We wrap up Apocalypse August with a review of the lighthearted Pixar film, Wall-E. It is a pretty creative film that manages to tell large parts of the story without words. Knowing that this film would have to in many ways be similar to a silent movie, the crew spent a year watching silent films and learning the craft, and it paid. Wall-E is a fun comedy that manages to make some on the noise points about our modern society.
Continuing on our journey through the apocalypse we take a look at Escape From New York, and briefly Escape From LA. I…..remember these movies both being better. Not to say that they are bad, but i remember them just being better. Regardless, they remain fun romps and Snake Plissken is one of the rogue characters ever created. These movies are fun, just don’t dive in as the pool is shallow and may crack your head.
Slow. Glacial. Plodding. The adjectives don’t adequately describe the utter absence of action or drama included in the movie IO, The Last On Earth. To be fair IO isn’t supposed to be a fast paced action romp. This movie aims for heady and thought provoking. The problem is that it misses. The intended discussion of human nature, culture, the value of love and basic human interaction, as well as the responsibility of humanity to be the ecological caretakers of Earth, is disjointed and jumbled, without focus or clarity. Paired with a story that has a paper thin plot without an antagonist or identifiable protagonist or conflict, results in a lackluster and boring tale that also isn’t though provoking. This movie is utterly forgettable.
Apocalypse August kicks off with Book of Eli, a film in which Denzel Washington is on a quest to get a copy of The Bible to safety. The film does a great job using a simple plot, get the object to the destination, to show a decimated and dangerous post nuclear winter Earth. The movie effectively uses setting and score to convey the desolation that has become the remnant of America. The entire time I was watching this movie I kept thinking it would make a great side quest in Fallout 4, but I digress. Book of Eli is a simple story that keeps you interested and immerses you in setting. It is not a tour de force, but its pretty good.
We had so much fun with terrible movies in Apocalypse August that we decided to bring it back for 2020. It’s like Die Hard 2 - Die Harder - Apocalypse harder Sickies! We kick it off with Book of Eli on 8/6
Jericho, or proto Walking Dead, is an intriguing post apocalyptic drama were rogue elements within the United States government conspired to detonate nuclear weapons across major cities in America. The reason is unclear but basically it is seen as the only way to destroy a corrupt system and rebuild a government that works. The result is a United States split into three parts, The Allied States of America, The Republic or Texas and the legitimate successor to the United States government in Columbus. The series tracks one small town in Kansas and its inhabitants efforts to survive. It also has Morgan from the Walking Dead and Billy from Scream, so hey.
Give Me Sci-Fi or give me death month continues with a review of 1984, George Orwell’s dystopian classic. This movie/book/story is so dystopian is has its own branch of dystopian fiction, Orwellian. The reputation of this story is well deserved. It presents the perils of communism, surveillance, state controlled media, propaganda and history better than any story before or since and in today’s current climate is more relevant than ever.
We continue give me Sci-Fi or give me death month with a discussion of Logan’s Run. I find this film to be underrated. It certainly has problems from a technical story telling perspective, but it dives deep into a dystopian post apocalyptic world in which the remaining settlement has finite space and resource, and solves those issues by requiring everyone to die at 30. In order to make people willingly sacrifice themselves society has a myth that some, if worthy, will be renewed for a longer life. No one is ever renewed. With everyone knowing that death occurs at 30 society is understandably hedonistic. Eat, sleep, get it on and be merry because life ends at 30, you don’t have to worry about long term consequences. It is an interesting look at how a dystopia can be a utopia on the surface, and how society loses any drive to better themselves when they live a decadent and scarcity free life.
Logan’s run is a flawed film, BUT, it makes you think about a lot of things, which not every film can do.
What better way to kick off give me sci-fi or give me death month than with possibly the greatest patriotic science fiction movie ever - Independence Day! Okay maybe it isn’t the greatest patriotic movie, but it has the greatest patriotic speech ever? Well maybe greatest isn’t the right adjective to use for this movie, but it remains pretty good and something I won’t turn off it is on tv. That’s good right?
July - in America we celebrate our independence from Great Britain. So it seemed like this month should all about Patriotism or seeking freedom from oppression. Or something like that.
We conclude conspiracy month with the most nerve wracking, confusing, ignorant and absurd of them all - flat earthers. Yes, there is a growing, vocal, crazy movement of people who believe the Earth is flat and NASA and all world governments are working together to hide the truth from all of us, because, um, I don’t know, something.
Wacky, wacky skeptics. Last week we explored the conspiracy theory that the Moon landing was faked. Once those conspiracy theorists were thoroughly and resoundingly debunked, they changed their tune. We did land on the moon. We however stopped going because we encountered aliens and we were told to stop coming to the moon…or something like that. Aliens are on the moon, because they need an advance staging base to attack Earth. Beings that can travel light years in space need a staging area to attack us, and require more than 50 years to set it up.
This one is only topped by next weeks conspiracy.
If you make a short list of the most famous and most enduring conspiracy theories nearly all of those lists will contain this one. Somehow, starting almost immediately after July 20th, 1969, this theory was hatched. Maybe it is because of the sheer immensity of the task of placing a human being on another world, maybe it is because the video evidence was grainy, and maybe it was just born out of the distrust that characterized the late 60’s and 70’s, but regardless, this endures even to this day. For whatever reason a small though sizeable about of people refuse to believe that humanity has reached and walked on the moon. We investigate and debunk this conspiracy in symptom 153.
Bigfoot - why can’t we ever find him? Well according to the Ancient Aliens crew it is because Bigfoot is a transdimensional alien. Or maybe he is a creature made by aliens to mine gold for them, who then mated with primitive humans to create us. Or maybe he is part of an advance scouting force to either conquer us when the time is right or let the aliens know when we are ready to be attacked. Confused? Me too. But it is Ancient Aliens and they never make sense. But the general idea is…bigfoot is an alien and “THEY” are hiding the truth because…reasons.
June is conspiracy month, but not the good ones, the crazy ones, like Bigfoot is real and an alien, the USA didn’t land on the moon, or we did and aliens made us leave and finally, the Earth is really a flat disc people. Wake up! Stop believe mainstream science and believe the guy, who thinks is “could be possible” and remember, the truth is out there.
We have talked about him all month, and for this symptom we are joined by Don O’Malley from Don’s Breakfast Serial on YouTube! He helps us review Undersea Kingdom - which stars Crash Corrigan. It is awesome. It is a little derivative of Flash Gordon, but Flash Gordon is derivative of Buck Rogers, so its ok.
Symptom 150. Doesn’t’ seem like it has been that long, but it has. It has been a labor of love, certainly not profit. Here we are though, 150 Symptoms in and it is time to review the 1936 Flash Gordon serial. It’s a lot of fun. It is well paced, plot driven, well acted and with characters that you come to care about and enjoy. It is easy to see how this comic strip turned serial spawned two more serials before 1940, multiple movie adaptations and shows and has stayed part of American and world culture for 84 years.
For this weeks episode we review The Fighting Devil Dogs from 1938. This serial is fantastic. It has a villain that inspired Darth Vader, a lackey/henchman who is every henchman stereotype but played perfectly and a great mix of action, suspense and mystery. This serial, while not perfect, is fun, inspirational and very well written and acted.
The Phantom Creeps is a 1939 serial. It has everything old science fiction is about, mad scientist trying to conquer the world, revenge, robots, invisibility cloaks and an underground secret lab. What else could you want? Well better pacing. But, it also stars Bella Lugosi! So it gets points back - and it inspired the Star Wars crawl.
The Phantom Creeps - it is someting
In the month of May we are going really old school - reviewing serials. For of you that don’t know what that is the movie theaters used to show portions of a movie before the main movie. Maybe next month we will review more silent films!