TRON 3

Apparently, they have been mulling over the possibility of a Tron 3 for a long time.  However, two teaser trailers were released.  Tron 3 is going to involve the actions of Alan, RAM's creator, and Sam Flynn as they deal with their titular enemy -- the Master Control Program.

So, far, so good, Disney has a good sequel on their hands.  If they don't screw it up, we can get the Rest of the Story.  Why Edward Dillinger is working for ENCOM.  Why he's communicating with the MCP, and why he was so relaxed as to ENCOM OS 12 being released on the Web.

And why RAM's creator ("Alan, can I have some of your popcorn?") is doing Flynn Lives.  The Grid, which Flynn was creating, was to be the evolution of the Net before the Web took over.  And it looks like TRON 3 will be set not on the ENCOM mainframe or Flynn's computer lab -- but the Web.

Atlantis: Script progress

I signed up on Scripped.com and started writing the movie: Atlantis.  No Sea Devils yet, but you can be sure that they will show up.

Some notes:
Wizards and Druids = the Wise.  I don't want to call them wizards or sorcerers, I want to downplay it as much as possible.  The Wise are capable of casting magic.  There are different traditions that the wise follows.

There are scientists in the script, and it seems to be focused on science.

Priests = They are also part of the Wise.


I've got three pages done already.  I'll be adding more later.  The script has the feeling of "Star Wars under water."  In other words, the storyforming process demanded a story focused around an event rather than a character, an idea, or a world.  The movie should be science fiction rather than fantasy.  Oh, and meet the antagonists of this movie:

The Life of Brian, Commentary

I've watched the Life of Brian today.  Basically, if anyone thinks that this movie is offensive to Christianity or Judaism, you have to get a life and look closer.  The movie essentially is based on what might happen if someone were completely mistaken for the Messiah.  The Christ, as he was portrayed in the movie, wasn't put down or made fun of.  In fact, I think Christianity was reverently handled.  What the movie did make fun of was the sheep mentality.


The Pythoners are actually geniuses when they put together their entertainment.  When they do a movie, they make a lot of social commentary on their day.  The movie does ridicule Authority.  From the Pharisee at the beginning to Pontius Pilate.  May I stress that the movie doesn't make fun of the Christ.


Basically, Brian is born about the same time as the Christ, around 4 BC.  About 33 years later, Brian begins his adventures.  He has an abusive mom (Terry Jones, I think), no father, and a hatred of the Romans.  He falls in with the wrong group, gets into a raid on the Fortress of Antony in order to kidnap the wife of Pilate.  However, he's truly innocent when his group (the People's Front) meets up with the Judean People's Front and the both of them get into a tussle over who planned what first.


Well, they die, and he is the only one left.  The Romans capture him and bring him before Pontius Pilate who initially wants to crucify him for trespassing and being an accessory to breaking and entering.  However, Brian claims that he's the son of a Roman Citizen and they get him confused with Biggus Dickus -- Pilate's friend from Rome.  He escapes, after a prisoner says that he is envious that he's getting crucified.

Having reached his so called friends, he leads the Romans right to them.  And the Romans visit not once, but three times.  On the third time, Brian falls to the street and takes on the guise of being a street preacher.  He preaches the Sermon on the Mount as best as he could from the Savior.  However, the people mistake him for the Savior and starts to follow him around enmasse (there's the Sheep Mentality).  All at once the new cult -- the Cult of Brian -- starts up.  At one point he tries to tell them to leave him alone, and he's not the Messiah, but the people are drunk with Sheeple thinking.


The next morning, they catch him naked and try to get more insight out of him.  Brian denies having any authority and tries to get them to think for themselves.  However, they are so drunk with Sheep think that they all answer in unison.  Finally he escapes, but his girlfriend tries to tell him that they want him to be a leader.  He eventually gets captured by the Romans, and was crucified.  The Romans try to have him released, but they mistake his identity for another.  So the people's front comes along and like untrue friends they abandon him to be crucified.  However, the JPF comes along, announces that they are a suicide squad and then stab themselves to death with gladii.  It ends when Eric Idle breaks out in a song.

The brilliant thing about the movie is that the central message is that we have the right to work out life for ourselves and to think for ourselves.  Which I think is really one of the themes of Christianity.  We work out our own salvation.  And there are several times in the scriptures where Yahweh and the Savior promote independent thought (in the Bible as well as modern Revelation).

The other brilliant thing about the movie is that it really portrays Terrorists as being ineffectual.  Just as ineffectual as governments (not that the suicide bombers are ineffectual, they cause terror more efficiently than the JPF).  Finally, the Sheep think.  What is strange is that the movie subtly hints that people are easily brainwashed when they want to be brainwashed.  Sheep think is an easy way to brainwash a massive amount of people and this method can be taken advantage of through propaganda.

The strangest thing about this movie is that:
--- It offends Christians.
--- Atheists seem to love it.

Christians should not be offended by this movie.  I don't find anything in this movie that offends Christ.  But it does touch on how a cult or a church can be formed.  As for Atheists, I really don't know how they get their kick off this movie.  They either perceive it makes fun of Christianity in some way or they make fun at the people who are taken by Sheep think.  What I think is that there are many Atheists who say that they are Atheists but are really not.  I find most of them to be confident people even if they are outspoken against Yahweh or any other god.  If it does speak out against Religion, I think its the Sheep think of a lot of people that Religion so often takes advantage of.

The Pythoners should be exonerated of the charge of blasphemy.  Really, there was no blasphemy in the film.  It's an innocent film about the stupidity of people, especially while in the grips of Sheep think.  The movie does have nudity in it, but we are all naked underneith, so what is the big deal?  And yes, there is a suggestion that they did have sex, but really the movie's message isn't about getting us to have sex out of wedlock.  The real message of the movie is what could have happened if someone was mistaken for the Savior.  Enjoy the movie, and remember to form your own opinion.

Steal these heroes!

Mystery Men provides some interesting super heroes.



Especially Ballerina Man. :)

My movie Recommendations

These are all movies that give me that glowing "RPG" moment, moments where I have flashes of Creativity.  I say, if a movie can do that, it's doing its job.  Okay, this is in no particular order.





1. Clash of the Titans (1981, 2010 is like . . . hopeful).  This movie gave me my second "RPG" moment. Clash of the Titans, a movie about the Myth of Perseus, is perhaps the best movie I've seen.  Even if the Animatronics the Master Ray Harryhausen had worked with is dated.  Perhaps it was the monsters, perhaps it was the story, but I had my first "RPG" moment here.  I wanted to live the adventure I witnessed at such a young age.





2. Jason and the Argonauts (1963, 2000) I got my first very first RPG moment from this movie.  The movie is about the Argosy.  It's a classic RPG campaign.  Boy gets nearly killed, grows up, helps Hera across the river and loses a sandal, gets recognized by the king, promises to go on a perilous quest, assembles a crew which includes a woman and a transboy -- and the mightiest man in all Greece, goes sailing, nearly gets crushed, meets a beautiful girl, circumnavigates Europe . . . blah blah blah.  Yep, this story is a great RPG campaign.

3. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) I saw this today.  I Enjoyed it.  Because, somewhere between the Fury and Hades Palace I got the feeling that this would be a great RPG campaign.  I started dreaming up lots of monstrous encounters and suddenly the Olympian campaign felt fresh and wonderful to me.



4. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1982).  I must have gotten a deep desire for D&D Basic while watching this series (linked "The Dragon's Gift" -- anything with Granamyr is top notch!). This series made me want to roleplay He-Man and his adventures.  That was after I was reading the D&D ads in the comics, I'm so hooked!



5. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2001).  This movie was made by D&D fans.  And the voice actors had lots of fun.  And yes, I got a "RPG" moment from this movie.  Need I say more?

Part 2 coming soon!!

Movies, What they should be

Everyone loves the movies.

With a movie, theatre is brought into a new dimension that is cost effective.  A movie, printed on celluloid, allows more people to watch a film than you can pack into a theatre.  With a movie, you can watch the tales of Haggard's hero Allan Quartermain; or Indiana Jones (which has little resemblance to Allan Quartermain); Tarzan, or any number of subjects.  Movies that include realistic items like Chicago, or Silence of the Lambs, or even When Harry Met Sally.

The problem with movies today is that Hollywood takes them too seriously, or they lost the whole idea of a movie's purpose.  Some still have these good ideas: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, and more recently Avatar are good examples of good storytelling.

To me, the purpose of a movie is to either Entertain or to Educate.  In the purpose of Entertaining, a movie is supposed to be used to bring you into a whole other world.  For the purposes of Entertaining, a good movie speaks to the inner child and takes you a fun journey to discover a whole new world and to have adventures.  Movies have been following this purpose as long as movies have been produced.

Since there were silent films and talkies, films had been talking to the inner child inside of us.  The original Thief of Bagdad, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's  The Lost World (which is one of the best books and recent films I've seen), and screen adaptations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes with Basil Rathbone under the hat all the way to Rupert Everet and Robert Downey Jr. spoke to our inner child.  There was many women's films, many films for young boys (including the all time movie serials like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and Radar Men from the Moon); and films for young girls.  All of these had their purpose to entertain the human being and speak to his or her inner child.

The other purpose of films is to Educate.  Films have been used to educate, through entertainment, about a wide variety of moral and social issues.  Many of these moral films are given the rating of R by the MPAA.  Films like the Godfather, Other People's Money, and The War of the Roses are social critiques and moral tales.  Some films are taken from Shakespeare and are also social critiques, as Shakespeare wrote to critique his own society (Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, criticized the duel).

A good filmmaker would choose to make films in these two veins.  For the moral filmmaker, it is often better to tell an "R"-rated truth than to tell a "G"-rated lie.  For instance, to expose what happened at the foot of Sinai would attract Censorship: homosexuality, murder, adultery, rampant drunkeness, coveteousness, falshoods, disrespect to parents, choosing a different God to worship, creating an image of that God, and most everything you can possibly think of they did at the foot of Sinai.

Not only that, but history is full of unspeakable truths a moral filmmaker can explore.  The lives of Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, and Julius Caesar all have done terrible things that parents would not show their children.  But they all make good moral tales through their actions and what they were trying to achieve.  Caracalla, for instance, was a cruel emperor who built a lavish Roman Bath complex in Rome.

To create a moral film and to water it down for families is the worst thing a moral filmmaker can do if he wants to impact his audience.  He's crossing into the territory of the Entertaining filmmaker, who makes movies for the inner child.  For while the moral filmmaker tells about reality and seeks to educate the populace about Social wrongs, an entertaining filmmaker must give up his quest for accolades of Oscar to tell stories that entertain and speaks to the child.  In the case of the Entertaining Filmmaker, it's better to speak to the inner child and to make a PG-rated dream than a PG-13 misdream.  An entertaining Filmmaker, after all, stands on the shoulders of those who wrote movies for children.

Adventure, fantasy, and comedy are the realms of the Entertaining filmmaker.  You make a film to tell a story that speaks to the child.  It requires deft storytelling and deals with the universal morals of right and wrong, love and hate, and all the tools of adventure fiction that writers had used ever since.  Although there is room for social and moral commentary, the emphasis is on entertainment.

However, mix these two aims, and you get bad movies.  Ferngully is a great example, and by all reports, James Cameron has learned his lesson and created a fantastic movie by the name of Avatar.  Avatar has strong parallels with Ferngully, but James Cameron used the premise of Ferngully and improved it with the tools of Science Fiction (Avatar, by many reports, brings you into a whole other world, while Ferngully was a propaganda piece).

There is a third way for filmmakers to work, and that is in Documentary.  A Documentary filmmaker is also an Educating filmmaker since he is making a film that documents something in the world.  A recent example is March of the Penguins and the various Nova programs.  Here, a good filmmaker relies on his prowess to tell his story.  While Nova's The Elegant Universe was superb at explaining String Theory, a documentary filmmaker shouldn't be at all perturbed but inspired by this kind of filmmaking.

But it's better off if the Documentary Filmmaker can check and recheck his sources when he writes his documentary.  Filmmakers who don't do this may find themselves in trouble.

However, whether the filmmaker is a documentary filmmaker, or an entertainment filmmaker, or a moral filmmaker they are all at once storytellers.  They tell stories on film.  They are also responsible in anything they do.  A good film may entertain or inspire your watchers.  A bad film tanks.  A good film is enjoyed by all.  Some people may recognize it for what it is (the recent Sinbad animated film has D&D written all over it), others will simply enjoy it.  It's the duty of the filmmaker to bring truth to light: whether their film is excellent (Avatar, Star Trek), good (Night of the Museum), bad (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Ferngully), or utterly unspeakably terrible (Mars Needs Women).  A good filmmaker always strives for excellence.  A bad filmmaker is just wasting a hard drive and celluloid.

Atlantis: the Movie?

I'm taking part in a Wealth Building consultation exercise. Or in other words, I'm getting some help in starting my business from CEOSpace. So what does this mean?

How about a movie based on Atlantis? RPGs aside, mass communication is the best way to reach a large audience. I'm thinking about a movie plot where a young man from our time is Summoned to Atlantis to help solve a problem that the Atlanteans have. Nevermind he looks exactly like the Crown Prince, and nevermind that he and the Crown Prince are "doubles." (The crown prince is the counterpart of our hero).

(I could put in an El Hazard twist in there and the Crown Prince becomes the crown princess, and the crown princess is a hedonistic 'dyke.' -- but that's been done.)

So, what is the problem that the Atlanteans have? Terrible diplomatic relations with a neighboring country? Someone's been trying to take them over from the inside? Is our boy to be a decoy?

More at eleven (to twist this around, what if it was a she? And the Crown Prince identifies himself as female and looks very feminine?) Oh, the possibilities!!

A-Team

So, you want to see a movie full of Awesome Sauce? May I suggest - - - The A-Team?