Earth Girls are Easily Cast

Link: The Problem With The Lady Aliens In 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' (And Most Space Films)

I think many commenters are misunderstanding the article. As far as I can see, it's not against the casting of babe roles in scifi. The complaint is that in a multi-species main cast, the male characters, while certainly including some beefcake, will likely ALSO have a lot of diversity and extremes of phenotype, while any female character(s) are likely to be relatively more heavily anthropomorphized, if not plain human, and fit the one body type.

Photograph: Allstar/Lucasfilm/Sportsphoto Ltd

This has happened with other mixed-species scifi "super teams" too: Star Wars, Farscape, Andromeda, etc. As a general rule, it appears that xenomorphism in the main cast is more likely and more extreme with male characters than with female ones.

I'm guessing that one of the main reasons this happens is that mixed-species main casts in scifi -- because of the shows' intended audience of human males -- tend to be (a) disproportionately male and (b) disproportionately human, with the central characters almost always human or practically indistinguishable from human. If you only have one or two females on your team, and you need to have some potential for a romantic subplot for the human male lead, you can't make make them sexually incompatible from a biological perspective. If FemRocket, FemChewbacca, FemBem and FemPilot were the only females in their respective casts, pairing them with a human character would be imagined as some kind of zoophilia. You might argue for intra-species non-human pairing, but given that multi-species casts also typically have at most one of each non-human species (scifi tokenism), that does not look likely to happen either.

The only solutions I can imagine would be more visibly non-human leads and/or more female main cast members. And maybe junking romantic subplots, but I doubt we will ever see that day.

Film review of Pacific Rim

A lot of comparisons (and contrasts) have already been drawn between Neon Genesis Evangelion and summer "Gundam vs Godzilla" flick Pacific Rim. I do wonder if this is the closest we will come to seeing an NGE-like film in our lifetimes - the plot and backstory of NGE is far too complex for a popular action film.

The human drama was about as cheesy as would be expected of the genre, with tropes and archetypes galore. There's a convenient plot device of the world-saving war machine needing cooperative piloting by two people, setting the stage for inter-protagonist tension. There's a bumbling scientist duo, people with dead relative trauma and daddy issues, a tough general dude in need of a chill pill, a cocky superstar warrior in need of humbling, etc. There's even what appears to be a tribute to Samuel L Jackson's death in an infamous creature feature.

The rest of it, however, was spectacular. A lot of the film is set in urban coastal East Asia, which is great for battles in colorful cities and beautiful sea locations. It's also closer to home for the Japanese origins of both of the film's constituent genres. I really liked how the mecha - called jaegers in the film - were designed and implemented. These things were so huge they could wade around littoral waters like they were in paddling pools. As were their opponents, the kaiju - extra-dimensional monsters invading Earth. Each kaiju and jaeger had distinctive looks and unique characteristics (which I'm sure will be great for toy lines), from extra arms and specialized weapons to claw tails and bio-EMP.

Guillermo del Toro was a good choice for this film, as he is great with choosing the right imagery - a sort of Mexican Tarsem Singh. The battles take place at night, so the urban glow, jaeger feature lighting and kaiju bio-luminescence really come through for a great overall look. Both jaeger and kaiju tower over most buildings, inspiring awe in the viewer, and their mechanical and biological aspects of each were well-executed. The battles featured little use of ranged weapons, except as finishing moves; they would rapidly descend into what can basically be described as massively super-scaled epic bar brawls (justifying the jaegers' otherwise-unnecessary humanoid forms), complete with the opponents wrestling, butting, pummeling, and using available objects to bludgeon and hack at one another. Which is simply glorious.

★★★★☆

Tron: Legacy (2010)

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy

The original Tron pioneered rendered 3D vector graphics and the virtual world immersion on the big screen, so much ought to be expected of any successor's visuals and script. Thankfully, Tron: Legacy stays clear of rehashing, and takes the sequel route instead.

The story is actually surprisingly good. Sure, there's the "mystery meat" science that makes use of techie buzzwords and codespeak to effect plot devices and quantum-leap over minor technological hurdles (like taking a human being of flesh and bone and transforming him into a computer game character and back). But aside from that, Legacy's writers pulled a few twists that caught even a seasoned trope-prescient like me by surprise (including a reverse Empire Strikes Back moment).

Years after the events of Tron, Kevin Flynn is working on something revolutionary when he suddenly disappears, leaving behind a young son, Sam. In his late twenties, Sam receives the keys to his fathers arcade/office from the author of the original Tron program and gets digimatizified, or something like that, when he activates the feature accidentally. Now a part of the computer system, he has to fight his way back out against lethal games and malicious programs.

Visually, the film is stunning. The CG clones of Jeff Bridges are almost completely convincing, and he himself puts in some good acting for this one. Besides, the black body suits are much better than the white ones in the prequel film, and the costumes are overall a definite improvement. The vehicles, from massive recognizers to gleaming light cycles to grand carrier vessels, are vast technological and design improvements, whilst retaining enough similarities to the originals to serve as worthy homages for the nostalgic (new ones were thrown in by the designers too). Speaking of nostalgia, there is the occasional 80s music score, but the background music is a huge improvement over its over-dramatic counterpart in the first film. Daft Punk, yeah.

Try seeing Tron beforehand, if you haven't - it really won't spoil anything anyway. But do see this - it has a great combination of homages for the fans of its predecessor, and new cutting edge designs to appeal to those with more modern tastes.

Avatar

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy

James Cameron's first work in all three top posts (producer, director and writer) since Titanic, Avatar is Cameron's essence on celluloid. The movie, as expected, featured stunning visuals and effects. These production values are the result of over a decade of preparation, as Cameron paced about his lair, waiting for the technology that would befit the realization of his glorious cinematic vision. No doubt, this was the right time for him to strike, as computer animation and 3D technology have made sufficient progress to produce such true-to-life works as Final Fantasy and Beowulf.

Now, the plot is fairly simple and cliched, as has been oft-mentioned. Something of a blend of The Last Samurai and Pocahontas, the trope of the spiritual, noble savage's battle against the technologically-advanced greedy imperialists is no stranger to mainstream scriptwriting, nor is the trope of the outsider "going native". The parallels are too overt to dismiss. The costumes, the body paint, the language - they all point in the general direction of real peoples from Earth's history. The badness of the bad guys is also portrayed with no holds barred, depicting ruthless enthusiasm for iconoclasm and slaughter, and corporate self-interest utterly devoid of conscience. There are even some not-particularly-subtle references to the Bush doctrine. Oh well, I think there's little point critiquing a caricature.

Now, the universe that Cameron built. We have some rather revolutionary flora-fauna design to look at, featuring heavy doses of bioluminescense. While most of the lifeforms on the planet are obviously inspired by familiar terran creatures, there is plenty that sets them apart in an alien way. Although the "bonding" is a little over the credulity limit, I won't fine for that, considering it was done with a bioelectric plot device instead of the usual telepathy nonsense that passes as scifi too often. Aside from the inexplicable "flux zone", Pandora was, in my opinion, believable as an extraterrestrial habitat. It's not just a few creatures plonked down on a terranesque planet - Cameron actually put effort into designing some pretty novel animals, insects AND plants for an entire biosphere. I believe it's all in the movie's companion book, along with the language that Cameron created for the natives.

Speaking of the natives, although I understand that Cameron has to make money off this film, I am nonetheless a little disappointed that he decided to significantly anthropomorphize the Na'vi. Aside from being slightly taller, having smooth blue skin and sporting a tail, there is not much that sets them apart as a race that evolved on a different planet. While the stereoscopic vision, opposable thumbs and general symmetry are credible convergent features, I think he could have at least made the Na'vi hexapodal and quadrupedal like Andromeda's Vedrans (especially considering that most fauna on Pandora seem to be hexapodal), or given them digitigrade "toe-walker" limbs like Starcraft's Protoss. Their faces are strongly anthropomorphic, down to the hair, lips, eyebrows and two neat rows of human-like teeth. For some inexplicable reason, the Na'vi females have human-like breasts, which Cameron apparently insisted on adding. I understand that the idea behind this design is to enable us humans to identify and empathize with the Na'vi. But if the point of the film is to pontificate about extending rights and respect to intelligent alien lifeforms, isn't having to do it by make them look strongly human missing it? Considering that cephalopods are one of our closest non-mammalian competitors in the intelligence department, would we make calamari platters of them if they looked like squid?

Enough with the nitpicking, though. Avatar is still a must-see film, especially in 3D. Being immersed in the universe of Pandora and its myriad colorful inhabitants is a delight, and production and direction are as superb as can be expected from James Cameron. The film starts moving quickly, and generally remains well-paced throughout the two and a half hours it runs. The plot, cliched as it may be, has enough believable devices and universal appeal to make the film watchable on that level too. This film was more expensive to make than was Titanic, but it is worth every cent.