READY PLAYER ONE SCORES BIG ON FILM

Do yourself a favor. Run, do not walk, to your nearest multi-plex, plunk down the outrageous amount of money they charge you to see a movie these days, buy some popcorn and settle into your seat for the most fun you’ll have in a theater this year. Go see READY PLAYER ONE, director Stephen Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s SFR tribute to Everything Eighties. You’ll thank me for the recommendation.

I was over-the-moon about the 2011 book that serves as the source material for this movie. For those of you who missed it, I’ll reprint my 2013 Spacefreighters review here, only because it serves to describe the film, too:

It is that rarity among modern SF—a readable page-turner of a book, with a wonderful set of characters, a lovable geek of a hero and even a little romance. Yes, romance!  An arc (barely discernible, but there) and **spoiler alert** an HEA!

The set-up is this:  in the near future the economy is collapsing in on itself, with the predictable energy and global-warming crises reaching critical levels. Those who can (which is anyone with a nickel to spare), escape the gray drudgery of daily life by logging into the Oasis, a virtual universe which is combination Internet/entertainment center/shopping mall/travel service/role-playing enabler/alternate reality. Think Xbox on steroids, with the ability to put you anywhere or –when you want. You go to school in the Oasis (that much is free). You shop in the Oasis. You travel to see the Pyramids in the Oasis (much too dangerous and expensive to try and do that in the real world).  Want to explore space with Captain Kirk (or Banzai Buckeroo or Captain Mal Reynolds)? There’s a world for that. Want to fight orcs with Aragorn? There’s a world for that. You just slip on your visor and gloves (or your full body suit or sit in your chair, depending on what kind of gear you can afford), become your avatar,  and slip away.

Then the man who invented all this, by all accounts an antisocial geek of epic proportions, dies. In his will he states that all of his worldly goods (and control of the Oasis) will be bestowed on the person who finds an Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the vast universe of his Oasis. The race is on, with our hero, a lowly nerd in high school at the beginning of the quest, matching wits with thousands of other experts on this man, as well as the bad guys, sent by a corporation out to gain control of the Oasis.

The fun part is that the inventor was obsessed with the 1980’s—its movies, music, TV shows, technology and, especially, videogames.  He’s filled his Oasis with sly references to all these things, and the quest for the Easter egg depends on knowledge of them.  So the author of Ready Player One can gleefully send his hero through stargates or use warp drive or have him fight robots with names true nerds would recognize (but I, regretfully, didn’t) because it’s part of the Eighties thing. One test for our hero had him reciting the entire script for MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL. Hilarious!

Fortunately, of course, our hero shares his hero’s obsessions.  He can actually play those ancient videogames, even the ones we might have played on old Commodore 64 computers and the like.  For those of us who can remember what it was like to type in instructions for role-playing games (which is why I quickly bored of such games and never went back), this book is a hoot.

Of course, some things from the book had to be changed for the film. The action elements were played up, the slower character interactions played down. In the film there were only three keys to the Easter egg; in the book there were, I think, seven. But the romance survived the cut. And seeing the Oasis on the big screen was worth every penny of my entrance fee. The CGI was amazing and just as imaginative as Cline’s agile mind.

Speaking of Cline, who was a newbie author back in 2011, that nerdy fellow must be walking on air right now. To see his quirky vision of the near-future up there on the screen, directed by no less a figure than Stephen Spielberg, must be a dream come true. I’m thrilled for him, and for all of us who can enjoy his success with him.

Cheers, Donna

THE SHAPE OF WATER: ROMANCE, BUT NOT SFR

THE SHAPE OF WATER, the unusual film now playing in cineplexes across the country, is billed as a science fantasy. And, as much as those of us in the science fiction romance community would like to see a romance between a lonely human and an apparently alien being light up the big screen, there are good reasons why this particular offering by creative genius Guillermo Del Toro doesn’t quite fit the SFR mold.

At first glance, the premise certainly seems to slip right into our orbit. In a hidden research facility, a mute (not deaf, mind you, just voiceless) cleaning person (Sally Hawkins) falls in love with the captive amphibian creature that is the subject of experimentation by a sadistic government operative (Michael Shannon). With the help of her partner on the cleaning staff (Olivia Spencer), a sympathetic scientist/Russian spy (Michael Stuhlberg) and her gay next-door neighbor (Richard Jenkins), she rescues her lover, and they make their escape together. SPOILER ALERT: Yes, they have their happily-ever-after. If you believe.

We have a lot of the standard elements of science fiction in this film, and though technology and “the future” are often invoked, they are seldom put in a good light. The setting is 1962, but none of the shiny, space-going optimism of that time is apparent here. The lab where the creature is captive is a dark, depressing place, far from the brilliance and can-do spirit of NASA. And what goes on there is more the realm of The X-Files   than THE RIGHT STUFF. 

Elisa, our heroine, by contrast, loves old musicals (in fact, she lives in an apartment above a movie theater) and old-fashioned romance. In one memorable scene in the film, she imagines herself dancing with her Amphibian Man to one old show tune. (Hokey, yes, but somehow it works.) She woos her lover with food (by sharing her lunch) and, later, music. And because she doesn’t speak, they communicate with signs.

You may have surmised by now that THE SHAPE OF WATER requires quite a lot of faith on the part of its audience. Like much of Del Toro’s work (PAN’S LABYRINTH being the best example), this film has a sort of dream-like quality that doesn’t lend itself to logical interpretation. It’s more magical realism than science fiction—beautiful, even touching on an emotional level. But not plausible.

This idea of plausibility—no matter how far-fetched or how far in the future—is what ultimately grounds science fiction romance for most of us. We rely on the science to create worlds in which things make sense (internally, at least). Love can still happen between aliens and humans—but lovers must be compatible somehow. Death can be overcome—with science. Happy endings can be found—if all obstacles have been overcome. 

I suspect those readers out there who say they never read science fiction are afraid those conventions won’t apply—that no matter how beautiful the writing or touching the story, it won’t be plausible to them. After having seen THE SHAPE OF WATER, I have to say I understand that point of view. The film is lovely in its way, but ultimately unsatisfying. I am sympathetic to these characters and their unique love, but I’m not sure I truly believe in them. 

Still, Del Toro’s creature is gorgeous; Hawkins, Shannon and Spencer are at the top of their acting game; and THE SHAPE OF WATER is like nothing you’ll see in theaters all year. It’s well worth a trip to see it. Definitely a GO.

Cheers, Donna

DESPITE CRITICS, PASSENGERS DELIVERS A GREAT RIDE

Science fiction romance demands a delicate balance that is not easy to achieve. For the romance to work, the hero and heroine must have a fiery chemistry that will attract an audience right away, and a bond that will survive all the obstacles we devilish authors can throw in their paths. For the science fiction to work, the world we create must be both believable and intriguing, expanding our readers’ minds in some way as they follow the story.

And if that balance is difficult to achieve on the page, just think how hard it must be to accomplish on the big screen, where it is so easy to overwhelm an audience with special effects on the SF side and neglect the much smaller-scale human interaction of the romance (MAN OF STEEL, OBLIVION, any superhero movie with a female love interest). After all, any number of great science fiction movies come to mind when the subject comes up. But only a handful of science fiction romances make the grade—AVATAR being far and away the best of them.

That’s why I was so excited to see PASSENGERS, currently in theaters, starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. Here is a film that satisfies on the SF side, with beautiful visuals of a lovely interstellar ship and of the stars themselves, with an external plot that is driven by familiar space-going emergencies. And yet, the romantic arc between the very appealing hero and heroine is central to the story, and, indeed, inseparable from it. Finally!

Pratt and Lawrence have just the right chemistry for this job, with the able catalyst of Michael Sheen in the role of a robotic bartender who serves as a sort of informal counselor to both parties. We are enchanted with their romance and root for them as a couple, just as we would in any rom-com. We want them to succeed together, despite the dark secret at the heart of their love’s origins, and in defiance of the challenges that inevitably come.

Of course, that dark secret (which I cannot reveal here for spoiler-y reasons), has thrown the critical world for a complete loop. PASSENGERS has been excoriated by the critics because of the ethical dilemma posed by this plot twist, which has been described as “icky,” “stalkery” and “misogynistic.” This from the same people who see the moral dilemma posed by a childless couple hiding the baby they found on a beach from its natural mother (in THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS) as high art.

This central moral question only makes PASSENGERS a much more interesting film, raising it a level above the usual space opera. The audience leaving the theater has more to talk about than just whether Pratt and Lawrence were good together or whether the special effects in the nul-grav swimming pool scene were cool or not. Viewers must decide for themselves whether what Pratt’s character did was justified or right or not; whether Lawrence’s character reacted realistically or as they themselves would. And, finally, they must determine whether the couple’s final solution to their external dilemma—a lifetime aboard a ship originally meant to be only a sleeper transport to a distant colony planet—is a good one.

As a romance reader, dark secrets and slightly stalkery behavior are really nothing new to me, either. Paranormal romance, in particular, is rife with such tropes. In fact, PASSENGERS could be said to combine SF’s well-known “Adam and Eve” trope with PNR’s “fated mates” trope to good effect. And no harm done. 

Science geeks will no doubt point out, too, that artificial gravity produced by spinning the ship would not cut out suddenly when the power went out. Thus the coolest scene in the movie (in my opinion) is scientific BS. Okay. It still looked awesome. I give it an “A” for conceptual effort.

PASSENGERS deserves much better than it’s been getting from mainstream reviewers. Go see it on the big screen and enjoy the best SFR film since AVATAR.  PASSENGERS is definitely a GO!

Cheers, Donna