Tron: The MCP is Kind of A Jerk

I have to admit, Tron is an important part of my cultural heritage. It was released the same year I was born (1982), and stars one of my current favorite actors, Jeff Bridges. It was also released by Disney, which was important growing up, and features a world starting to become obsessed with computers, which is an important part of my life (in terms of personal use as well as professionally). Also, it's a genuinely entertaining science-fiction film, featuring some truly ground-breaking effects and cinematography (especially considering when it was released; it looks like child's play compared to what we currently have).

Everyone should know what this movie's all about, so if you don't know, I'm going to tell you. Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is a young programmer and video game enthusiast. He used to work for a large software corporation, until the big boss stole his game ideas to increase their empire. Unbeknownst to the programmers, their programs live very real lives in the computer world, with personalities, desires, relationships, and feelings. Flynn's program, Clu, tries to hack into his former employer's system, but their Master Control Program (MCP) captures it. The MCP is represented as a megalomaniacal entity, trying to completely rule over the computer world with the help of Sark, the computer program created by Dr. Dillinger, the guy that stole Flynn's ideas. Trying to eliminate loose ends, the MCP digitizes Flynn while he's breaking into ENCOM, trying to help his friends and former colleagues Alan Bradley and Lora Baines. When he's in the computer world, he becomes his program Clu, and is captured by the MCP. The MCP likes to force programs to play vicious games with one another, where the winner survives, and the loser is "derezzed," or killed. Flynn/Clu teams up with Tron, the security program created by Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) to take down the MCP.

The truly remarkable thing about this film is that it's the first film to extensively use computer-generated imagery for the computer world. The real-world actors wander about in a simple but immersive computer world, with CG vehicles (including the ever-popular Light Cycles) and backgrounds. The actors themselves are also enhanced, with outfits that have glowing circuity-bits. This was achieved by filming in black and white, and then rotoscoping the enhanced colors and glowing lines.

It's my opinion that this film is severely overrated, both as an important science fiction film, as well as starting up the relationship with computer animation that Disney has now come to rely upon more than traditional animation. I don't think we would have as much CG enhancements to contemporary films without the preliminary work of films like Tron and The Last Starfighter. It's very primitive, yes, but it's recognizably computer animation, and in many ways, it helps the movie maintain its 1980s time representation. Plus, how many movies do you know where the main villain is a giant, rainbow top?

Tron also has some interesting religious implications, where the computer world is analogous of the human world, and their human users as an unseen force that drives their actions. Many programs don't even believe in the users, having never seen any evidence of their existence, and despite being created by the users, they do seem to maintain individual identities and free will. Suddenly, Flynn appears in their world, as his program, Clu. In many ways, I'm glad that they didn't try to put a lot of messiah nonsense in the movie, trying to make Flynn/Clu out to be some sort of program messiah. In reality, Tron is the real hero of the film (obviously, hence the name), with Flynn serving as an outside observer, giving the audience an easy window into the computer world.

I highly recommend this film. I'm deeply afraid that younger viewers might find the "archaic" special effects laughable, but the film has a great spirit behind it, with some really interesting characters, and an extremely original story. However, fear now, younger viewers! There is a sequel coming out next year, titled Tron Legacy with Jeff Bridges reprising his role as Clu/Flynn, with the inclusion of Flynn's 20-something son (presumably born shortly after he takes over ENCOM after the destruction of the MCP and the revelation that Dillinger stole his game ideas). However, it seems that Flynn disappeared sometime in the late 1980s, and may be trapped in the computer world.

Check this out for an extremely awesome trailer for Tron Legacy. It has updated Light Cycles, and is immensely mind-boggling.

In summation, I give the original Tron four and a half flying discs out of five, or four and a half evil MCPs out of five. Go check it out!

Escape From New York and Into My Heart

I feel that I should put this out there right away: I love this movie. It's one of many John Carpenter/Kurt Russell collaborations, and arguably one of the best-known of their films. This is also the movie that helped launch Kurt Russell's new acting career, starring previously in mostly Disney movies and more generally family-friendly films. I'm often amazed that more people are unaware of his status as a child star, and most contemporary audiences know him best for roles like this one. Plus, his character has an eyepatch! It honestly doesn't get much better than that.

For those of you that are unaware, the plot of Escape From New York is relatively simple: It's the fantastical dystopian future of 1997, and crime has reached such unprecedented heights that the entire island of Manhattan (which apparently means all of New York City, as well) has been turned into a prison. Air Force One crashes into the city due to a random revolutionary, and the President is then kidnapped by the criminal population. As luck would have it, a well-decorated military man and criminal arrives, and is then forced to rescue the president. This man is Snake Plissken, and he is a bad-ass.

See? Told you.

This film is of particular interest to me in that it features Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, and Ernest Borgnine as "Cabbie," as well as Donald Pleasance as the President. The police force that runs the prison (from outside the walls) offers Snake a full pardon in exchange for his help. To make sure that he retrieves the President in a timely manner, he injects tiny explosives into his neck, which would explode just enough to sever his arteries and kill him. So what's a guy to do, huh? Guess there's no choice but to take a glider into the city, fight some crazy post-apocalyptic Mad-Max-like criminals, check out Adrienne Barbeau, beat up Isaac Hayes, and save the day.

One thing I don't like about this movie is that it's very dark. It may have been partly my settings on the TV, but still; it's often quite difficult to see what's going on. I understand that it's the future, and all dystopian, and depressing, blah blah blah, but still. A little ambient lighting never hurt anybody. Another thing that always confused me was that everyone that Snake encounters in this dumb place seems to know who he is. Ernest Borgnine's cheerful molotov-tossing Cabbie seems to love Snake, and is super-happy to be hanging out with him. Harry Dean Stanton (a.k.a. Brain) is scared of Snake, but that's mostly because he (Brain) betrayed Snake and their friend "Fresno Bob" on an earlier job. The Duke hates him just because he's trying to save the President, and The Duke is used to being "A number one," and Snake basically beats him hands-down at being a badass.

Shortly before his untimely death, I saw parts of Escape From New York on television, and was surprised to see Isaac Hayes in the role of the villain. I'm so used to him as a comedic actor on South Park, as well as his music career and his minor role as "Asneeze" in Mel Brooks's Robin Hood: Men In Tights. I don't feel that they use Isaac enough in this movie, and they definitely don't let him talk enough. He doesn't get a very dignified death (in the film), either, which is a shame.

In a scene that I particularly enjoyed, a captured Snake is forced to fight for the amusement of The Duke and his army of criminal crazies. We also get to see his namesake tattoo, a particular dark and muddy-looking cobra, which is probably one of the worst movie tattoos I've ever seen. It looks like someone drew a cobra on his stomach with magic marker, but he'd never seen a cobra before. Luckily, there was someone that had seen a picture once, and they told the artist what to draw. However, the pure amateur shoddiness of his terrible tattoo is immediately forgotten when I see who he has to fight:

Yes, that's right. He has to fight Zangief from Street Fighter! In actuality, this is a character named "Slag," and he's played by the legendary Ox Baker. Not surprisingly, Snake is able to not only defeat this behemoth of craziness and beard, but he is also able to retrieve his timer-bracelet (approximately the size of a bedside alarm clock), and activate a tracer bracelet, both of which had been stolen previously, but were conveniently on some nearby wrists after the fight. Meanwhile Brain and Maggie (Barbeau) have rescued the President, and try to steal Snake's glider. Snake shows up in time to see the bad guys drop it off the top of the World Trade Center, so our anti-hero has no choice but to navigate a bridge lined with mines and explosives. Also, The Duke shows up, Cabbie randomly has the coveted audiotape that's almost as important as the President's life (though nobody's really sure how he gets it), and then everyone but Snake and the President die.

Kurt Russell makes a pretty good anti-hero, looking suitably grizzled and manly in his tank-top and camouflage leggings, shooting guys and throwing knives in their foreheads, all to the absolutely "brilliant" musical score provided by Mr. John Carpenter himself. There are explosions, people getting shot, beaten up, etc. There are no big revelations, no real secrets about mankind's future revealed, no deeper meaning. It's pure entertainment, simple and joyous. Relax and let it wash over you for a couple of hours, and you'll enjoy it. Four Ernest Borgnines out of five, or four fake-Zangiefs out of five.

WestWorld: When the West was "Meh."

In 1973, acclaimed author and all-around cool guy Michael Crichton decided that he would write and direct a theatrical film. The story is pretty decent, and would have probably made an entertaining novella, or maybe expanded a little into a real novel. Unfortunately, what we have is this movie instead.

Don't get me wrong, it isn't terrible. It just isn't terribly good. I wasn't expecting it to be brilliant, so I wasn't disappointed. I've seen Maximum Overdrive, so I know how movies that are directed by writers can turn out (though I am glad for Maximum Overdrive, because it has a little league coach being bludgeoned to death by a soda machine). I'm sure there are some quality films directed by novelists, I just can't seem to think of any right now.

Ok, sorry about that, this movie isn't all that bad. It was released in 1973, was written and directed by Crichton, and stars Yul Brynner, James Brolin, and Richard Benjamin, with a puzzling cameo by Dick Van Patten. In the future (or maybe not), there exists an adult amusement park, where for a paltry $1,000 a day, you can basically live in a carefully recreated medieval, Roman, or American western-themed world, and the primary thing that people want to do when they go there? They want to kill and/or have sex with robots.

John and Pete are going to WestWorld as the film opens, taking a hovercraft that jets majestically over a projected-screen desert. John's been there before, and Pete's a WestWorld virgin. When they arrive, we notice immediately that several of the stewardesses, attendants, whatever, have blank, terrible, soulless dead eyes. These are robots, with fully articulated movements, limbs, and extremely subtle and realistic facial expressions, mouth movements, etc. What's the one thing that these amazing future-scientists can't quite get right? Their hands. (This is a pretty major flaw in how an actual android would be; Currently, Japanese scientists have created some pretty amazing robot heads, but the faces are really the hardest thing to pull off. It's a big problem in CG, too.)

The only real problem with this movie is that I can't bring myself to care about the characters. They're pretty poorly developed, and there are some basic attempts made early on to round them out. Pete's apparently recently divorced, though it doesn't really matter too much. Not much is known about John, other than he really gets into the whole Western thing. The major conflict arises when the robots arbitrarily decide that they're not going to obey the rules anymore, and start killing everyone. Again, there are some basic attempts made to scientifically explain this, like it's some sort of real virus spreading around between the robots. But it doesn't really matter.

The best part about the movie by far is Yul Brynner. He's essentially playing his role of Chris from The Magnificent Seven. He only has like four lines in the movie, gets shot up a couple of times, and mostly stalks around in a very robot-y way, first kiling John and then spending some time trying to kill Pete. He's also apparently the only robot in WestWorld, because when all the rest of the robots go crazy, it seems to mostly be localized in the Roman and Medieval worlds. He also might just have a longer energy reserve than the other robots (because the dumb scientists shut down all the power, which didn't do anything except seal off some rooms and their own doom). The movie never really explains how the Yul Brynner Gunslinger character is able to rampage for so long, but evidently, it doesn't really matter. Because, y'know. He's a robot, man! And he's unstoppable! Literally a killing machine, what's better than that? This film attempts to postulate that not much is in fact better than that.

Also, they take his face off, and it's pretty cool.

This review seems pretty negative, so I must have disliked the movie more than I thought. I took a lot of funny notes while I was watching it, though, so I did enjoy it. (Sample note: "He gives a robot girl that was being tied up a sip of water and her friggin' face shorts out, and smoke pours from her cheek/ear/side of hear head. Good job, idiot. You could have totally had sex with that robot.") It is also a testament that I watched it all the way through. If a movie is that terrible, I'll stop watching it.

It's not imperative that this movie be seen by millions of people. It's even less imperative that anyone go out and watch the sequel, Futureworld, where the amusement park is used to lure the rich and powerful to their robot-y doom. There was also an ill-advised and thankfully short-lived television series called Beyond Westworld, where I rightly assume that the only thing it was "beyond" was sense, rationality, and the notions of entertainment.

If you're a super-huge fan of Michael Crichton, you may want to watch it, just to say that you did. Or, you may just be a huge fan of Runaway, the unexpected flop starring Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons, which was unexpectedly overshadowed by The Terminator in 1984.

I give WestWorld two and a half faceless robot Yul Brynners out of five.

Jacob's Ladder: This Movie Is Totally Crazy

First and foremost, this movie is totally bonkers. Absolutely insane. It uses some unique techniques to create some crazy in-camera (non-post) special effects, and you really see how incredibly, mind-bogglingly tall Tim Robbins is.

Jacob's Ladder was directed by Adrian Lyne (director of Fatal Attraction) and stars Tim Robbins, Danny Aiello, Ving Rhames, Jason Alexander, just to name a few. It was released in 1990, and again, is absolutely whacked-out.

Tim Robbins stars as Jacob Singer, a Vietnam war veteran (with a Ph.D) who works in a post office. The film opens in Vietnam, as Jake and his army buddies joke around until they see movement in the trees. Then all hell breaks loose, and there are explosions, gunshots, and Ving Rhames starts having some kind of seizure. Jake is bayonetted by an unseen assailant, and then he wakes up. He's been home from the war for awhile; I don't think it ever really specifically says how long, but it's set in 1975, so he can't have been home too long. As the film progresses, he begins having strange hallucinations and visions of demons, as well as war flashbacks, seeming to be some sort of post-traumatic stress.

There is a ton of religious imagery and references in the film (his girlfriend's name is Jezebel, and his sons have biblical names). He consistently refers to Louie, his chiropractor (played by Danny Aiello) as an angel, an "overgrown cherub." He sees a faceless man (or a man with a bag on his head) everywhere, his face blurred and shaking (accomplished in-film by filming an actor shaking their head back and forth at a slow rate, then played back normal speed, resulting in a totally crazy blurring effect). Nobody seems to believe him, even when he falls ill with a 106 fever, and needs to be baptized in a tub of ice water to save his life.

It seems like a lot of movies feature dank, horrible, depressing hallways, especially in hospitals. After he's abducted by apparently military men/thugs, he beats them up and bails out of the car, hurting his bad back and getting robbed by a streetcorner Santa. When he goes to the hospital, they think he's a little crazy, since he says Santa Clause stole his wallet. He begins hallucinating again (or so we think), as they take him deeper and deeper into the hospital. He sees gibbering mental patients, deformed patients, his son's damaged bicycle (his son Gabe, played by Macauley Kulkin) was killed in an accident on his bike while Jake was in Vietnam), as well as a hallway of random organs and blood. The doctors there tell him that he's already dead, and he thinks that he's in hell. He eventually wakes up; his ex-wife and his sons stop by to visit, but he has more visions. Louie shows up later, raving about the conditions in the hospital, and carts him away, always the guardian angel.

During the whole movie, in addition to his other hallucinations and visions of demons, hell, etc., he also has random flashes and dreams of Vietnam, showing after he was bayonetted, his fellow soldiers finding him, helicopters, etc. This is one of the most interesting aspects of the film. Potential spoiler alert, although I think that 19 years after release, it won't be that big of a deal anymore. However, I don't want to ruin it for anyone that hasn't seen it yet (and I do recommend checking it out), there's some fair warning. By the end of the film, we discover that Jake never made it out of Vietnam. He dies shortly after being stabbed, and his entire post-war life is one long, detailed hallucination, an example of extended tachypsychia, a perception of distended time, where in the span of a few minutes before his death, he lives out a few years of his life, though towards the end, he begins hallucinating and catching visions of reality.

The point is, all the random flashes throughout the film about Vietnam are the only things happening in the real time of the film. Because they're so short, and the other segments are so long, the audience assumes that the Vietnam stuff is a flashback, and the rest is current. In reality, Vietnam is the only current event taking place, and the rest of the movie represent extended "flash-forwards," where he has hallucinatory visions on his deathbed. Not only is this a good plot twist and comes out of nowhere, it's a fantastic example of how the audience can be manipulated by expectation. We assume that the post-war stuff is "real," and actually happening, because we're given no conceivable reason to assume otherwise. In looking at it the other way, we see only about ten minutes of actual "reality," where even the seemingly normal post-war scenes are in fact hallucinations, featuring their own otherworldly twisted hallucinations as his brain begins to die, along with his body (this may explain his chronic back pain; additionally, in his fantasy world, he has a scar on his abdomen that is apparently the healed bayonet wound that he "survives").

The movie also brings up important questions on the nature of perception and reality as we experience it. Can we truly trust anything that we experience with any of our senses? Can we be sure that what we perceive as real actually is? Jake meets a man towards the end that claims to have been a military chemist, and Jake's platoon was being tested with an experimental drug designed to make soldiers more aggressive. It worked too well, causing the soldiers to attack indiscriminately and extremely violently (Jake is stabbed and killed by one of his own men, although it's possible that this is all fake as well, considering he's told this by one of his hallucinations). "The Ladder" is a drug designed to take soldiers straight down into base anger. He returns "home," to his ex-wife's place, and eventually sees his deceased son on the stairs. He climbs them with Gabe, and the scene is whited out. We then see that he's still in 'Nam, dying on a surgical table in a tent.

Louie told Jake that people that burn in hell are those that cannot let go; the fire burns all that away, and it frees the soul. If you have made your peace, the fire is cleansing, and the devils are really angels, freeing the soul. His entire life after the war is designed to help him let go of what he has been clinging to: his wife and children, and the guilt over his son's death, and of not being there when it happened (to prevent it, or even to grieve properly). It's all eventually burned away (get it, with the fever, and whatnot? It's metaphor!). He also climbs a "ladder" of sorts (stairs are like a ladder, sort of, it's a metaphor too, see?).

This movie really messes with the mind. It's difficult to accept anything at face value, and I can see how the ending could be less of a twist and more of a "What the...?" to some audiences. The fact that none of it actually "happened" or was "real" isn't really important. The idea of reality being up to our minds is pretty staggering. Basically, my face was like this by the time the movie was over:

This film is definitely recommended. It's worth four imagined lifetimes out of five, or four insanely tall Tim Robbinses out of five. Definitely check it out, just be sure to prepare your mind for a complete freak-job.