Equilibrium. “The disease is human emotion!”

This, I came across on Netflix last night. It’s a sci fi thriller/ action film directed and written by Kurt Wimmer. So a couple of seconds in, we’re told that, in this dystopian future, it is against the law to feel emotion. I roll my eyes at this point. Then there’s the explanation. Quite often in sci fi films set in a world differing from ours, there has to be some kind of explanation of what has happened to make it that way, usually with the assistance of a voice over or subtitles where one paragraph fades to make way for the next. However in Equilibrium we have both subtitles and voiceover, only the subtitles didn’t display all of what was said in the voiceover, but select highlights. It was like watching an advert. A really boring advert.

But stick with it. I’m so glad I did. Because after the back story is fed numbly to us, Christian Bale walks in with his squad of emotionless beings and the action begins.

 

Here’s the plot. Bale’s character, John, is a high-ranking officer of a team of law enforcers. The world in which these people live has been created separate from the old world in which there are too many relics which may inspire emotion (art, literature, etc.) Emotion is forbidden in this new world because hate is what caused a 3^rd world war. The inhabitants of this totalitarian society have to administer an emotion repressing serum to themselves using this strange injection which also looks like a gun (into their neck, no less). Yum. Bale’s character drops his daily dosage one evening. Eventually he grows addicted to emotion cue all the crazy sh*t that’s about to go down.

There were some weird visual effects. One scene had Bale shooting at people in complete darkness and so the only light emitted was that from the gun as he shot it creating lightening type visuals. It was pretty exciting. I like Wimmer’s style.

This is probably the only situation in which describing dialogue as being devoid of emotion be a complement. And that is exactly what it was for the most part. And, to be honest, I think that is probably a hard thing to do!

Another difficult task was actually playing the role of an emotionless human being. The cast were brilliant. Bale, after stopping his dosage, had to play a man who had feelings but had to act as someone who didn't  It was acting within acting. Inception acting.

 

Ironically, through trying to prevent a war by eradicating emotion, they were actually at war with emotion which, in turn, lead to the uprise of a resistance. Bottom line? Humans love war? I must say, this film did not leave me with a positive outlook on life or on human nature. I do, however, think that it was an amazing film.

Brilliance, pure brilliance.

And to all of you who are familiar with Blake Snyder: I thought it was pretty funny that Bale’s character’s “save the cat moment” was actually a “save the dog moment”. Lol.

Also, if you want to see Christian Bale in another emotionless role, watch American Psycho. He really nails it.

8/10

Diversity in Alien species

Something that has always baffled me is Hollywood’s tendency to depict aliens in a certain way. The stereotypical alien is more advanced technologically and physically, and their intellect is a skyscraper towering above our humble shack of a brain. They usually have the ability and the tools to build space ships and weapons capable of shocking amounts of damage, have mastered movement at the speed, or exceeding that of light, and are often twice or even three times the size of a normal human being. Their skin is often translucent, and their bodies athletic and chiseled into the perfect shape for combat and running at high speeds.

                      

                          

Yet with all this in mind, they seem to lack one very important ability: coherent speech. I have only very recently noticed the lack of discourse that goes on between aliens in films, which is often limited to a series of grunts and high pitched noises. This is something I find highly confusing. Were it not for our ability to communicate with one another, our species of human would have died out thousands of years ago, and the less talkative homo erectus would be dominating the earth’s surface.

Could it be that aliens are conveyed to be the equivalent of our homo erectus? I find this utterly ridiculous for, without the ability to communicate with one another and share ideas, how would such a being be capable of building a paper aeroplane, let alone a spacecraft?

Another thing I find to be unfair in the depiction of alien beings is their lack of diversity. All aliens in one particular film look exactly the same, quite often it is hard to distinguish between the males and females. One exception to this would be the film ‘Aliens vs. Predators’, where two types of aliens (one from each planet) battle it out for the title of ultimate alien. Well done, Hollywood, for showing two different groups of aliens in one film. But again, we have to consider the fact that as human beings, we come in all different shapes and sizes, races and other physical differences. Correct me if I’m wrong, but in all alien films, aliens from the same species all look exactly the same.

There are no different shades of alien, no particularly short or particularly tall aliens, and for god’s sake, where are the overweight aliens? I’m sure other planets out there have a problem with obesity, considering how little humans have to exercise with the surplus in technological advancement which limit us to playing tennis in our living rooms. Surely aliens with even more advanced technology have even less reason to move at all…shouldn’t they all be overweight, then?

Or perhaps they choose to only send the strongest, most intelligent aliens to invade earth, in which case, I fully understand. But when it’s humans who invade (which is hardly ever the case – aliens are always the bad guys) still, there is no trace of diversity among the native alien clan. Why is it that they are all the same? Is there only one country on other planets? Do they all speak the same language? These are things that we, as casual sci-fi film watchers, don’t consider often enough, if at all. One exception that I can think of is the portrayal of aliens in Men in Black. From what I can remember, there is some diversity there. However they still look ridiculous.

I just want some more realistic representations of alien life forms which are relatable to humans. Not only would they be more realistic, but also they’d actually seem more threatening because their lack of tentacles or extra mouths/heads would hint at hidden capabilities. If we know what their weaponry is we can find ways to defeat it. if we don’t…well we’ve got the potential for an interesting sci-fi film

Starship Troopers

Its a Friday night, I'm home alone and I'm bored. I'm not trying to get your sympathy but I'm sure you will feel some for me after the end of this review. So I went on Netflix and, for those of you who live in the States, I've got to tell you how lucky you are because your Netflix has a way bigger selection of films. Our one in the UK has about 20 films on it. Not really but you know, we have limited choices. So I searched the thriller section as I usually do and came across this film called Starship Troopers. The name sounded familiar, it was under the "action thrillers" genre so I went onto the IMDB website and looked it up. It got 7 stars; I was sold.

So I got myself all cosied up, lights down low, iPad propped against a cushion, hot water bottle; the whole shebang. The first thing that struck me was that it was not going to be a serious film. It starts with an advert to join what they call the "Federal Service" which is, in essence, a space army. It's completely spoofy. The music was over the top while a reporter stood in front of a backdrop of disembodied limbs, encouraging viewers to join. Then suddenly we get thrown back a year to a high school classroom full of stock jock characters, bimbos and over-eager teachers. Then it slowly dawns on me that it was essentially going to be a teen-sci-fi-action-spoof-thriller and I'm thinking "how the hell is that going to work?" *spoiler alert* It didn't. 

"Kill them! Kill them all!" really does a great job of summing up the whole plot. And by them, I mean the giant alien bugs and by "kill" I do mean kill. Netflix wasn't lying when they said it was an action film. There were plenty of people getting blown up, ripped apart and having their brains sucked out, but what it did lack entirely, was suspense. The main criteria for a thriller is suspense which is why I felt cheated by Netflix and it is also why I feel as though, by putting this on my thriller review blog, I am, in a way, cheating you. I'm sorry. I just had to make those hours I wasted watching this film count.  

One positive thing I can say about this film is that the makers played around with the voyeuristic nature of us humans. There was another advert at one point for a live execution that evening. There was also live coverage of soldiers being killed. I was shocked at this, but then I thought, hey, isn't that what we're doing by watching this film? People do die in wars and, by watching war films, in a way, we want to see a reenactment of those deaths. We are sick, people! 

But back to the criticism: I remember thinking to myself, at various points: "interesting things are happening, but I'm not interested." I didn't care if any of the characters died. And that's because the characters were completely two dimensional. For me, there were no interesting character traits portrayed in any of them. They were all just basically killing machines. The above quote somewhat proves this.

And killing the bugs was very necessary. They, like most extra-terrestrial beings, were hostile creatures, and there was one bug in particular that I found very alarming. It kind of looked like a giant brain and, coincidently, it's favourite past-time seemed to be eating brains. So the one thing I can say I've learnt from watching this film is you are what you eat.

A fair 5/10. Watch it if you want to see lots of people dying in terrifyingly horrific ways.