![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
more fannish stuff
Sep. 16th, 2020 06:08 pmI got obsessed with Murderbot back in May when the new novel came out (some relevant tumblr posts, because I've been posting more there: exploding with feelings about ART and Murderbot and how they misunderstand each other, and a conversation about usage of names and pronouns by artificial intelligences in Murderbot); I want to vid it because of course any book I love I'm like "I want to vid this now lack of video source be damned." Anyway I have a huge collection of space/robot/cyborg/AI movies and shows I've been watching with an eye to collecting material for a Murderbot vid.
Gravity: tbh i spent a good 2/3 of this movie pondering what heist the Ocean siblings were trying to pull in space. also i am SO DEEPLY OVER "woman takes off space suit, wanders around in tank top and underwear." what a weird pointlessly objectifying trope. (Is it older than Alien? I mean, I remember it very vividly from Alien.) Also she's supposed to be wearing NASA space suit and like, that has specialized temperature-controlling full-body long underwear under it. Yes, this movie did make me spite research astronaut underwear. Also, did you know it takes like 45 minutes to get a spacesuit on, with help, it's practically impossible to get one on without help, so that scene where she goes outside in time for the space debris shower in under 7 minutes is just a bit beyond credulity.
Ad Astra: needs more Ruth Negga. There was a bit when she had just been introduced and some lackey is like "you can go now we're talking about things above your clearance level" and i was just like excuse you??? you're not even credited??? Parts of this were just headdesk. Like Brad Pitt's character (how did Rusty get separated from Danny and Debbie anyway? poor guy) sneaks onto a mission he's been banned from and in the first five minutes manages to ACCIDENTALLY kill everyone onboard. I was just like. Wow. I cannot make myself care about you. I had a really hard time figuring out when this was supposed to be set, and I finally decided it occurred approximately in the present but in an alternate timeline where basically every space probe or robot we sent out was actually humans/colonization. Mars was colonized when we sent Curiosity and Sojourner and Spirit and so on. The mission Brad Pitt's dad was on? Basically Voyager.
Edge of Tomorrow: funnily enough I didn't know about the time travel/loop element of this and was highly entertained! Also there is a chance I will end up casting Murderbot as the back of Tom Cruise's head because he's been in a fair amount of high-budget schlock and likes to do stunts that would be more readily attributable to someone with construct strength and speed.
Europa Report: I'd already seen this but decided to rewatch it, and I freaking love this movie, highly recommend if you've never seen it. It's a faux documentary of a mission sent to Europa. They encounter a lot of technical difficulties (parts of it are kind of space horror, a lot of characters die) but they are incredibly dedicated to scientific advancement and learning new thing and have this joy about finding life on another planet/moon.
Tau: Netflix movie wherein a dude is kidnapping like homeless people and sex workers (your basic serial killer move of going for the disposable people) so he can map their brains to make AI. There's a back of the neck glowing implant that's useful to my purposes. The kidnap victims stage an escape and most of them get killed (including the black guy, OH MY GOD) so the rest of the movie is a weird power play thing between Scientist Kidnapper and Attractive Blonde Girl. Tau is the name of an AI the guy already built, but finds imperfect, so it's limited to running his house and isn't allowed access to information. Scientist Kidnapper routinely puts Tau in charge of his prisoner so of course she bonds with Tau and gets it to help her in exchange for telling it about the world outside the house and looking up answers to things it wants to know and isn't allowed to read for itself. Ends in satisfying explosions.
Falling Skies: post-apocalyptic series about a semi-official militia of survivors of an alien invasion, starring Noah Wyle as scruffy hot dad protagonist. I'm about 2 seasons in (they're short seasons) and it's actually a lot more frequently about humans fighting amongst themselves than about humans vs. aliens. The mechs might be useful to me (combat bots?) so I keep skimming for big battles. The aliens enslave teenagers with a biotech slug they attach to their spines; unfortunately it is waaaay too big and organic looking to work for what I need, although the kids who have been freed and just have spikes sticking out of their backs might be useful to me. I have a complaint about an antagonist from like the second episode--the plot of that episode was a scout team gets caught by a post-apocalyptic gang of assholes who are like "society's over let's just rape and kill our way to the end" and I was like, oh no, they cast the leader of the gang too pretty, they're gonna keep him aren't they, and sure enough IMDB says he's in 48/50 episodes. I keep being like GOD why do they think they can make the murdering racist rapist a likeable character? And then I remind myself that I do know of post apocalyptic fiction where the good guys just don't put up with that shit: in Meg Elison's Road to Nowhere series, of which I've read Book of the Unnamed Midwife and Book of Etta, there's a lot of post-apocalyptic rape gang bullshit, but the town of Nowhere basically just decided they weren't having it. When people come to trade and offer to sell them their rape slaves, Nowhere executes the rapists and frees the slaves. People who responded to the apocalypse by enslaving and raping other people don't get any passes, they just get dead. So sometimes I watch Falling Skies and think to myself how if the pretty gang leader had showed up in those books, he'd just be dead. "well he saved so and so's life" he's a rapist, shoot him in the head. "he can cook!" don't care he's a rapist kill him. no excuses.
Gravity: tbh i spent a good 2/3 of this movie pondering what heist the Ocean siblings were trying to pull in space. also i am SO DEEPLY OVER "woman takes off space suit, wanders around in tank top and underwear." what a weird pointlessly objectifying trope. (Is it older than Alien? I mean, I remember it very vividly from Alien.) Also she's supposed to be wearing NASA space suit and like, that has specialized temperature-controlling full-body long underwear under it. Yes, this movie did make me spite research astronaut underwear. Also, did you know it takes like 45 minutes to get a spacesuit on, with help, it's practically impossible to get one on without help, so that scene where she goes outside in time for the space debris shower in under 7 minutes is just a bit beyond credulity.
Ad Astra: needs more Ruth Negga. There was a bit when she had just been introduced and some lackey is like "you can go now we're talking about things above your clearance level" and i was just like excuse you??? you're not even credited??? Parts of this were just headdesk. Like Brad Pitt's character (how did Rusty get separated from Danny and Debbie anyway? poor guy) sneaks onto a mission he's been banned from and in the first five minutes manages to ACCIDENTALLY kill everyone onboard. I was just like. Wow. I cannot make myself care about you. I had a really hard time figuring out when this was supposed to be set, and I finally decided it occurred approximately in the present but in an alternate timeline where basically every space probe or robot we sent out was actually humans/colonization. Mars was colonized when we sent Curiosity and Sojourner and Spirit and so on. The mission Brad Pitt's dad was on? Basically Voyager.
Edge of Tomorrow: funnily enough I didn't know about the time travel/loop element of this and was highly entertained! Also there is a chance I will end up casting Murderbot as the back of Tom Cruise's head because he's been in a fair amount of high-budget schlock and likes to do stunts that would be more readily attributable to someone with construct strength and speed.
Europa Report: I'd already seen this but decided to rewatch it, and I freaking love this movie, highly recommend if you've never seen it. It's a faux documentary of a mission sent to Europa. They encounter a lot of technical difficulties (parts of it are kind of space horror, a lot of characters die) but they are incredibly dedicated to scientific advancement and learning new thing and have this joy about finding life on another planet/moon.
Tau: Netflix movie wherein a dude is kidnapping like homeless people and sex workers (your basic serial killer move of going for the disposable people) so he can map their brains to make AI. There's a back of the neck glowing implant that's useful to my purposes. The kidnap victims stage an escape and most of them get killed (including the black guy, OH MY GOD) so the rest of the movie is a weird power play thing between Scientist Kidnapper and Attractive Blonde Girl. Tau is the name of an AI the guy already built, but finds imperfect, so it's limited to running his house and isn't allowed access to information. Scientist Kidnapper routinely puts Tau in charge of his prisoner so of course she bonds with Tau and gets it to help her in exchange for telling it about the world outside the house and looking up answers to things it wants to know and isn't allowed to read for itself. Ends in satisfying explosions.
Falling Skies: post-apocalyptic series about a semi-official militia of survivors of an alien invasion, starring Noah Wyle as scruffy hot dad protagonist. I'm about 2 seasons in (they're short seasons) and it's actually a lot more frequently about humans fighting amongst themselves than about humans vs. aliens. The mechs might be useful to me (combat bots?) so I keep skimming for big battles. The aliens enslave teenagers with a biotech slug they attach to their spines; unfortunately it is waaaay too big and organic looking to work for what I need, although the kids who have been freed and just have spikes sticking out of their backs might be useful to me. I have a complaint about an antagonist from like the second episode--the plot of that episode was a scout team gets caught by a post-apocalyptic gang of assholes who are like "society's over let's just rape and kill our way to the end" and I was like, oh no, they cast the leader of the gang too pretty, they're gonna keep him aren't they, and sure enough IMDB says he's in 48/50 episodes. I keep being like GOD why do they think they can make the murdering racist rapist a likeable character? And then I remind myself that I do know of post apocalyptic fiction where the good guys just don't put up with that shit: in Meg Elison's Road to Nowhere series, of which I've read Book of the Unnamed Midwife and Book of Etta, there's a lot of post-apocalyptic rape gang bullshit, but the town of Nowhere basically just decided they weren't having it. When people come to trade and offer to sell them their rape slaves, Nowhere executes the rapists and frees the slaves. People who responded to the apocalypse by enslaving and raping other people don't get any passes, they just get dead. So sometimes I watch Falling Skies and think to myself how if the pretty gang leader had showed up in those books, he'd just be dead. "well he saved so and so's life" he's a rapist, shoot him in the head. "he can cook!" don't care he's a rapist kill him. no excuses.
