by the dickhead monster. Strangely there can be three possibilities depends on what cut you watch. Let’s begin with 2003’s Director’s Cut where he is cocooned and begs Ripley to kill him, simple enough. In the longer Theatrical Cut, he is either eaten or blown up when the ship Norstomo explodes.

Last but not least, Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver. Ms. Weaver and the aforementioned Ms. Cartwright were both born in 1949 but about 6 months apart and with the day miHoYo’s country of origin was established in between. Sigourney being only 28 when the movie was shot is of course the younger one.

The interaction among those 7 is where this film shines. Of course the first 2 to die can be seen as the weak links: Kane does not stand out until that Facehugger get up his face and Brett only says “Right.” But the tension between bridge crew (Dallas, Kane, Ripley and Lambert) and mechanics (Parker and Brett) regarding payment is fun to watch. Dan O’Bannon envisioned a landing foul-up for this film and the tension between 2 crews is highlighted by it as the 3 bridge members go off to investigate something alien, while the 2 mechanics get real shit to do. Between them being Ripley overwatching the repair and Ash being Ash.

The Director who did cut

Yours truly usually prefer “extended cut” to “director’s cut” since the alternative cuts available to us common folks are usually longer. But Ridley Scott is an odd duck on this front. The director’s cut of Alien in 2003 runs about 115 minutes, one minute shorter and even the cut watchable on Bilibili is longer with seconds of Chest bursting shaved off.

The director’s cut was how I watched the movie for the first time and maybe it gave me the impression that this film is about the crew. The first scene added would be Lambert slapping Ripley after the latter insisting on the quarantine protocol and not letting Dallas and Lambert along with Kane who got a finger monster on his face.

The other 2 scenes being: after Brett’s death, Ripley and Parker going in and see blood dipped down; during Ripley’s “17 minutes” as the long survivor, she found a very dead Brett and a still alive Dallas being feed to Alien eggs. I can take or leave those, especially after Aliens’ Queen laying eggs was taken by Fox as canon instead of one single dickhead cable of fucking themselves.

Now the vegetable is out of the way

If it cannot be more obvious: yours truly is more of an Aliens person than an Alien person. I cannot stand the Alien game for more than a couple of hours yet I cannot count how many games inspired by Aliens I played and enjoyed. Still, being the stone cold classic as it is, Alien does provide point for me to admire.

The film’s influence on science fiction literature cannot be ignored by readers of those. No, I’m not just talking about William Gibson, for I haven’t read anything by this Canadian since the year 2013. Speake of that year, it was when Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie came, by the end of that book there is a scene where its hero had to space some monster out of her spaceship. The year before this book, Caliban’s War came out. In the second book of Expanse series, the crew of Rocinante also is forced to get one single titular Caliban out of their ship. Neither of those books would have done so without Dan O’Bannon writing the scene in his first draft and Ridley Scott sticking to his gun about shooting the scene.

Then I would say if you cannot stand 1970s deliberate pacing, just skip this one. Personally I had the storyboards Ridely Scott drew more fun to read while felt bit sleepy during this flick. Go watch the Expanse instead, you all. Or stay tune to hear why I prefer Aliens.

(To be concluded in Tech Warrior Ripley)

Some Japanese dub suggestions for Hade II based on its Early Access

There are 2 official statements to make here: on the on hand, Supergaint Games is in the “bigger, badder” sequel business now; on the other, I have probably become a loyalist to that studio. Hades II came out as Early Access surprisingly but not that surprisingly in an, er shall we say, interesting week. After all, it’s not every week yours truly have the impulse to throw a succession of four FUs at both Xbox and Playstation, Nic Cage’s first scene as Sean Archer in Face/Off style. Ah, the nature of industry! It just contains too much bullshit so when there are products one like, those should really be treasured.

And for a product yours truly see as “anime enough”, thinking about a Japanese language dub is one way to treasure it. In the week before time of writing, I had 22 runs of the game about going into the underworld. I got as far as the final boss of the third area and counted 14 new NPCs with the 14^th still not identified. So, with the new player character on top, let this pipe dream commerce.

1. Miss Video Game Twenty Twenty-four

Asami Seto as Melinoe

This is a voice viewers of Giantbomb would have some similarity with. Ms. Seto played Reina the new girl in Tekken 8. With that game’s insistence of Japanese character speaking Japanese, that’s the voice we all hear when we watch Grubb playing the game. The 31 years old lass was also the Name Shift Up chose for their console debut Stellar Blade, as she voiced Eve in what formerly known as Project Eve.

Hades sequel features the more-uptight-than-his-brother Melinoe as its player character, a type Ms. Seto flourishes in. As a lazy ass, yours truly do find a certain softly spoken uptightness charming. Ms. Seto provided such quality in 2021’s Scarlet Nexus, voicing player character Kasane Randall, a nature-born pain-in-the-behind according to IGN Japan. Well, I really would love to hear her voice in a different sexy game than something not managed to sell a PS5 to me.

2. Witch with aibs

Yoshiko Sakakibara as Hecate

Hades II was announced along with Bayonetta Origin: Cereza and the Lost Demon during Keighley’s 2022. This is a casting choice because those 2 “young witch in the woods” games were almost inseparable. Ms. Sakakibara voiced the final boss Morgan in Platinum’s latest, the character there is of course a witch ready to throw down. Hecate is Melinoe’s mentor and serves as the final boss of Hades II’s first area, this feels like a no-brainer to me.

3. The two faces of a ghost

Haruka Tomatsu as Dora

Of all them ladies riding that Tsuntera wave of later aughts, Haruka Tomatsu is about the closest in age to yours truly. I think she can do Dora’s spoopy haunting and the lay-about maid attitude well.

4. Odie goes Ora

Daisuke Ono as Odysseus

Like Iliad ends then Odyssey begins, the resident mortal of Hades II changes from Achilles to Odysseus. And I strongly suspect that Jen Zee and friends based this character’s look on one of the earlier Jojos, back when Araki drew lads with boarder shoulders. Odysseus looks like Joseph Joestar in his forties if you ask me. So why cast Mr. Ono Daisuke, who voiced Joesph’s grandson Jotaro Kujo as a middle-age father to a teenage daughter in Star Ocean?

5 From discord to retribution

M.A.O as Nemesis

Pretty people in heavy armor are what Saint Seiya sold on. And it’s only to have one cast member from that franchise here. M.A.O or Mao Ichimichi voiced the goddess of discord Iris in one of the spinoffs. Somehow, Ms. Ichimichi is the only one I can hear in my head. Perhaps Kushana in Nauccica of the Valley of Wind is key here, since I imagined M.A.O as the armored warrior princes before while aforementioned Sakakibara voiced her in that Hayao Miyazaki picture. Nemesis is like Thanatos in the first game as she would have “see who can kill more” standoff with Mel and the player character keeps warning her about not caught be Hecate.

6 Doom doom DOOM

Kensho Ono as Moros

For the other child of Nyx, I imagine him with another voice of Jojo. This time the slimer GioGio of Golden Wind, Mr. Kensho Ono. This younger Ono and the voice I imagine for Thanatos, Natsuki Hanae do seem like brothers in arms in the field of voice acting. Well, they did voice rivals in Aldnoah Zero a full decade ago, it’s time for them to voice brothers.

7. Laboring Weaver

Sumie Uesaka as Arachne

Ah, yes the poor lass who got turned into a spider by Athena after a weave off. Aoi Yuki would be fitting for this one for she was in an Iseikai where she played a human turned into spider, but Ms. Yuki is one of two voices for Chaos in my book. So, from that same Iseikai show, here is Sumie Uesaka who played the Dark Lord also happened to be an ancient spider queen there, Shelob and Sauron in one if you may. Ms. Uesaka plays her majoring in Russian up as part of her personality and somehow that country’s history in the twentieth century got played up. Fitting given Arachne in Hades II is a member of laboring class seeing player character as one of nicer ones among the rich and powerful.

8. Idealized Masculinity

Takuya Eguchi as Apollo

With Artemis returning and Apollo appearing, this Olympian twins are present in Hades II’s Early Access. For the sun god, I introduce to you a frequent collaborator of Saori Hayami, Takuya Eguchi. The most recent and noticeable role Mr. Eguchi would be callsign Twilight in Spy Family, that book/show’s titular spy and family man. It’s just funny for me to see Hayami and Eguchi go through the arc of playing lovers, playing couple then playing siblings.

9. Rider Moon

Kotone Miishi as Selene

How can we discuss magic girl and moon without thinking about Sailor Moon. Or at least the one and only Japanese for the iconic and titular character. Ms. Miishi had been the voice of Sailor Moon/Usagi Tsukino since the very beginning and is about only returning member of Crystal. Having her voicing Selene a moon goddess is just putting the name Selena back in.

10. Like Mother, like Daughter

Kikuko Inoue as Hestia

Yours truly simply cannot do Japanese dubbing fantasy booking without a Hideo Kojima collaborator or two. Kikuko Inoue had the longest collaboration with the famous video game director, from playing his dream girl in Policenauts to sharing his dream of playing with Linsay Waganer “sack puppets” digitally in Death Stranding. However, the joke above is referring another 2019 game Ms. Inoue was a cast member.

In Fire Emblem Three Houses, Inoue voiced a character mostly known as Rhea, the Japanese pronunciation of which might be the same as “Lea”. But they chose the more divine spelling with letters, r, h, e and a. In Greek myth, Rhea is the spouse of Chronos and mother of several Olympians. You might heard of them: Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hera and last but not least Hestia. Inoue’s radio voice of kind granny nowadays will be fitting for this round and soft-edged goddess of flame. After all, there is always the threat of “burn’m all” underneath the kind appearance.

11. Like my forge?

Daisuke Namikawa as Hephaestus

Daisuke Namikawa started voice acting early, as a lad whose pitch had not been lowered kind of early. Among his involvement in video games, the biggest one is probably Persona 4. Mr. Namikawa played a recurring blacksmith in Kimetsu no Yaiba, forgers of many titular demon slaying blades. Only fair he plays the god who Romans called Vulcan.

12. Vision for one, flower for all.

Akira Ishida or Jun Fukuyama as Narcissus

From the voice of one Persona player character to another, I was debating with myself as whether Darren Korb’s latest voiceover should be dubbed by 3’s Akira Ishida or 5’s Jun Fukuyama. The latter’s voice can be the embodiment of narcissism however the former is more fitting for pretty boy. I lay towards the former since hearing Ishida’s triple casting in Persona 3 made me think he is more fitting. Maybe change would be made after the art is locked.

13. Homicidal Rocker

Ikumi Hasekawa as Scylla

Now we come to a Japanese actor who did dib into foreign to Japan indie game, as Ms. Hasekawa was cast in Opus: Echo Starsong’s enhanced edition. But to play this clam I only put down twice, Ms. Hasekawa’s performance in comic book adaptions is key. She played outgoing vocalist Ikuyo Kita in Bochi the Rock and some homicidal mage in Freien the Slayer. Combined those 2, you pretty much got Scylla, the vocalist of rock band Scylla and the Sirens. Also the final boss of the second area in Hades II, filling the “THAT MOTHEREFFER” provoking shoes left by Thesus.

14. “Major” Time

Banjo Ginga as Chronos

Let’s close out with a Hideo Kojima collaborator, or Metal Gear Solid series cast member might be more fitting for this old gentleman. Mr. Ginga played Liquid Snake, Major Zero and Liquid Ocelot throughout MGS series. I was careful not to include old timers in those fantasy bookings, but Mr. Ginga would appear in Atlus’ Metaphor so here he is.

While I am still to fight Chronos in the game as the time of writing, the Titan of time himself would appear occasionally as the first area is clear. First as a shape of old man with a cane and neat haircut, the character does look like Major Zero in Snake Eater, so it would only be fitting.

In which my criticism and appreciation for the Matrix Resurrections are expressed

The world had changed a lot in the time between 2003 and 2021. The Wachowskis had their gender resignments separately. Keanu Reeves had some highs and lows before he returned to the high of “being inseparable from a film franchise” with the John Wick flicks. Yours truly had turned from “chasing that ‘cutting edge’” to “go portable or go get bent” in terms of gaming. All in all, 18 years is a long time to release a sequel after. And Joel Silver was not producing this one.

Despite the Wachowskis’ statement that they would not make another Matrix sequel back in the aughts, Warner sure kept the franchise cooking, including a failed attempt to chase World of Warcraft. In fact, Matrix Online’s “shadow” remains until these days, or at least over this movie released in 2021.

Since the Matrix Resurrections were on Max the same day as the theatrical release, here in the city hosting miHoYo global headquarters the movie is watchable through you-know-how method (Same method I watched Dune Part 1). That was a freezing day in late December, 2021, a couple of days before Christmas and given the movie’s title, it is fittingly a very Christmas Movie, capital C and M, about miracles.

The Bad

2003’s Revolutions is not a whole Matrix movie on its own. It’s a direct continuation of Reloaded and it lacks the one key factor of Matrix opening: Trinity whacking dudes and running from Agents. Resurrections does open with Trinity whacking dudes as an homage to the 1999 original with both upgrade and downgrade. The dudes getting whacked are upgraded since they are fully kitted SWAT armed with full-automatic weapons. “Trinity” herself is the direct-to-video counterpart to the character played by Carrie-Anne Moss. The behind-the-scene material in the home media release call the cast member in this scene a stunt performance rather than an actor.

But direct-to-video Trinity is not point-of-view character here, a new lass named Bugs is. Introducing herself with “Bugs as in ‘Bunny’” is the first sign of this movie saying “Try not to take this one too seriously”. Bugs meets the lead Agent, a black man called Smith in a peaceful talk, gunpoint not withdrawn. This Black Smith says he is waiting for someone who can get him out and Bugs does so. Only it’s not out of the Matrix but a Modal, something closer to Construct in the previous movies in terms of its relatively small scale.

After this we got somewhere similar to the first act of the 1999 original: Keanu Reeves as Thomas Anderson unknowingly in the Matrix. But Anderson is no longer a low ranked employee but a combination of id’s 2 Johns with some Hideo Kojima dust on the top. The real Geoff Keighley even gave this movie a fake TGA trophy as prop, since Anderson won it in 1999 for a video game titled Matrix. Unlike in the 1999 original, he is not looking for Morpheus but pining for a married woman with kids played by Carrie-Anne Moss. Then, Thomas “Johns Kojima” Anderson was tasked to make Matrix the fourth as a video game, with all the brainstorming bullshit to follow.

After this dicking around, Black Smith, or Morpheus the machine, tries to get Anderson to remember about Neo and get him out of the Matrix in Anderson’s office. As it follows the 1999 original, Anderson simply cannot do it in his office while the second time is the charm. Plus, a woman has to ask Tommy Anderson nicely. Anderson at the end of history once again turns into Neo in the desert of real and sees Trinity, actually played by Moss here, in the pod close to him. Another “Stop trying to hit me and hit me” sparring against Morpheus the machine, Neo is finally back to the future.

Here in miHoYo’s country of origin and before Reeves flicks got banned for the actor’s statements regarding Tibet, the Matrix Resurrections were officially released with the subtitle “ju zhen chong qi”, meaning “matrix rebooted” literally. It’s a fitting title when this first act is concerned.

Personally, I think this Force Awakens bullshit is the bad part of this movie. A fan girl (Rey/Bugs) looking for the legend of old, assisted by a black actor who deserves a whole movie banked on his own (John Boyega/Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Then beat by beat, the classic tale unfolds as if it’s time of old. And the Merovingian’s guest appearance later is pure cringe. However, Lana Wachowski has a much better sense with science fiction than Abrams, and this new desert of real had more to offer than the so-called era of resistance.

The Good

Neo thinks wrongly that his effort in Revolutions mounts to little. As Neo recovers and starts to settle in Bugs’ much newer hovercraft (The more animal tail looking rear being the dead giveaway for audience), he starts to notice the machine crew members. Apparently the “men versus machines” binary is gone now.

Humanity has a new city called I/O and here they live a better life with the assistance of the machines who have “bleed hearts”. It’s no utopia but it’s gentler than Zion’s more militarized mentality. Niobe is the third face from the original trilogy here, though “Mrs. Will Smith” is unrecognizable under all that aging make-up. Here there is almost a retracking of Reloaded, another guided tour of another human city. There is fake sky that also serves a water and air filter. There is an orchard to grow fruits in. There is the memento for Morpheus, the one played by Lawrence Fishburne that is. Apparently, Matrix Online’s assassination of Morpheus is canon in this one. Guess Lana Wachowski can only undo her part for the franchise.

While the rest of this movie is about rescuing Trinity, it’s nice to be reminded where Neo where rescue her to. The final rescue mission lays out like a heist and ultimately Trinity does things the One does, namely flying and implied that she got administer access to the Matrix system like Neo after he got shot by Smith for the first time. Over all it’s a happy ending, but I cannot shock the feeling that it’s just the ending of that 1999 film.

The “Ugly”

Watching Resurrections within 24 hours after watching the 2003 sequels is seeing how much worse movies look compared to yesteryear. Despite the amount of digital effect in them, the 2003 movies were still largely shot on films. The 2021 movie looks like it’s taped rather than filmed. Those shots with Keanu Reeves in the sunlight do make the man look like a polygonal model, a very detailed one mind you but still a sense of fake, rather than a human being. Makes me wonder if is video game “rising” to the level of movie or is movie “lowering” itself to video game. After all, no polygonal photoreal game nails the “filmed” feel outside grains.

Lana Wachowski likes video games or so her IMDB page told me. One small aspect of Resurrections makes me believe it. It can be called flashbacks, with glimpses into the trilogy, usually after a plot point is referenced. Kind of like Guns of Patriots. And of course, the way Jonathan Groff’s Smith menaces Neo is quite like Liquid Ocelot menacing Old Snake.

And then there is the action. I think they are okay. Obviously cannot be compared to the first 2 movies. Since this 2021 one is more of a farce, Revolutions’ war scenes are not here either. But after seeing Reeves almost killed his fellow John Wick 4 cast member by saying that opening scene in the final fight of Revolutions took 95 takes, it’s only understandable why Lana Wachowski took a more laid-back approach for Resurrections.

The last of Triple A

Wachowskis seem to like naming the antagonists with A-words: Agent, Architect and, this is on Lana alone, Analyst. Agents are the only kind who trade blows with the good guys. Architect, aka an evil Santa Claus looking motherfucker, is the one who kept part of humanity alive, so no point for the One to punch him in the face. Then there is Neil Patrick Harris as the Analyst, one woman-hating program who control humanity through feeling. (Or is it “necessary fiction”?) Yours truly first saw Harris when he hosted Spike TV’s Video Game Award 2010, and seeing Trinity’s victory lap over his character in Resurrections feels good.

Compared to Smith and other Agents, Analyst is a more active warden of this digital prison. While Agents only enforce rules, this one make their own. They completely embrace the void left by state power and corporate interest by stepping into the lie for profit business. They are a clown fuck for sure, but at least they surpass Smith the virus on the insidious front.

Red, blue and “poison”

Four installment trilogy can be seen as the story of Keanu Reeves’ life. Or at least the part involves franchises. John Wick is another one starring him with humble beginning, robust middle and a long-awaited ending. Though John Wick 4 did well enough for Liongate to consider sequel, so Chan Stahelski will be ready with a metaphorical shovel and some myth can be made into cold hard fact. Lana Wachowski seems more lucky on that front, with a piece of fan fiction bringing back old favorites mainly for herself, and assholes like yours truly at least appreciate the motion. Warner can make its extraction shooter and call it Matrix Online 2, I would just jack out happy seeing Neo and Trinity doing their “Cyptonians on Earth” thing. At least until a Christmas day when I want to see something dumb fun.

(The End)