Paying lip service to intelligent characters

Blog - Reading and Reviews

Written by Sofie
Monday, 20 May 2013 00:28

I saw Star Trek: Into Darkness a few weeks ago (it opened earlier here, guys. *smug*). Don't worry, this post is spoiler-free. With all the secrecy surrounding the 'John Harrison' character, (though the secret, when it's revealed, is pretty much exactly what you expected it to be - and kinda only a meta-secret, really. The big reveal about what's going on is only an "oooh" moment to certain fans. Still, it made a great publicity point for the movie, so I can't blame them for doing it) I figured the only way to not be spoiled was to see it when it opened.

I had mixed impressions. As a spectacle and an emotional fun-ride, it was fantastic. Dark moments, funny moments, touching moments, scary moments, wonderful play with the previous canon, fantastic visuals and scope. But intellectually, I have some issues with John Harrison's plan. Or rather, the lack thereof.

In action movies, the bad guy is doing Bad Stuff before the good guy first learns about him. It's generally how the good guy learns about him. So, natch, Harrison does some Bad Things, and it's all good because at this point, he's just Generic Bad Guy That We're Gonna Stop, we're not thinking too hard about how his actions coalesce together, we're still kinda waiting for the real movie plot to reveal itself. And when it does, we kinda forget about figuring out how those original Bad Things worked together because we're too busy watching the rest of the movie. But when you think about it later, those early actions don't really make a coherent plan. They're basically just a series of events to culminate in the meet-cute between Harrison and Kirk, but Harrison's own motivations for them don't hold water. They're stupid decisions on his part when there were much, much smarter options.

Which would be fine if Harrison wasn't supposed to be a super-intelligent tactician-guy. Then it kinda falls apart. "Okay, so when you did this stuff, what was your plan? Really? That's a terrible plan! That's not even a plan, it's just plot that you knew in advance!" Kirk's plan in the throwaway opening sequence is more intelligent than his. It really irritates me that 'strategy' in sci fi movies (or other, but I rarely watch army or guns'n'girls flicks) so often seems like something a five-year-old could defeat. Not even just the 'space is a 2 dimensional ocean' thing, but "so, the grand plan is to, erm, attack him. With ships. He'll never see it coming." (no, that wasn't a spoiler).

Another thing that also irritated me was the treatment of the female characters, but Felicia Day says it far, far better than I would, so I'm just going to direct you to her post. Warning - very slight (but not major) spoilers in her post.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie. The performances are top notch, it's a fabulous, highly-entertaining ride. I'm just using it as a showcase for something that bugs me generally in films.

Collaborating with shakespeare

Blog - The Writer's Life

Written by Sofie
Tuesday, 14 May 2013 00:00

You may notice my posts have been a bit light-on of late. Life is crazy busy over here at the moment, forgive me. But this is a good bit of fun: as a demonstration (presumably to help plug google drive and google docs) you can collaborate writing a story with Shakespeare, Neitzsche, Poe, Dickens etc - as google says, "admittedly a few years after their prime".

Go type in stuff - I specifically recommend you add a sentence somewhere about Shakespeare - and watch them come in and "improve" your work, often arguing with each other about words and phrases.

You have to be a bit patient, as sometimes they edit right away, sometimes they don't, and don't use language that's too "literary" - keep it simple. Key phrases seem to go quite well (I was amused to discover both my mother and I started with "It was a dark and stormy night") but we found that words above a 6th grade reading level tended to stump our 'collaborators'.

Time travel and Simulated Realities

Blog - Reading and Reviews

Written by Sofie
Monday, 13 May 2013 00:00

I love infographics and charts of things. I would make them if I had time and more than marginal graphic design skill. Then every so often some one comes along who reminds me you don't need mounds of graphic design to make cool stuff:

"Mr Dalliard" has two awesome infographics, one showing the various forms or rules of time travel in numerous movies, and the other doing the same for simulated reality. They're really worth a look - I'm not posting them here, because they obviously contain spoilers (especially the simulated reality one, where the major plot point of the movie is typically "what's actually going on".)

Just goes to show that with a good idea and some effort and brain power, you can make cool stuff without needing extra graphic cookies.

Highrise cities

Blog - World Building

Written by Sofie
Tuesday, 07 May 2013 00:00

This is awesome: an infographic on how a set of interconnected highrise buildings became an entire city in its own right - Kowloon Walled City, which house 50,000 residents in 1980 in Hong Kong, complete with schools and day cares, metal fabricators and basic industries, unlicensed doctors and dentists, etc.

Click image for larger view (6mb)

Shane Black - King of the Hollywood Script

Blog - Writing Craft

Written by Sofie
Monday, 06 May 2013 00:00

There's the rule we all know of 'show, don't tell'. It's especially important in screenplays, where words are at a premium, and you have to paint and entire scene in a sentence. And then there's this guy, writer of Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Last Boy Scout who breaks the rules so hard they form whole new scultpures of entertainment.

Article on his screenwriting here is a great read.