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Thursday, March 19, 2015

Mooning

I've no doubt that Hollywood will thoroughly screw this up:

Bringing Heinlein's Lunar Revolution Home: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress As a Major Motion Picture

For those who haven't read it, the book is about a colonial revolt on a future moon colony, very loosely based on the American Revolution. Beyond doubt Hollywood will turn it from a message of constitutional libertarianism -- the basis of all of Heinlein's books as well as his personal philosophy -- into some distorted fringe-lefty garbage. The producer is a human rights activist who says of himself, "I’m a non-violence fanatic."

Yeah. That's gonna work out great.

I've been wrong about this sort of thing before, of course. The Battlestar Galactica reboot, for example, was fantastic -- although I still believe Katee Sackhoff may be the worst actress in the history of the world. I find it is best, however, to start with the assumption that anything Hollywood touches will turn to shit, then you can be pleasantly surprised on the very, very rare occasions when the opposite occurs.


___
Hat-tip to Jason M.

4 Comments:

Blogger Banduar said...

I'm really surprised that you liked the Battlestar Galactica reboot... I thought it was complete shite. The plot was asinine, the acting was horrible and the dialog was only occasionally entertaining. Worse yet was their grasp of military culture and tactics.. when is the last time you saw an entire patrol in hostile territory decide to just sit down and take a break? Most of the show seemed to involve people refusing to follow orders and then having to clean up the clusterfuck that followed. It reeked of "liberal" misconceptions about military life, which I would have thought would set your teeth on edge.

09:57  
Blogger Jar(egg)head said...

I should be clear that I'm speaking primarily of the mini-series. The follow-on series had some good moments, but was mostly downhill after the first season. When they stuck to the fun stuff -- blowing up Cylons, for instance -- it was great. (I highly recommend the first season episode "The Hand of God." It's one of my favorites in all of sci-fi.)

From a military perspective, the "naval" side of it was actually pretty accurate. It was based on methods and procedures used on U.S. warships and they nailed most of the lingo and overall atmosphere, although the Galactica was much cleaner than any warship I was ever aboard. Space janitors, I suppose. Edward James Olmos did a bang-up job as a commander, displaying just the right mix of stoicism and empathy which is a hallmark of the best officers.

As for the "ground" side... well, nobody ever gets that right, whether in movies or television. A sports team as bad-ass guerrilla fighters? Pilots fighting like Marine infantrymen? Yeah, whatever. Every pilot I ever knew hated dirt-side rotations to FAC and AO positions and couldn't wait to get back into the cockpit. They certainly wouldn't have gone seeking firefights; that's what we grunts are for. In any case, I just tuned those parts out -- or often as not, skipped them. For the most part, when bullets start flying on screen, I move on. It's an experience which cannot be conveyed on screen, so they shouldn't even try.

I even liked Mary McDonnell as Laura Rosslyn. The character was a hard-ass and never hesitated to treat the enemy as the enemy -- always a good quality in a leader -- including summarily blowing them out of airlocks. (I actually giggled in delight when that part happened; yeah, I'm a sick bastard).

The biggest problem I had with the series was the fact that it devolved rapidly into metaphysics, with the entire last season consumed by it entirely. As Churt once said to me, "Metaphysics make my teeth ache."

10:52  
Blogger Banduar said...

OK, that makes more sense. The original mini-series was not bad, but after the first season it rapidly descended into a cesspool of vapid nonsense.

The characters portrayed by Olmos and McDonnell were bright spots in the series, along with the scenery of Grace Park. If not for them (and that my wife watched the series repeatedly) I would have tuned out much sooner than I did. I can't even remember how it ended since by then my give-a-shit had completely expired.

11:20  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hopefully this movie is so bad it flies under the radar and I’m never aware of its release. I've tried watching 2 of the director’s movies (X-Men I\Superman), they are the Elvis formula movies of our day.

-JW

08:41  

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