WARNING: REINCARNATED SPACE SPOILERS AHEAD
I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time, mainly because I feel like they’ve been promoting in forever. Given that it is up against Seventh Son, a fantasy film, nerds have plenty to watch this weekend, though these films may be cannibalizing one another’s profits since their core audiences are going to be the same contingent of geeks and dweebs.
That’s not an insult geeks and dweebs. I am one of you.
And sadly, since they’re both movies that cater to a younger crowd, I think they’re both going to be trounced by…dun dun dun… Spongebob: Sponge Out of Water.
But enough about business talk.
The plot? It turns out that worlds aren’t so much natural occurrences as they are business assets of a corporation owned The Abrasax family. The three heirs, played by Eddie Redmayne , Tuppence Middleton, and Douglas Booth, as heirs to a fortune often do, squabble over their inheritances, always trying to gain more planets for themselves.
But they don’t want to rule them. They want to harvest them. We’re all basically cattle and once a planet’s population exceeds its resources, the Abrasaxes have all of the people killed and somehow they are turned into a juice that can be bathed in to reverse the aging process.
Umm…good luck with that. All I can say is if you bathe in a juice made out of me, you’re going to be pretty disgusted.
Somehow, and they don’t really explain how, but Jupiter Jones, played by Mila Kunis, is a reincarnated version of the Abrasax kids’s mother. That’s a problem for them, seeing as how their mother, before being murdered by Redmayne’s character, Balem, wrote it into her will that her reincarnated self would inherit Earth.
Sidenote – this movie realized that I’ve done very little to ensure that my assets will be transferred to my reincarnated self, and thus as soon as I’m done writing this review, I’m going to get my attorney on the horn posthaste.
Keep in mind that at the start of the film, Jupiter has no idea that she’s a reincarnated space queen. She was born a Russian immigrant and cleans rich people’s toilets for a living.
Middleton’s character, Kalique, is happy to have a version of her mother back. Booth’s Titus contrives a scheme to marry Jupiter, claiming that doing so will protect Earth and keep it out of Balem’s grubby mitts. However, Titus has his own evil plans.
Here’s a rundown of a conversation I had with the Wachowskis in my mind as I watched the film:
ME: So this guy is trying to marry a reincarnated version of his mother?
WACHOWSKIS: Yes.
ME: That isn’t incest?
WACHOWSKIS: No. She’s not actually his mother. She’s his reincarnated mother.
ME: But she’s his mother brought back to life so…
WACHOWSKIS: SHUT UP AND WATCH THE PRETTY SPECIAL EFFECTS!!!!
Anyway, Channing Tatum plays Jupiter’s protector, Caine Wise, a human-wolf hybrid, and at this point, the man’s abs must be a multi-million dollar business.
HOLLYWOOD: Channing, we want you in our next picture.
CHANNING: I’m gonna have to charge you a million per ab.
And much to my surprise, Sean Bean was in the movie and he didn’t die. He dies in every movie he’s in, so it was kind of a disappointment that his character didn’t bite the dust, buy the farm, or kick the bucket.
All in all, for a February film, it was pretty decent. I’ve seen ads for this forever, and when a movie is hyped for this long, you kind of go into it expecting your socks to be knocked off, and usually they never are. But sci-fi nerds and space geeks will be pleased. The Wachowskis of Matrix fame are masters of the genre and they don’t disappoint with their special effects skills. People fly, there’s space craft warfare, and so on.
Plus, the scene lampooning the bureaucratic process that Jupiter has to go through to be named Queen was amusing.
One minor complaint – there were a lot of characters, aliens, technologies, organizations – in short, just a lot going on. It leaves you with questions that unfortunately a movie just doesn’t have time to answer.
The special effects alone are worth seeing on the big screen though, and let’s face it, you’ve got nothing else better to do this weekend, so go see it.
Gonna go out on a limb here and guess this is a robot.
Geeks, dweebs, nerds, and poindexters of the world, assemble, for I have a doozy of a question for you.
What is the difference between an Android and a Robot?
As we’ve previously discussed, I’m working on a science fiction novel, and seeking the advice of nerds everywhere for help. Don’t be offended by being called a nerd. It’s a badge of honor, really. Frankly, who wants advice about robotics from a non-nerd?
This is total nerd stuff, baby.
I find that in the science fiction world, the words “android” and “robot” are often used interchangeably. But should that be the case?
The best advice I’ve found thus far:
“A robot can, but does not necessarily have to be in the form of a human, but an android is always in the form of a human.”
– Edmond Woychowsky, TechRepublic – “The Difference Between Robots and Androids, 2010
Click here for Woychowsky’s Full Article
Well, wait a minute. That sounds simple enough at first, but what about C3P0? He and his buddy RD2D are invariably referred to as “droids” in the Star Wars universe. Haven’t you heard the infamous line from Obi-Wan Kenobi, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for?”
C3P0 has a torso, arms, legs, a face with eyes, he is definitely modeled after a human, but he’s also built out of a golden colored metal, his arms and legs only move so much, his eyes are pretty much just sockets, and there’s just a slit where his mouth should be.
That’s not exactly a human, is it? What did Edmond have to say?
“It can be argued that an android should be able to pass as a human in natural light. So, if you subscribe to this belief, C-3PO from Star Wars and R. Giskard Reventlov from Isaac Asimov’s The Robots of Dawn are robots, not androids.”
Seriously? So George Lucas got something wrong? In addition to Jar Jar???
So, if you take this android vs. robot information seriously, then C3P0 is a robot. The robots from the film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, are robots (that’s a given, since they didn’t call it, I, Android).
Rosie, the Jetson family’s maid, is a robot. C3P0, Rosie, and the I, Robot bots, all might have human-inspired designs, but if you were to see them, you would say, “Hey, that’s a robot!”
Apparently, the question of whether an “artificial being” is a robot or an android boils down to whether or not you can tell when you first meet said being. As Woychowsky notes, Data from Star Trek: Next Generation, does appear to be a human, “albeit with an odd complexion.”
As an additional example, I would submit that Ash from the original Alien movie is an android. He was so passable as a human that this is actually a major plot point of the film – he was passing as a crew member but in secret, was an android with a special mission. For part of the film, the audience doesn’t even know he’s not a human.
So what say you, readers? I need your nerdy opinions, because the novel I am working on, and sadly, procrastinating on, might feature robots, or it might feature androids, but I want to make sure I’m using the right terminology so that my nerd credentials are not questioned.
“A towel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
If you haven’t read it yet, you really should.
Happy Election Day!
We here at bookshelfbattle.com (and by “we” I haven’t decided whether I am referring to the royal “we” or to the mouse in my pocket) are non-political. Whether you are Republican, Democrat, Independent, or if you belong to one of those odd parties that believes we should turn the government over to space aliens and/or robots, all we want to do is to discuss something that transcends party lines – the written word. Also, we want your clicks – your sweet, sweet web page clicks. So while you’re already here, don’t be a slacker – click on an extra button or two.
Have you ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams? It is by far one of the funniest novels ever written, and it is a fairly short and easy read, so there’s no excuse to not check it out. Honestly, you should be ashamed of yourself for not reading it already. Go read it. I won’t bother to get into the plot because I intend to have a review of this book coming soon.
Adams wrote a number of sequels set in the Hitchhiker universe. Here’s a quote from one of them that provides some proverbial food for thought:
“The major problem-one of the major problems, for there are several – one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” – Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Of course, Adams was discussing the intergalactic politics of his fictional universe, but it still applies to today’s politics. In my opinion, today’s political contests have basically become glorified beauty contests where the person who talks the fastest, promises the most, or looks the best wins. Abraham Lincoln would never win an election today because the media would be all like, “Who cares if he’s the Great Emancipator? Have you seen his craggy face?!”
Sure, there are many politicians who run because they want to do good deeds and believe their ideas are just and true. On the other hand, there are a lot of politicians who just want to see their names on signs and get lots of fame and applause.
There are many intelligent people who would be great leaders who shy away from the entire process because their intelligence tells them that they might as well ignore politics altogether rather than get involved and have the media pepper them with questions like, “How many times did you pick your nose in third grade? Nose-picker Gate! Film at Eleven!”
In conclusion, whether you are a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or Friends of the Space Aliens Party – enjoy watching tonight’s election results. May the candidates that suit your personal agendas be victorious and as always, may you crack open a book and share your literary wisdom on bookshelfbattle.com
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