Hard News: A very roundabout review of 'Tron Legacy'
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Matthew Littlewood, in reply to
Which begs the most interesting question about Avatar -- did anyone in the largest media corporation on Earth actually read the parts of the script where the entire human race has become a genocidal military-industrial complex? (Or Titanic come to that -- where a rapacious corporation racks up a pretty impressive body count in the class war.)
Wall-E (released by Disney's better, smarter subsidary, Pixar) is another case in point, although knowing the writers and creators involved, it would be entirely intentional. I mean, they depict modern society as little more than pods which are slave to the basest, laziest impulses- who are destined to a life ruled by corporations and machines. And the only way humanity can seemingly overcome this is by banding together against the machine...albeit with the help of some pretty sympathetic ones...and learn to conserve and preserve what's left.
Or maybe it was less about social commentary and more about the makers goofing off on references to 2001, Silent Running, Dark Star et al- that period of sci-fi films which were decidedly, er, hippie and counter-cultural. The truth is probably somewhere in between, but credit to the makers of Wall-E that it feels entirely like its own creation, not just the sum of its admittedly illustrious parts.
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Kracklite, I cannot live in cities because of the noise: I hear abnormally well (which means I hear all those over-tones and under-drones & 'other' noises.)
Lights I can control very well (in my own home, and houses wherein I sleep.)
I cant stand random people being here (or in any family space) but hey! I'm really good when people come into a congenial space. And I work very well when I am within a space and with people I trust, and I am doing what I do best. Spinning stories, singing songs, making unknown things somehow shine-pathetic eh?
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Sacha, in reply to
I think I hate the term “issues” as much as I hate “going forward.”
For some reason in official circles we get disability 'issues' rather than the more exciting 'affairs' enjoyed by women or Pacific populations for instance. Doesn't help the sales pitch, I tells you.
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nzlemming, in reply to
For some reason in official circles we get disability ‘issues’ rather than the more exciting ‘affairs’ enjoyed by women or Pacific populations for instance. Doesn’t help the sales pitch, I tells you.
Actually, I think it speaks more to who has the issues. We can carry on with our affairs if we want ;-)
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To be honest, I didn't think the script in the first Tron movie was that great, although there were a few decent one-liners. Also, never been a Jeff Bridges fan.
What blew me away when I was 13 was the music - awesome Wendy Carlos - and the effects.
Also, I did some musing elsewhere on how Tron almost anticipates the whole cyberpunk genre. Gibson's first short story in that line came out the same year Tron did, and Neuromancer wasn't published till 2 years later. There is apparently a seminal cyberpunk story that was written in the late-70s, but I haven't read it and can't comment on how much it might have influenced the movie and Gibson.
We'll just leave out the whole Macguffinitude of the light bikes - would you seriously need something like that to get around a virtual world? Or were they shoehorned in to entertain adolescent boys and provide an excuse for shiny effects? (This is not a serious question - they did/do look cool.)
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...oh, and to throw a cat in amongst the pigeons of so-serious sci-fi fandom, would Neuromancer have been so popular without Tron preparing the way in a visual sense? I wonder.
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Sacha, in reply to
I reckon it would have. Possibly not without BladeRunner though.
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Waiting for Goffman...
would Neuromancer have been so popular without Tron preparing the way in a visual sense?
R U Sirius and odd space ditties from David Bowie and Hawkwind, 2001,
Burroughs (both Bill & Edgar), comic books and drugs,
all helped kick start the zeitgeist...
P K Dick had been pushing that barrow for a while too... -
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
...oh, and to throw a cat in amongst the pigeons of so-serious sci-fi fandom, would Neuromancer have been so popular without Tron preparing the way in a visual sense? I wonder.
I think it would have been -- 'cyberpunk' didn't spring full formed from the Muse's womb with the publication of Neuromancer in 1984. His first short story, 'Fragments of a Hologram Rose' was published in 1977. And 'Burning Chrome', which is widely credited as the first appearance of the term "cyberspace", appeared in 1982. Proto-cyberpunks like Burce Sterling and John Shirley were also picking up on something in the air before Tron came along.
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Some say William Gibson merely perfected cyberpunk, and that its real pioneer was George Orwell's 1984. At the very least, Orwell laid the groundwork for the genre.
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Nothing remotely punky about Tron
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I'm very glad Leo has shown more interest in the NotSchool's syllabus, and I'm not at all surprised he's scored highly in literacy. Working with him was a great experience, and I'm still amazed at how tolerant he was of my amateur efforts, considering that we were both learning Java together. One of the best parts for me was him teaching me about games, about which he talks with passion and clarity, and extensive knowledge.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Nothing remotely punky about Tron
That suit that Jeff Bridges gets to wear at the end, symbolising the restoration of his rightful status and the due bag o' fruit of his genius. Worst happy ending ever.
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Ha! I was discussing Tron with Mr Telfar last night, after our daughter had said she wanted to see Legacy. He said Legacy couldn't be any worse than the original. I said Tron was cool. He said it was [lame], that it was a cult movie, and that movies achieve cult status by being bad. I pointed out that movies also achieve cult status by being sci-fi. He responded with "They wore hockey helmets! And had frisbees as their `data discs'." And then showed me a promotional poster featuring said hockey helmets.
I still maintain it was cool. I bet when he reads this column he changes his mind and agrees with me (that's how influential Russell is). Unless he reads this as well, in which case, damn! Can one post-date a post?
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http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/4486422/TVNZ6-axed-for-youth-channel
Congratulations in order Russell? TVNZ7 all good for next year? Am I behind the times or on the right thread? Whatever, I think the news is rather good!
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meanwhile under Las Vegas, Gibson's visions of the future are coming along nicely...
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I cannot live in cities because of the noise
I'm fortunate myself in finding a corner of Aro Valley that has nothing louder than Kaka and Tui in the morning.
pathetic eh?
On the contrary, it sounds like you've crafted the life to suit your soul.
disability ‘issues’ rather than the more exciting ‘affairs’
Useful bureaucratese... "issues" are static, requiring no immediate action, "affairs" are dynamic, requiring continuing action and engagement.
Some say William Gibson merely perfected cyberpunk
My theory of literary origins is that it's a waste of time to look at the "first" of anythging, but to look at the point/horizon where an old category is less useful than a new one. Arguably, Frankenstein is the first science fiction novel (so saith Brian Aldiss), but it can still be covered by the moniker "gothic" - it's when we get to Wells' "scientific romances" ( a term he used, which itself was used by someone whose name I forget to denote speculative essays as much as fiction), that "gothic" certainly no longer suffices.
Art in general may have its celebrity revolutionaries, but really, any new movement draws on deep and diverse roots. My PhD supervisor, Brian Opie, credits Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths with the conceptual invention of hypertext, and I can see why. Cyberpunk itself owes a lot to the pulp fiction of Dashiel Hammet, Raymond Chandler and so on in its tone as well as all of the technical papers that were coming out of MIT as well as the innovations of Gates, Jobs and Wozniak (Wells himself explored through fiction the implications of the lectures by Huxley that he attended). True revolutions are syntheses. In my not very humble opinion (but I've got the letters after my name, so there, pthbbbt!).
BTW, loving Zero History right now. One forgets just how drolly funny Gibson can be.
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nzlemming, in reply to
True revolutions are syntheses.
Well said, that Kracklite!
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Sacha, in reply to
Useful bureaucratese... "issues" are static, requiring no immediate action
Fits perfectly, then
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Scott A, in reply to
Proto-cyberpunks like Burce Sterling and John Shirley were also picking up on something in the air before Tron came along.
P.K. Dick and Harlan Ellison to be specific. Speculative fiction like this is always a continuum, not a revolution; but films can sometimes appear to be due to the lengthy development time. But, even so, watch enough movies for long enough and you'll see how every idea has its antecedent, every camera move his it's ancestor.
Avatar, on the other hand, to my view, is a reflection of the deliberate corporatist and commercialised adoption of 'green' politics. Sure, I don't doubt Cameron and the writers were heart-felt in their core concepts, but there's no doubt now in the capitalist mind that money can be made from green.
Which is why New Zealand may shortly be bottling 'Fiji Water' for the Californians...
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“…of the making of books there is no end. There is nothing new under the sun.”
Humans are an onward-going ever-flowing evolving meme-pool…I was truly horrified when people picked up on ‘blue’ as a colour for hominids(because I’d invented this blue peaceloving elsewhere tribe way back in 1987) – but hey, I knew about Krishna, *and* the “Blue Men of the Minch.”
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
Humans are an onward-going ever-flowing evolving meme-pool…I was truly horrified when people picked up on ‘blue’ as a colour for hominids(because I’d invented this blue peaceloving elsewhere tribe way back in 1987) – but hey, I knew about Krishna, *and* the “Blue Men of the Minch.”
Ken Catran had blue (and green and red) aliens (well, gengineered humans living on Mars), too, in his Deepwater Black and prequel series - which, funnily enough, also had very strong themes about pollution, environmental damage, and corporate control. These things circle around.
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I definitely agree that the genre of "virtual worlds"/cyberpunk was definitely coming along from the late 70s with Sterling, Dick et al. Can't quite place Orwell on that spectrum though.
But I do think some movies can kick things along - yes, the literature is bubbling along under the surface, but there is a seminal work - like Neuromancer - that ramps it into a higher gear. And sometimes a movie can be the seminal work - look at Bladerunner. Do Androids Dream... has an amusing premise, but my god it's a boring story. The movie is something else.
This doesn't negate the fact that the vast majority of SFF movies are retrograde and simplistic, although I suppose a lot of SFF novels are too ( Eragon and the Belgariad saga, anyone?). It's nice when a good movie epitomises or even slightly anticipates the crest of a genre - I think the original Tron, despite its faults (Bechdel Test, lol), sits in there.
While I found Avatar an entertaining movie, yeah, simplistic in the extreme, and I could have done without the retrograde "white man becomes better native than the natives (or native-messiah) and saves their useless butts." I don't mind Cameron's "one person rebels against soulless rapacious corporation" trope, but man, it didn't need to be word-for-word Aliens - and the irony of his making megabux from these Hollywood movies is amusing.
Also, *waves at Craig*. Been seeing you on TBD, where I very occasionally comment as Trix.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
This doesn't negate the fact that the vast majority of SFF movies are retrograde and simplistic, although I suppose a lot of SFF novels are too ( Eragon and the Belgariad saga, anyone?)
The vast majority of any type of creative work is kind of meh, period, although SFF does translate badly to the big screen more often than most (I think largely because people think SFF and think SFX, rather than story. Which...misses the point, rather.) Regarding the novels, it's also worth remembering that Eragon was written by a fifteen-year-old and Eddings...well, there's no excuse for Eddings, really. Except that people like to hear the same stories over, and he perfected that. And made a lot of money doing it.
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well, there's no excuse for Eddings, really. Except that people like to hear the same stories over, and he perfected that. And made a lot of money doing it.
The way he tells it, he also found it quite enjoyable, as did millions of his fans. That's plenty enough excuse.
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