Trump, Civilization and the Second Coming of the Christ

draft

I am sure I speak for all Americans when I say how proud I am to have a vulgar sexist and bully represent us to the world.  And how beautiful that this moron would call for a vigorous defense of civilization when it is this piece of garbage and his venal friends who are themselves destroying civilization, at least here in America..

How wonderful it is to be demeaned and disgraced in front of the world. Any foolish pride we may have had reduced to the banal by this moron and his supporters, the Republicans, the soldiers who fight for God. But I wonder, what is left for #45 to achieve, having ascended to the very pinnacle of history as leader of western civilization? What is next? Perhaps he would consider becoming the Bishop of Rome, yes to ascend to the throne of St. Peter, or perhaps even reveal himself as the second coming of the Christ, the Murdered God who opens a Door back to God.

Who else could forgive us for our sins?

Pacific Grim

Warning: This essay contains spoilers for the film Pacific Rim (2013).

Some are born great and some have the mantle of greatness put upon them.

In our world there is mere craftsmanship, then art, then great art, then movies with giant robots.

But not everyone who is called to the altar of greatness is up to the challenge or in some way evil or circumstance interferes with its realization, and we experience the tragedy of a movie that could have been important but that fails and lives down to our worst expectations.

Such is the case with Pacific Rim (2013).  I had seen the effects reel at the Academy Bake Off and I was looking forward to the director's take on the critically important sub-genre of fiction: giant robots beating the shit out of alien and hostile ocean monsters.  But the great concept for the movie was let down by a truly puerile script and shallow characters. The humans were so stereotyped and uninteresting that even the giant alien monsters seemed more richly drawn, realistic and authentic in comparison.

Lucas claims that a movie is binary, that it either works for the audience and they ignore the flaws, or it does not work for them and the flaws are completely annoying.   I think that this principle of all or nothing has merit.   For example, I did not notice many of the flaws in Edge of Tomorrow (2014) when watching the film and when they eventually did occur to me it did not really bother me.

The flaws were made less important because the film was so entertaining.

A mashup between a German scientist and a Cambridge University mathematician, or something.

But not so for Pacific Rim, at least not for me.  There were so many problems and all of them attached to a very obvious and banal plot.   Not even giant robots could save this movie from its plot.   Here is a short list of just some of the problems in no particular order of importance:  1. If you are dying of radiation poisoning, you don't just get a nose bleed, or rather if you do, its because you are bleeding at all your orifices.   But none of that really matters because the radiation has probably killed all your blood stem cells and you will be dead in less than a week, horribly, and wont have the time to lead a group of desperate men and women in a last chance struggle to save humanity.   2. I found the cultural stereotypes of the German/Cambridge scientist to be offensive, although it was supposed to be funny, 3. The mind melt with the alien thing, aside from being improbable, is just confusing. Do the bad aliens read the stupid little scientist mind or not?  4. Umbilical cords are generally for mammals, as I understand it. Are the filmmakers saying that these hideous underwater alien monsters are descended from mammals? That doesn't seem very likely from what we know of them.  5. This may sound silly, but what is the motivation of our alien menace and the big fellows on the other side of the breach?   I mean what is going on?   Are they just attacking because they think its fun? Are they after our women?  What?  6. These big aliens although they are impressive looking seem rather average in terms of construction.   If they can be filleted with (for example) giant spinning sushi knives or a sock to the jaw then it seems logical that they would respond well to a couple of dozen standard, stand-off, air-to-air missiles, not to mention MK48 torpedoes.   7. Its all very well to throw around words like "analog" in regards to EMP, but for that to work that would mean that all the control systems of the adorable Gypsy Danger would have to be analog computers, etc, and I kind of doubt it.

Open wide and stick out your tongue... 

Ok, enough.

It is a principle of visual effects that great visual effects will not save a bad movie.   That is certainly true in this case, but there are some things to note about the film that are positive, in terms of cost reduction, costume design, production design and, of course, visual effects.   

1. They probably saved a lot of money on the writer.

Many people feel that having a script in a visual effects movie is just throwing good money after bad. Certainly, Michael Bay has never been held back by not having a writer on his films.  They probably saved several hundred thousand dollars on this one item, which would leave them more money for visual effects. 

2. The female lead was given an excellent costume.

Movies of this type are often calculated to appeal to adolescent boys of all ages, and one way to get their attention is to put your female lead, suitably cast, into a skintight and/or polyethylene outfit. Actress Rinko Kikuchi plays the role of Mako Mori, the spunky and strong female technocrat and martial arts specialist. I think that the rubber/latex outfit that they have her wear while controlling the giant robot in partnership with our hero is very practical and shows off her intelligence among other attributes very well.   I am still looking for the right single frame to show you what I mean, this image is a standin for now.

The properly sexist still of Mako in her latex jumpsuit has eluded me so far.  

3. In visual effects, objects interacting with water is very difficult to achieve in a realistic manner.

4. One reason that water generally looks fake in earlier visual effects (see WW2 movies or pirate movies with ships generated with model photography on a pond or swimming pool) is how off the sense of scale is, no matter what the visual effects people did.   We get an excellent sensation of scale for most of the important fight scenes of the film which either take place in shallow water or under water.

5. Finally, it is a non-trivial thing to give these 3D models a sense of scale while they are beating the shit out of each other.   And most of the shots, although often ridiculous, were also dramatic and did have good scale to them.   I was very impressed.  

ILM did all these things very well.   Have a look at some of these stills and remember that IMHO the only way to really judge the work is in motion and on a big screen.

6. Very few movies get to show what it is like on the other side: to show the unspeakable and unknowable alien world. This movie did that acceptably I thought, the pacing was good and the reveal of the horror that is the vast and evil alien intelligence is suspensful... Of course the implacable menace is just beginning to understand that they are doomed as disaster overwhelms them.

Pleasantly abstract, the alien menace sees their doom approach.

Its the stories and the characters and the details that let them down. The movie feels like it was written for 10 year olds, and maybe it was. Only a 10 year old could go with the hackneyed characterizations and the stupid plot points. And of course the whole premise is ridiculous. Although it would be moderately expensive (1) and messy to turn these monsters into shredded fish food, it would be straightforward to do so with the weapons at hand in any modern air force or navy.  I mean they are big and ugly and spray acid and look pretty mean, but it seems to me that they blowup pretty much like normal flesh and blood, alien though they may be.

The other scientist stupidly visits the alien fishbait abortion.  Nice eyes.

But I prefer to emphasize the positive about this movie and hope that something better will happen next time. Good art direction and creature animation does not a good monster movie make. del Toro has the capability of doing great work, I hope we will see better and more moving, plausible, end of the world implacable monster movies from him in the future.

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Notes:

1. The cost of a Hellfire missile is roughly $70K but I think that is a little underpowered for this activity.  A Tomahawk missile from Raytheon is about $600K - $1M depending on how you look at the accounting. A Mark 48 torpedo is roughly a million a pop, I think.   Delivering these munitions is not cheap either.  We are talking about flying F-18 Super Hornets off of aircraft carriers or of attack submarines delivering many torpedoes as suitably modified for this application.   So it would be completely plausible for the destruction of one giant alien sea monster to cost at least $50M and probably more like $100M  if not more per critter.   Not cheap, but immensely cheaper than what is portrayed in the movie as the last hope of mankind.  No nuclear weapons would be necessary.

Tomahawk Missile

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile)

Mark 48 Torpedo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_48_torpedo

Pacific Rim on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/

The Hills Illuminated by Fire and the Esoteric Prophecy of Human Resources

draft/in progress

At 2AM last night, I walked out onto my patio to check on my garden, where to my surprise I saw that the nearby hills were on fire. A layer of smoke lay over the valley. “Is this the time, Oh Lord”, I thought to myself, “Is now when the world will be cleansed of the sins of the wicked biped mammals who have turned away from the path of righteousness and wallow in the filth of self-aggrandizement and narcissism?”

As I watched a fire seemed to explode on a hill to my left. When I ran to get my camera and returned it had diminished to nothing much. So will the wicked explode, I thought with grim satisfaction, when they are touched by the vengeance of the Lord. A burst of flame and then nothing much.

Is this a sign that the End is near?

As I watched the hills burn down around me, my thoughts turned to happier times, years ago, when I consulted for Viacom in New York. There I made friends with a beautiful woman who was consulting for Human Resources on a special project.  Although we did not know it, Cindy and I were working on different pieces of a much larger, more important,  project than the one we were nominally working on.

We both thought we were on very different aspects of the Interactive Television AT&T Castro Valley Test but in fact those differences were irrelevant.  There was a real project that underlay the apparent project, and this was the project that was truly driving events.  You see, Viacom is a cable company, it exists and profits in a beautiful monopoly ordained by the Lord and granted by Our Government to those who are Worthy.  And in the interests of the Public, these monopolies are reviewed from time to time by the specific agencies of our government that hand out these monopolies to the rich.   Viacom's monopoly was up for review and as part of that review we demonstrated advanced technology in the public's interest, we had Sumner Redstone speaking at the Washington Press Club, I even contributed to the signage of a third party industrial press firm who was working on the publicity for this event.

But soon this very long process that the three of us, Cindy, Sumner and myself, had been involved in would be over and the monopolies given by certain agencies of our government would have been reaffirmed, the little theatre of interactive television having played its part, the forms having been observed, the lobbyists paid.   Then the blessed bloodletting could begin to sacrifice those who would through their wretched jobs stand in the way of the profits that rightfully belonged to the shareholders. 

Some might think that because these types of companies are in fact government created monopolies in their region and sector, that there might be some rules such that some of the money extracted from the consumer might also trickle down to the workers, perhaps in the form of employment.  But such a thing would be anathema in America.  The poor can go fuck themselves for all the government cares as long as they pay the taxes on their pathetic wages.  That is the way it has always been, that is the way it must always be. Anything else would be to turn away from the values that have made this country great.

Because Cindy liked me, she let me see the real Human Resource manuals, not the ones that they let the uninitiated see, but the secret one, the one reserved for the Elect.  She turned to the section on Layoffs and told me that it foretold the future and talked about the end times. She asked me to read it to her out loud.

I turned to the first page and read

The fire of God's vengeance will burn away the corrupt flesh from the body.

“Hallelujah!”, she said, and laughed.

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