Movie Review: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

First things first: if you are not a Battlestar Galactica fan, or if you haven't seen the series, then this straight-to-DVD movie is not for you. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan assumes that you have seen the series from beginning to end, that you know the characters and pretty much remember the main events.

The movie basically retells the events of the first two seasons from the perspective of the cylons. The central character is Father Cavil (a.k.a. Model One), or rather two Father Cavil's (one on Galactica, the other one on Caprica), as they plot the destruction of those humans who survived the cylon's nuclear attack on the planets of the twelve colonies. One subplot thus follows the schemings of Cavil on Galactica and on the other remaining ships of the human fleet, as he cleverly manipulates those cylons that have infiltrated the fleet to take actions against the humans, even if this is against their will: he talks a reluctant Boomer into killing Adama, and attempts to convince an unwilling Simon to blow up the ship on which his wife and stepdaughter live. Various Sixes turn up, too, in various guises and with varying inclinations to help Cavil.

The other Model One has attached itself to the struggling rebel group surrounding that other cylon, Sam, on occupied Caprica. This Cavil ends up developing sympathy for the humans - a plot point that seems contrived as it goes wholly against the grain of that character, even more so as his 'conversion' comes from a rather silly remark made by Sam concerning the nature of love.

The movie opens with both Model Ones being marched to the airlock, then flashes back to the destruction of the colonies (shown in starkly eerie details), then follows key plots from the first two seasons as the cylons keep sabotaging the fleet from within and attacking from outside; and ends with the truce proposed by the cylons to the humans and the demise of the two Cavils.

Using the rather odious character of Father Cavil as the central figure was a bit risky, but it works, mostly for the charisma of actor Dean Stockwell, even if he has a tendency to over-act at times. It's also nice to see the Simon character (Rick Worthy) getting a bit more screen-time, as this character was shamefully under-used in the series.

The movie uses a large amount of footage from the series and cleverly injects the cyclon subplots into them. Edward James Olmos' direction is fluid, the editing crisp, and the plotting faultness. As said above, this is more an exercise in style (or as some cynics claim, a last attempt to milk the hit sci-fi series now that it has run its course) than a movie that can be valued on its own merits, but it still amounts to almost two hours of good entertainment for those who have enjoyed the series.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Movie Review: District 9

Maybe it does take the name of a Hollywood name like Peter Jackson to catapult a non-Hollywood science fiction movie like District 9 into the awareness of international critics and viewers, but so much the better. This is one movie that deserves the hype that is currently building up around it.

District 9 tells, in mock-documentary style, the story of a middle-management operative, Wikus van der Merwe, who is pushed into the leading role of evacuating over a million aliens from District 9, the shantytown camp near Johannesburg, where the creatures have been held since appearing in a giant derelict space craft some twenty years ago. As Wikus leads the operation with a mixture of bureaucratic correctness and utter despise for the insect-like creatures, he becomes exposed to a chemical substance from the space craft and from then on slowly mutates into one of the creatures himself; whereupon he finds himself being a prisoner of his employer for the very reason that his altered DNA can trigger the alien weapons which a human cannot. What follows is a story told before, of a man who becomes what he despises most, and ends up having to ally with his former enemies against his former allies.

The story, written and directed by South African born Neill Blomkamp, is an obvious allegory of his country's apartheid past, and possibly also a comment on the xenophobic riots from a couple of years ago which left several migrant workers from South Africa's neighbouring countries killed by an angry mob. The use of a pseudo-documentary style is convenient for showing how far ingrained the racism towards the aliens has become in humans, with little or no sympathy being shown for the creatures throughout all the strata of human society. In this, I was reminded of the treatment that Romanian gypsies currently receive in many European countries, where media, right-wing politicians and un-reflected hearsay contribute to a deep but vague feeling of antipathy, accompanied by openly racist legislation in a number of EU countries, towards this 'alien' people right in our midst.

With its tight plotting, the movie manages to generate a feeling of unease that it does not relent throughout most of its duration, although some of it is mitigated through the cathartic shoot-out at the end. Wikus's mutation into an insect-like alien is highly reminiscent of David Cronenberg's The Fly; I found this not the only similarity to Cronenberg's movies - the said sense of unease and the slightly surreal, claustrophobic atmosphere are other common traits.

I also liked the fact the aliens were truly that - alien - for pretty much most of the film. Despite the human names the aliens were given, the creatures shared very few human traits - apart maybe from a certain gluttony. Again, towards the end, a movie-typical father(?)-son relationship ends up humanising the main alien character, as does the apparent bonding between Wikus and the alien. The last half hour of the movie is why I do not give the movie a 5/5 rating: despite being very entertaining (certainly to science fiction fans), the ending lets in a few of the Hollywood stereotypes that the movie was consistent enough to avoid until then. It can be argued that plot devices like the alien father/son subplot or the human/alien bonding help in bringing the movie's message home, but I think that it somewhat reduces the impact of a movie that for the most part remained intense because it remained different.

Finally, it should also be added that the movie's production is of great quality. Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop and Weta Digital companies have created top-notch special effects, and the aliens are certainly some of the best CGI creatures on celluloid. Also, as humans and aliens alike are variously blown or torn to pieces in very graphic detail, the film is not for the squeamish.

In summary, District 9 is one of the best science fiction movies of the last years, and does what sci-fi does best, i.e. use the fantastic and the futuristic to reflect upon human nature in the here and now.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Book Review: The Affinity Bridge, by George Mann

The Affinity Bridge contains everything you come to expect of a steampunk novel: automatons, airships, steam-driven cars and grisly murders in the smog, all this set, of course, in Victorian London. For good measure, author George Mann also throws in zombies and the purported ghosts of dead policemen. The good news is: the mix works.

The novel follows the investigations of Sir Maurice Newbury, an agent in the service of Queen Victoria, and his assistant Veronica Hobbes, as they look first into a series of murders in, yes, Whitechapel; and then into the crash of an airship and the disappearance of its automaton pilot; only to find out that both events are related. Along the way, the investigators come face-to-face with would-be-assassins of various ilk, and both of them have to face their personal demons - an addiction to laudanum for Newbury, a sister in a mental institution for Hobbes.

The characters are engaging, the plot moves along at a fast pace and is highly entertaining. The setting and the time period are well depicted without resorting to gross imitations of pseudo-period talk.

While the story does not really touch on some of the social issues inherent to the steampunk setting (or for that matter, found in the stories of the novelist who inspired the movement, H.G. Wells), i.e. the huge class discrepancies of the Victorian age, Mann does reflect on the not always positive intrusion of scientific progress into the everyday life by playing off Newbury's fondness for new inventions against Hobbe's dislike of the noisy, steamy and awkward new machines.

There are a few negative points to the book: the writing is at times stilted and awkward, resorting too often to stating the obvious; not least in the action scenes in which the narrative is too long-winded to be effective. Some of the dialogues are marred by overly long passages of exposition. My other, minor, point of criticism is that none of the steampunk ingredients are terribly original, all has been done before. The automatons, for example, are highly reminiscent of certain Doctor Who villains, which may not be a coincidence seeing that Mann has written Doctor Who stories in the past. But, as said above, Mann makes the stew of ideas work, which is what matters.

Overall, I give this book a 3.5 out of 5 rating.

Note: George Mann continues the adventures of Newbury and Hobbes in the recently published The Osiris Ritual.

Book Review: Extraordinary Engines, by Nick Gevers (editor)

Steampuk is a movement that has been generating more and more buzz over the last years. What started out as a literary genre had now branched out into other arts, crafts and lifestyle in general. For those not in the know: steampunk is basically Victorian science fiction by modern authors, much in the vein of 19th century authors like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, i.e. authors of what was then called scientific romances.

Michael Moorcock is generally credited with having written the first modern steampunk with his A Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy of books. The movement gained momentum, and its name, when cyberpunk icons like William Gibson, Bruce Sterling (authors of the defining The Difference Engine) and K.W. Jeter (credited with coining the term) started turning to the 19th century.

These pioneer steampunk authors not only picked up on the gimmicks invented by their 19th century counterparts (airships, submarines, steamdriven automatons, early computers as the one thought up in real-life by Charles Babbage), but also continued the themes dear to the likes of H.G. Wells: the ever-growing chasm between the classes, the colonisation of pretty much the rest of the world by a few European superpowers, the arms race and the extreme nationalism prevalent at the time, as well as the nascent feminist movement; the underlying message generally being that science mostly serves those in power.

2008 saw the publication of two comprehensive anthologies of steampunk fiction: Extraordinary Engines: The Definitive Steampunk Anthology, edited by Nick Gevers; and Steampunk, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. I will review the latter work at a later date, this article concerns therefore only Extraordinary Engines.

Nick Gevers has assembled in his collection a series of original fiction by some of the genre's most renowned authors, showcasing what the genre has evolved to over the years. The plots have branched out into adventure, swashbuckling yarns and detective fiction; the social message is not necessarily as prevalent as it one was (i.e. the punk ingredient has somewhat left steampunk). All this is reflected in the stories at hand. The most poignant one, Fixing Hanover, by Jeff VanderMeer still picks up on the themes of H.G. Wells as he shows the effects that the arms race and colonisation has on individuals involved in it and those who fall victim to it. Other works include espionage stories on submarines (Speed, Speed the Cable, by Kage Baker), a steam-driven boxing automaton who becomes a working-class hero (in the strong opening story, Steampunch, by James Lovegrove), a satirical take on early feminism (Lady Witherspoon's Solution, by James Morrow); as well as stories set in the future where steam still reigns; the latter sub-genre providing the only true steam-meets-cyberpunk story, The Lollygang Save the World on Accident by Jay Lake. Not all stories are set in Great Britain: Machine Maid by Margo Lanagan is set in Australia and a couple off stories are set in the USA.

Overall, the stories range from good to very good; not one is disappointing; and the collection certainly works as a stepping stone in exploring the steampunk in the works of the authors assembled in this anthology.

Extraordinary Engines: The Definitive Steampunk Anthology, edited by Nick Gevers, is published by Solaris.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Movie Review: Terminator Salvation

Yesterday I finally got around to seeing the new Terminator movie. I've been putting it off, mostly due to the bad reviews the movie has been getting in the US and over here. So last night, I expected the worst and came out having quite enjoyed the movie. This left me musing all day why I liked the movie and the critics didn't. I didn't find an answer, but left me with enough arguments to write my own review. So here it goes.

Here's what I liked in the movie: having moved the franchise to the much vaunted Days of Reckoning, the movie does a good job of conjuring up an apocalyptic mood. Rendered in almost colourless hues, with impressive CGI backdrops of bombed out cities, and with the constant threat of machines out to grab the last humans, the mood of despair and paranoia couldn't be better visualised. The action scenes are well orchestrated, and despite what one may fear, not as drawn out as they could be (but it is an action movie nonetheless). They leave enough room for character development, story telling and of course for repeating the message underlying the first Terminator movies (i.e., men and the rise of the machines etc.).

The cast is very strong, lead by the central character of the half-human/half-machine Marcus, played to great tragic effect by Sam Worthington, with great support from Moon Bloodgood, Anton Yelchin, Helena Bonham-Carter and others. The movie, to me, felt more like an ensemble film than did the previous movies, which I thought was a good thing as it did not rely on the "lone hero" cliché.

This brings me to the negative points in the movie. I see two main ones. One is that the director and/or writers obviously felt like kids in a candy store and came up with any machine possible for the CGI guys to implement. Was there really a need for sentient motor bikes, transformers, flying saucers and even machine kraken (though I liked those)? Less would have been more, and might have helped to focus the action on the sinister, skull-headed terminator models, who got pretty much side-lined but were the most impressive of the lot.

The other weak point of the movie: a totally underwritten, bland John Connor. The character which was supposed to take centre stage stays on the side-line, mostly because the writers did not provide him with a background (unlike Marcus, who gets an origin story of sorts). There is no link back to the boy of the previous movies; there is a vague attempt at continuity provided by the voice of Linda Hamilton on tape, but this doesn't really do the job of filling in the holes. There are some good ideas (the prophet who isn't believed, the good soldier who learns to disobey), but overall the John Connor storyline feels rushed and incomplete.

The pregnant wife that the writers plant at his side is treated even worse: she's there, she's pregnant, she utters a few lines - but we do not know where she comes from, how they met etc. etc. . The movie's makers could have created a more credible story line by developing a boy-meets-girl around John Connor, in parallel to the budding Marcus-Blair romance. This would have gone a long way of making the character more approachable.

So, in the end, the movie is carried by Sam Worthington, and while this makes the movie less than perfect, it doesn't make it anywhere near awful. The film delivers intelligent entertainment, and if the writers learn from their mistakes and concentrate more on developing John Connor, then the planned next two instalments should really work.

If this was a starred review, I'd give Terminator Salvation 4 out of 5.