The Radical Child

A.I. Love Is Still Love, Dammit

Artificial intelligence has become a hot-button issue during the past few decades that would intensify over time in whatever fields it applied, were it for computers, factories, machines, and most recently, artwork. The fear of computers and machines becoming totally sentient causes major concern about the ultimate extinction of humanity and has inspired media such as the Terminator and Matrix series. One question maybe a few have proposed is "Can robots love?" The late director Stanley Kubrick acquired the rights to Brian Aldiss' short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," but its actual film adaptation would come to fruition from Steven Spielberg as A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

In the twenty-second century, climate change has obliterated an overwhelming majority of the world's cities, with female procreation becoming outlawed, and Mecha humanoid robots substituting for additional beings. In New Jersey, a couple, Henry and Monica, receive a prototype Mecha child named David capable of experiencing love, with their biological son Martin being in frozen suspension due to a rare disease. David befriends Martin's old talking robotic bear, Teddy, who accompanies him on his various journeys throughout the film, with some unexpected twists occurring early on that I can't really elaborate upon due to their spoilerific nature.

Stanley Kubrick was hesitant to flesh out his original vision for the film because he felt that CG wasn't advanced enough to create David and that no human child could convincingly portray him, but Haley Joel Osment did an excellent job in the role, with the other performances, like Jude Law as the prostitute Mecha Gigolo Joe, being superb as well. The visual effects are beautiful as well and have aged well, with John Williams' score also being emotional. References to Carlo Collodi's classic The Adventures of Pinocchio frequently abound as well. There is some occasional weirdness throughout the movie, but otherwise, I really enjoyed it and would consider it one of Spielberg's magna opera.

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The fourth Indiana Jones film, which had fallen into more significant protracted development than its predecessor, opens a little under a score after its precursor in 1957 Nevada, with an (almost) immediate dive into its main plot where Soviet forces led by Colonel Dr. Irina Spalko (and I’m pretty sure her being Ukrainian won’t resound well with audiences today), having captured Indy and his friend George “Mac” McHale, visit the government warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is in search of the eponymous crystal skull that can allegedly give great psychic power to those who return it to Akator. Like how the first three films took their inspiration from adventure serials of the 1930s-40s, the fourth movie takes its from science-fiction films of the 1950s, and for the most part it does a nice job in that respect.

Indy escapes from the Soviets and attempts to get help and at first seems to find it in a desert town, but as it turns out, it’s fake and was built to demonstrate a nuclear bomb, and he finds a hiding place in the form of a refrigerator, which alongside other lines and callbacks to the previous films gives it a significant lighter tone. Back at the college he teaches at, Jones encounters a greaser named Mutt Williams, who helps him continue eluding the Russians, the two going to Peru to seek the crystal skull, the Soviet forces continuing to give chase. In South America, Indy reunites with his old fling Marion Ravenwood, she and Mutt helping him continue their race for the skull, which brings with it some major twists and a conclusion that’s in some respects like Raiders of the Lost Ark’s.

For the most part, the fourth film did an excellent job mimicking the style of its precursors, John Williams’s musical score very much helping, with several riddles Indy and his companions follow, and Shia LaBeouf is in my mind one of the better sidekicks of the series. It’s certainly not perfect, but I think those who dislike it do so for the wrong reasons, the biggest of which is “the original films are untouchable,” and it is in respects like Raiders in that Indy could have just stayed home and nothing would be different, but there is the auxiliary effect of Indy reuniting with Marion, which is somewhat critical. I do hope they explain Karen Allen and Shia’s absences from the forthcoming Dial of Destiny, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it regardless since I’m not blinded by nostalgia like many critics and audiences hypocritically seem to be.

The first Indiana Jones film sequel, actually occurring chronologically before the first, opens with American songstress Willie Scott performing a Chinese rendition of the titular theme from the old Broadway show Anything Goes in 1935 Shanghai, where the eponymous college professor, archaeologist, and adventurer negotiates with Chinese mobsters in an exchange of treasured artifacts, which culminates in a shootout that leads to Indy escaping with the woman who semi-serves as a love interest, along with his trusty sidekick Short Round, portrayed by Vietnamese child actor Ke Huy Quan (who would ultimately append Jonathan to his name upon becoming a United States citizen, his other notable role being Data in The Goonies).

The party of three escapes on a cargo plane whose pilots eventually bail out, and after a lucky escape, they find themselves in colonial India, where the first village they encounter has lost a precious stone along with its children used by an evil shaman as child labor, and Indy decides to help them, traveling to a Maharaja’s palace for a hearty “meal”, and that night, after an assassination attempt, he finds a passageway into the eponymous temple, Short Round coming along and Willie following suit to rescue them from a trapped room that nearly kills them, although she needed to overcome her fear of bugs (which I very much share, so it would be hard for me in such a situation).

The remainder of the film involves the three dealing with the cult that stole the sacred stones and kidnapped the children and concludes satisfactorily. It’s very much a good film, but it’s probably my least favorite of the series due to being way too dark and gross at times, and when it originally came out showed the flaws of America’s film rating system (it was instrumental in adding PG-13 to it, although I more think it should have been rated R). Apparently in the eyes of the MPAA’s film raters, saying the f-word is a lot worse than ripping someone’s heart out or otherwise attempting to murder someone, which says a lot of the sorry state of how Americans perceive certain “offensive” content.

The film’s overall xenophobic attitude is another reason I don’t hold Temple of Doom to the in the same regard as other Indiana Jones films (and Short Round is a memorable sidekick, but not in a good way), given the portrayals of the Chinese and Indian people and society, and that I think is another factor to consider when giving movies content ratings. Even so, John Williams’s score is also notable, given the mentioned Chinese rendition of one of the older Broadway showtunes, along with several pieces fitting the Asian locales throughout the movie, along with “The Raiders March” and its various remixes, the ending theme worth sitting through the opening credits to hear. Not a bucket-list film like Raiders but has nonetheless aged well.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The late Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, which would spawn a highly-successful Amblin Entertainment media franchise, has an interesting style, with occasional intermediaries between a few chapters, not numbered in his magnum opus, depicting the evolution of a fractal curve in sync with the crisis that occurs at the book’s eponymous dinosaur-populated resort. After the beginning visualized fractal curve, Crichton begins with admonition about the commercialization of genetic engineering and how scientists tend to ignore national boundaries, believing themselves to be above the concerns of politics and even international conflict, with the private corporation InGen’s genetic crisis going unreported.

The official prologue of the book tells of a teenager who allegedly received an injury during a construction accident at the forthcoming Jurassic Park, when really it was the result of one of the more-intelligent dinosaurs resurrected from their period of existence, the vicious velociraptor. Another incident involving them occurs at the Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve, on the western coast of Costa Rica, where a young girl named Tina is victim to an attack by a diminutive dinosaur, after which comes a mysterious illness. Doctors deem the perpetuator of the attack to be the result of a normally-harmless basilisk lizard, except that the number of toes was inconsistent, the creature also having avian features.

John Hammond, the aged proponent of Jurassic Park, finds himself under suspicion by lawyers, although his he confident in his forthcoming resort, believing visits by attorneys to be purely social, and had used a diminutive elephant in past fundraising efforts for his scientific ambitions. In the meanwhile, the Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, California, calls a meeting of its board of directions, discussing InGen and the successful cloning of long-deceased dinosaurs. Another skeptic of Hammond’s dinosaur park is Ian Malcolm, skilled in chaos theory, who believes the resort to be an accident waiting to happen.

Archaeologist Alan Grant and his companion Ellie Sattler receive invitations to visit Jurassic Park, the two impressed by the successful recreation of dinosaurs, with Dr. Henry Wu being the mastermind of resurrection thanks to extracting dino DNA from prehistoric amber, filling in their gaps with frog genes, which somewhat proves critical to what ultimately happens in the resort. A high mortality rate in San José, Costa Rica, causes concern, given the possibility that dinosaurs and their respective influenza escaped the island. Wu himself desires “upgrades” to the park’s dinosaurs, rightfully wanting weaker incarnations, although Hammond disagrees.

John Arnold, in charge of the park’s control mechanisms, believes the resort’s computer systems to be secure, with the suggestion that Jurassic Park would ultimately come to feature “rides”. Crichton gives occasional factoids such as the greatest scientific advancements beyond the Second World War coming from private laboratories, as well as the inception of computers in the late 1940s due to mathematicians’ desires to predict the weather. Malcolm yearns to keep track of the exact number of dinosaurs on the island, with the revelation that despite Wu allegedly making all the animals female, they are somehow reproducing.

Disaster comes to encompass Jurassic Park thanks to the antics of the resort’s information technology specialist Dennis Nedry, who wants to make money off of frozen dinosaur embryos, with the electrified fences failing and a tyrannosaur escaping onto the main tour road, with John Hammond’s grandchildren Tim and Lex, along with Grant, Sattler, and the visiting lawyers, struggling for their lives, and Arnold doing his best to restore power and get the park back in order. The velociraptors prove just as big a threat as the t-rex, and given the crisis, consideration is given to bombing the island resort, with the novel’s ending hinting that the incident was only the beginning.

All in all, Jurassic Park is undoubtedly Crichton’s masterpiece, providing great sociopolitical commentary about the arrogance, danger, and fallibility of unchecked science and its consequences, with the agreeable implication that dinosaurs are better off extinct. Most of the introductory material is absent from Steven Spielberg’s iconic film adaptation, although many of the action sequences, with occasional diversions from the novel, are present. Some of the lamer elements of the film such as Arnold’s “Hold on to your butts” and Nedry’s “Uh-uh-uh!” are mercifully absent from the book, and aside from possible lack of visibility for the appearances of characters and the dinosaurs, I would very much consider it one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century involving the long-extinct animals.

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