We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The Video
Why it’s great
Back in the 90’s, soda ads sometimes went all-out in an attempt to convince consumers how awesome it is to guzzle down a high-fructose corn syrup-ladden carbinated beverage drink. Most of these ads have fallen by the wayside, but I recently had the pleasure of discovering this commercial, and the unimaginably devoted wife who has to go through a ridiculous amount of obstacles to get her soft drink. Still, the impressive production values makes it one heck of an entertaining quest.
Two weeks ago, I theorized why the dinosaurs who escaped at the end of ‘Fallen Kingdom’ hadn’t been blasted into extinction by humanity, and that while I would love to see a world war between humanity and dinosaurs, it was implausible when the dinosaurs are so massively outnumbered. Yet, while director Colin Trevorrow has said ‘Jurassic World 3’ won’t feature such a conflict, I wonder if he’s only telling a half-truth. While we may not see armies engaging with millions of dinosaurs on the battlefield, it’s reasonable to suspect that we will see a different kind of war: A war of survival to see which species will inherit the Earth.
To see why such a war is inevitable requires looking back at the previous films and the common theme that runs through them, which is stated perfectly in this scene from the original movie:
Without knowing it, ‘Jurassic Park’ was setting up the theme of the franchise for years to come: Our attempts to play god and control life will always fail, with catastrophic results, a theme that was more heavily featured in ‘Fallen Kingdom’:
It’s not hard to imagine Ian Malcom’s coda as a preview of what’s to come. And if what has happened in the previous films is any indication, it won’t be pretty. Consider what has happened in each film:
Jurassic Park: The intricate and delicate system keeping the dinosaurs in their pens breaks down, and the park is abandoned.
The Lost World: Humanity’s attempt to capture the animals and open another park fails, and dozens of people die despite having the best weapons and technology money can buy.
Jurassic Park 3: Ingen’s efforts at playing god created a monstrous, hybrid spinosaurus much more powerful and aggressive than a real spinosaurus, which relentlessly pursues and kills several humans on Site B.
Jurassic World: Despite all the advances in containment technology, a genetically modified dinosaur causes havoc and causes the park to be permanently shut down.
Fallen Kingdom: Humanity saved dinosaurs from extinction to sell them as weapons, and said dinosaurs still break free, escaping into the wild.
When those three clips, and these outcomes are taken into account, they lead to the ‘Jurassic’ universe’s unshakable rule: Attempting to control life will always fail. For five films, such attempts have been confined to an island or a relatively small urban area (San Diego and the Lockwood Estate), but now that the dinosaurs have escaped into the wild, and the logical outcome is that the dinosaurs will defy all our attempts to stop them.
Such an idea may seem far-fetched (there are over seven billion of us, and less than 70 dinosaurs at the time of ‘Fallen Kingdom’), but it’s my opinion that this is the logical outcome of the franchise’s theme about our lack of control, and lack of respect when it comes to playing god: Life will never be controlled, and our attempts at doing so – for both good and ill – may have paved the way for our own destruction. It’s the perfect setup for a war of survival to mark the end of a decades-long franchise.
But what form will this war take? While it’s impossible to know at this point what this conflict would be like, I think we may have already seen something very similar in a film with a remarkably similar setup: 2011’s ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ features a small group of intelligent apes escaping from a confined location and eventually rising up to take over the world. But they couldn’t have done that without a man-made virus that accidentally wipes out humanity in the subsequent sequels.
Sound familiar? It should: Humanity plays god and gives animals a boost in intelligence, but in doing so engineers the seeds of their own destruction.
Therefore, my theory is that ‘Jurassic World 3’ might see the resurrection of a prehistoric disease, virus, or plague that a rogue nation or terrorist organization might synthesize, and then release to the public at large, killing off millions and allowing the dinosaurs to run about unchecked, leading to Owen, Claire, Grant, Malcom, Ellie, and the other main characters racing against the clock to find a cure. And after many scenes of them running from carnivorous dinosaurs and fighting for their lives, I theorize that they will find a way to use science to save humanity, but at the cost of wiping out all the dinosaurs. Balance was thrown asunder when we created life, and for balance to be restored, that life has to be destroyed. Thus, at the end, all the dinosaurs die off one after another, finally ending with Rexy – the Tyrannosaur from the first film, and the icon for the entire series – being the last to pass away. Humanity is left in ruins, but will rebuild, and be wiser than before about the dangers of playing god.
Of course, this is all speculation. We still have two years to go before the film is released, and I’m eager to see how it plays with all these themes. But this is still an important example of how exploring themes can infuse long-running franchises with substance you won’t find in your average monster movie. There will always be a time for action films that are light on themes and philosophy, but adding both helps a long-running story gain deeper meaning, and lets audiences know that the writers aren’t just making something to try and earn money, but want to encourage the audience to think long after the credits have rolled, or the book has ended.
NOTE: This post contains material that is not safe to view at work. Specifically, numerous panty and bra shorts from a Japanese miniseries featuring girls who are clearly underage because GOSH DANGIT JAPAN WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.
A popular urban legend says that famed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki once said that anime was a mistake. Considering how the most popular stereotype of anime depicts of being crammed full with underage girls whose panties and bras are frequently visible, that quote might be on to something. If nothing else, it gives the impression that Japan is full of sexual deviants who are desperate to find any excuse to feature schoolgirls in morally questionable outfits, and that’s before all the tentacles show up.
This short miniseries does nothing to dispel that stereotype:
Well, that’s… something. Let’s break it down and see what writers can learn from girls who turn into vehicles.
What the video does well:
*It does an excellent job with random humor
The best thing about this miniseries is that it masterfully uses a random joke so well: the idea of girls turning into cars, fighter jets, and ships for the flimsiest of reasons, complete with over-the top transformation scenes, leaving a non-transforming onlooker to stare on in stunned silence. While humor relying on sudden, over-the-top elements at random times doesn’t always work, it can provide some great laughs, especially if it’s so ridiculous it has no chance of being taken seriously.
*It does a great job portraying laughably ineffective powers
My favorite video in the series features one girl transforming into a battleship to save another girl on a sinking life raft, complete with the music, the elaborate changing sequence, and falling into the ocean… only to reveal that the battleship is only two feet long, making it all-but-useless when it comes to actually rescuing girls stuck on sinking life rafts in the middle of the ocean, ensuring that she’ll die a miserable, watery death.
This use of a giant buildup with a pitifully weak payoff is one of my favorite comedic acts, because when we think something is going to be awesome, intentionally subverting it for comedic effect can almost always get a belly laugh, like superpowers that turn someone into popcorn.
What doesn’t work as well:
*It sexualizes underage girls, complete with numerous shots of their underwear.
Excuse me for a moment.
*Goes off and drinks bleach*
Okay… let’s do this.
If the girls in the videos above wore normal clothes, like jeans or long-sleeved shirts, and we didn’t see their undergarments when they changed, it would be a lot less creepy. It wouldn’t leave me feeling like this guy. Unless you’re willing to risk being labeled a closeted pedophile, don’t have any underage characters do anything that could even be remotely considered sexual. Tight clothes, bra shots, panty shots, ridiculously tiny skirts that no one would or should wear in real life – including all these things in your work is only asking for trouble and possible visits from your friendly neighborhood police officers.
The Bottom Line:
NEVER, EVER FEATURE UNDERAGE CHARACTERS IN ANYTHING REMOTELY SEXUAL ARG.
There are a lot of great quotes about writing out there; these are some of the most insightful, thought-provoking, or ‘ah ha!’ ones I’ve come across.
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‘This music video always makes me nostalgic even though I’m not old enough to have been around to watch the originals and the prequels in theaters (which is a fact that makes me sad). It’s such a good representation of the Star Wars cinematic universe. Being a fan of the movies isn’t just watching them, but loving the universe and the characters, and for me, wanting to be a part of their world…’
This is such a simple comment, but the last part of it jumped out at me; part of the appeal of so many fictional worlds is the eagerness to explore and experience it: How many of us have dreamed of visiting the Star Wars Universe, Hogwarts, or Middle-Earth? If my safety was guaranteed, I’d love to visit Lothlorien, Minas Tirith, Barad-Dur, Valinor, and so many other places in Tolkien’s universe and look things over, maybe sit down for dinner with some of the characters, drinking ale and munching on Lembas bread.
When crafting our fictional worlds, it’s easy to forget that, for all the drama, danger, and terror that our stories can hold, there should be good things, too, things that readers and audiences would want to experience for themselves. Perhaps it’s magic, incredibly advanced technology, recreational activities that allow people to live out their most beloved fantasies, or a world where governments actually get along and war is a thing of the past, but having these good things can draw in the audience and make them not only want to learn about this new setting they’re in, but even long for it to be real. And if they want to be a part of the world you’re presenting, then you’re doing something right.
A few weeks ago, I watched ‘Jurassic World: Battle at Big Rock,’ a short film that gives us a glimpse at how humans and dinosaurs are interacting in the wake of ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s ending.
Having been given a taste of what the third Jurassic World film might be like, I tried to imagine how things could get worse from this point out. Currently there are five concrete facts known about ‘Jurassic World 3’s story:
1. Claire, Owen, and Maisie will be back.
2. Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcom are coming back as well.
3. The story will take place around the globe.
4. Dinosaurs being created, sold, and spread around the world.
5. It will not be about a world war between dinosaurs and humans.
Despite the last fact being confirmed, I’m guessing that there will still be a major conflict between humans and dinosaurs, and an inevitable battle to see which species will have the privilege of survival. There is, however, one huge problem with this plot: At the end of ‘Fallen Kingdom,’ approximately 67 dinosaurs escaped into the wild. ‘Battle at Big Rock’ tells us that:
*The dinosaurs have been in the wild for a year.
*Their presence is known to the public at large.
*People are willing to go camping with their families when giant carnivores are running around (?!).
With that in mind, there’s one important question that must be answered: Why haven’t the dinosaurs been killed yet? From a public safety standpoint, these dinosaurs are an invasive species and a massive menace to public health. It’s only logical that authorities would want to take these creatures out as quickly as possible to ensure public safety. But why haven’t they? Five possibilities come to mind:
1. Authorities have not gone after the dinosaurs.
2. Authorities are hunting them down, but are having a difficult time locating them.
3. The dinosaurs have been tagged and are allowed to roam free within a limited area.
4. Shady individuals are bribing/threatening government officials to let the dinosaurs run free.
5. The public wants the dinosaurs to run free.
The first option is highly unlikely: whenever a bear or other dangerous animal is loose near communities, it’s quickly hunted down. If there was, say, an allosaurus or a tyrannosaurus rex stomping around a national park or suburban community, they’d be hunted down as quickly as possible, and if the authorities were slow to do so, then mobs of armed civilians would take up the task, not wanting their children or loved ones to become Purina Dinosaur Chow.
The second option is more reasonable, but still unlikely. We have technology and weapons that not only allow us to kill any dinosaur we come across, but to also track them down; finding the heat signature of a T-Rex or Triceratops with infrared cameras on a helicopter would be a relatively simple matter (though it’d be more difficult to track smaller dinosaurs, like the compies, and finding that mosasaur and the pteradactals would be neigh-impossible considering they could be swimming and flying anywhere on Earth), and military-grade weapons would make short work of even the thickest dinosaur hide. An ankylosaurus might be among the most heavily armored dinosaurs, but I doubt it would survive a rocket to the face.
The third option is the most likely, but is not without its flaws: as noted earlier, dinosaurs are an invasive species, and while a plant eater might be allowed to walk about freely with a tracking beacon, a house-sized carnivore who needs to eat hundreds of pounds of meat a day would still be a massive public safety hazard, and would be tracked down as quickly as possible and shot.
The fourth option, as silly as it sounds, could be at play in some areas: In this day and age, corruption runs rampant in governments, and the thought of shady companies/organizations who want the dinosaurs to survive for whatever reason would deploy threats or bribes to force various officials to look the other way. The problem with this, though, is that the inevitable public backlash against prehistoric carnivores running free would eventually become too great for even bribed officials to ignore; history shows that, when the public demands something for long enough, and loudly enough, governments eventually cave, no matter how corrupt they are.
The fifth and final option has people wanting the dinosaurs to roam wild and free and sing songs in the sun all day long… which means it’s probably environmentalists, hippies, and children who would take this option. But the problem is that they’re likely to be a minority, with the majority of people wanting their families and children to stay safe from murdersauruses running about in the woods.
With all that said, which option is the most likely one? While we’ll have to wait until 2021 to find out, I’m guessing the answer is a mix of 3 and 4 with a sprinkle of 5 thrown in: The authorities are going after the dinosaurs, but because of public affection for the beasts, authorities have decided to tag and track the herbivores, allowing them to roam free while warning the public that they may encounter said beasts in the wild. But while the authorities go after carnivores, the beasts somehow manage to escape capture, thanks to people who want them to be free, such as Eco-terrorists who work to remove tracking chips, or threaten people who try to tag said carnivores.
Of course, this is all speculation. I could be wrong on all of these, or may have just correctly guessed how things are going in the ‘Jurassic’ universe. But this scenario does provide a valuable lesson for writers of speculative fiction where unusual animals are released into the present day: There needs to be a very good reason why they aren’t wiped out quickly by humanity and our drones, guns, helicopters, tanks, and the like. Perhaps the animals are shapeshifters, or perhaps they reproduce at an astonishing rate, or have hides that are almost impervious to our weaponry. Simply having them run free without a good explanation of how they survive won’t work in our modern era; going back to the 6osih dinosaurs now roaming the wild, we have to contend that they face 7 and a half billion people, billions of guns, and every military on earth. To survive, each dinosaur – including the compies – must kill approximately 124,758,064 people to win the inevitable dinosaur war. Coupled with the fact that we have helicopters, heat-seeking missiles, high-caliber weapons, and an unmatched talent for wiping out entire species when we put our hearts and minds to it, the logical outcome of such a war is that the dinosaurs are slaughtered within a week or two, with only the compies surviving and thriving due to their small size, speed, ability to hide almost anywhere, and (presumably) fast reproduction speed.
The bottom line? Before we release animals into the wider world in our stories, it’s always a good idea to sit down, take a few minutes, and figure why they’re not blown to kingdom come by the most bloodthirsty species on the planet – us.
There are a lot of great quotes about writing out there; these are some of the most insightful, thought-provoking, or ‘ah ha!’ ones I’ve come across.
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‘The Adam West “Batman” teaches us that life is serious and angsty enough without having to get more of it from our entertainment. That it’s ok to be lighthearted and not always take things so seriously. The world would be a better place if more people took this approach.‘
–Matthew Marcinko, commenting on the Honest Trailer for 1966’s, ‘Batman: The Movie’
While this isn’t a quote on writing, per se, it’s still a valuable reminder that not all fiction has to be serious; fun is a part of life, too, and we should cherish and remember that.
We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.
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The Movie
‘Van Helsing’
The Scene
Why it’s great
2004’s, ‘Van Helsing’, a fun, actionized adaptation of Universal’s Dracula, Frankenstein, and Werewolf mythos, has it’s protagonist, Gabriel Van Helsing, being an agent of the Knights of the Holy Order, a fictional organization devoted to fighting supernatural evils. Early on in the film, he goes to the Vatican to get his next assignment, which sets him down a path that will lead to a (rather awesome) showdown against Count Dracula.
As you might expect from a secret religious organization that’s set in the Vatican, the Order features a strong Christian bent, with priests, monks, and the like rushing about. But in a nice touch, it’s shown that the organization is composed of people from different faiths, including a Buddhist monk and an Islamic Imam (specifically, at 1:37 in the video). The movie doesn’t draw extra attention to these characters – they’re just in the background, doing their thing – but to see people of different faiths working together for a common cause is something we don’t see much in stories, and I wish it was far more common – in today’s divided world, such signs of solidarity and cooperation are badly needed, even if only in fiction.
Every story has a cast of characters that we follow and watch and come to love… but what about the background characters? The nameless masses who rarely get our attention? This column examines my favorite background characters who deserve a moment in the spotlight.
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The Movie:
‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’
The Character:
A Praetorian Guard who doesn’t exactly think things through
The Scene:
(The guard in question appears at 1:40)
Why He Deserves A Moment In The Spotlight
All of Snoke’s Praetorian guards – who have no special abilities – deserve recognition for taking on two very powerful Force users. Granted, they all die, but they still put in a comendable effort to avenge their… Well, their master who we didn’t get to know too well, but I’m sure they liked him.
Today’s background character, though, is the guard at 1:40 (let’s call him Bob), who, in the most important battle of his life, attacks Dark Side user Kylo Ren by… ramming his armored forearms against Kylo’s lightsaber blade and immediately dies.
Why point out this guy? As the elite guard to the leader of the First Order, it’s logical that these guards are at the peak of physical conditioning, masters with their weapons of choice, and have been trained for countless hours in all manner of hand-to-hand combat so they can take on any threat that might attack their leader. So why on earth does Bob perform such a silly act against a lightsaber user? (A question that others have pointed out) He doesn’t have any weapons, and leaves himself open for a fatal counter attack. Perhaps he was trying to distract Kylo so one of his buddies could take him out, but I like to imagine that it was a momentary lapse of judgement, showing that, while highly trained, Bob can still make mistakes or not think clearly when fighting for his life against someone he has no chance of defeating, humanizing someone who would otherwise be just a nameless, faceless dude who’s killed off in a few seconds and has a $250 Sideshow Collectables figure made after him to appease the Star Wars fan who will buy anything based off of any character, no matter how short their appearance.
But best of all, I like to have fun imagining what Bob was thinking in those final seconds of his life:
‘Okay, this is it! I’m gonna charge this emo punk and ram his lightsaber with my forearms! Yeah, that’ll show him! Okay, here I go! Wheee! I did it! I did it! I… Wait; wait, what do I do now?! Oh shit, I didn’t think think this thruooourrararrrrrrgghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!’
Imperfect Glass 