Childhood's End - 'The Children'

Karellen's final announcement interrupts Harvey, just to prove that he's a dick.

Beset by crowds of children and with Milo constantly calling them, the Greggsons move to the enclave of New Athens, where the last flowering of human cultural achievement exists in a state of willful imperfection, separate from the Overlords' golden age. Milo conducts tests on the children of the world, all of whom are rapidly manifesting psychic powers. And in Missouri, Ricky is dying, and rejects Karellen's offer of a comforting hallucination of his honeymoon with his dead first wife.

Milo sees disaster in Jennifer Greggson's eyes and has his girlfriend vacuum-pack him for shipment to the Overlord's planet. For him the trip takes 48 days; for the Earth, 40 years. Karellen announces that humanity's time is over; their children have become something else and will soon depart to another state of being, and that no more children will be born. We are then treated to a montage of children floating away from their crying parents and one woman discovering she is no longer pregnant, because fuck you that's why.

And then New Athens explodes.

"Well, there goes the neighbourhood."

Milo learns that the children are joining with the Overmind, a universal consciousness formed of the last generation of almost every sentient race in the cosmos. the Overlords are an evolutionary dead end, a race who will never ascend, and who act as the Overmind's emissaries. Returning to Earth, Milo finds that everyone is dead, with just Jennifer Greggson, the catalyst and focus of change, standing on a mesa somewhere, channeling all the energy of the world into the act of ascension, destroying the world in the process.

As the end comes, Milo begs the Overlords not to forget humanity, and to keep something of their culture. When the Earth is gone, Karellen leaves one song to hang in space as a memorial.

The final installment of this adaptation wallows in its desire to make the story of humanity into a human story. Ricky Stormgren spends most of the episode dying, or in the hallucination of his first wife, leading to an emotional payoff when he declares his second wife the true love of his life that has next to no impact, because this really isn't his story and it's hard to invest in him. Since the end of 'The Overlords', he's basically just been a hanger on, tangentially involved at best through Peretta's bullshit Christian assassin subplot.

For identification purposes, we are not the Midwich Cuckoos.

The focus on Jennifer Greggson also hampers the broader story, and the necessary contraction of the time scale and bigging up of the seance and the Overlords' intensity makes the natural evolution of the last children of humanity to join the Overmind look like a deliberate act of cosmic child-snatching (and the less said about the sudden and arbitrary termination of every ongoing pregnancy on the planet the better.) What took decades in the novel occurs in a single generation, and the resulting emotional whiplash is clear in the characters, who transform a sedate and thoughtful work of philosophical speculative fiction into a histrionic angst-fest. The children too are so instantly and utterly alien that it's hardly surprising that they are seen as being 'taken', and their survival as representing nothing of humanity. From all we can see, they might as well be a battery for the Overmind, as the eroding of identity is replaced by the nigh-deification of the catalyst, Jennifer.

I don't know if Childhood's End is unfilmable, but certainly in this instance the drive to connect the story to a continuous human cast has dramatic and deleterious effects on the story and its fundamental purpose. The endgame of the story is the loss of individuality, and by focusing on individuals instead of the broader human story, that step becomes more antagonistic, the overtones more sinister. I guess the thinking was that without clear and consistent protagonists the story is less accessible, but I suspect that this is a story that would benefit from a bit of detachment. It's a shame, because there's a lot in there to like and there was real potential for more.

It was also frankly awesome to see the SyFy Channel investing in something weightier than another Sharknado movie.

Childhood's End - 'The Overlords'

This is certainly a series that makes some bold visual choices.

Into a world on the brink of environmental collapse come the ships of an alien race. They temporarily halt all transport, silence all communication and harmlessly ground all aircraft, then use the images of dead loved ones to send a message. Karellen - the self-styled supervisor for Earth - announces that they are here to help and to prevent humanity destroying the planet and themselves. They choose Ricky Stormgren, a Missouri farmer and natural leader to be their sole contact with the people of Earth.

Media mogul Hugo Wainwright, distrustful of the aliens, dubs them the Overlords and uses social media propaganda to drum up distrust, while Ricky struggles to overcome resistance to the often high-handed methods of the planet's benefactors. The Overlords provide clean power and a massive programme of resource redistribution, but run roughshod over national sovereignty and personal property rights, resulting in a continuing support for Wainwright's Freedom League, while other groups voice fears that the Overlords will eclipse the concept of God. All the while, Karellen refuses to appear in his true form before the people of Earth.

Inner city kid and aspiring physicist Milo (who narrates the opening bookend from a post-apocalyptic future) is shot by a gang banger after his mother gets into a fight with a rival drug dealer, but the Overlords intervene, killing the shooter and restoring Milo to life, at the same time healing his lifelong paralysis. As their good works begin to drown out the Freedom League's message, the League kidnaps Ricky and threatens to kill him if the Overlords do not withdraw and allow humanity to fuck up the planet on their own schedule. Karellen acts to rescue Ricky, but not before allowing Wainwright's fanaticism to subvert his own message and thus removing the last organised resistance to the Overlords' project.

I was if nothing else impressed that they went full demon for
the Overlords.

In their last meeting, Ricky uses a camera to shoot a picture of Karellen through his one-way mirror, but he and his wife agree that Karellen was right to hide himself. Even fifteen years later, when the supervisor deems it time, the world is shocked to see his true appearance. The watching grown ups are horrified when Earth's 'guardian angels' turn out to be towering demons, but the children smile in acceptance.

This new miniseries adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's first successful novel makes a number of changes, for better and for worse. My familiarity with the source is limited to this opening part as I have only read 'Guardian Angel', the short story which Clarke adapted into the opening section of the eventual novel, so I'm not claiming to be an expert.

Like the earlier BBC Radio adaptation, the miniseries opens with a character in the end days of Earth, which is kind of OMG spoilers. It also massively compacts the timeline of the series, so that there can be continual protagonists, whereas in the book each section revolves around a different cast of characters, and the gap between the arrival and revelation of the Overlords is fifty, not fifteen years. I guess it makes sense to have a more consistent cast for television, but it makes a bit of a mockery of the whole concealment thing when they don't leave long enough for the generation who have grown up with the Overlords all their lives aren't in charge yet. Also, so far the series hasn't mentioned the Overlords' first visit to Earth, but that may come later.

Finally in the headscratching side of things, the book's ambassador for Earth is Rikki Stormgren, the Finnish Secretary-General of the United Nations, representing a form of international authority and more importantly hailing from a largely neutral nation. Switching this character for Missouri farm boy Ricky Stormgren puts the voice of the Overlords slap bang in the middle of perhaps the most hated international playground bully since the European empires of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and results in the aliens' directives being effectively issued by the USA, with Stormgren flanked by dodgy Secret Service assholes. This muddies the waters significantly. Stormgren even notes to Karellen that the worst thing for many people would be if the Overlords, the beings sitting in judgement of the world, were just other humans with a bit more tech throwing their weight around. In essence, by working through the US, this is what they become; the parallels are too great, despite their almost Communist agenda.

On the other hand, the series makes an excellent fist of updating the present-day setting. in particular with the Freedom League's use of social media and soundbites to obliquely liken the Overlords to the Nazis or to farmers fattening stock for market. The use of the image of planes being lowered between skyscrapers was also a very potent and bold visual, a gentling of the great American nightmare image of the 21st century.

So far, the adaptation has been pretty good, holding to the basic ideas of the book with just a little compression of time and an increased US focus. The fact that part two is called 'The Deceivers' instead of 'The Golden Age' however gives me pause.

12 Monkeys - 'The Red Forest'

"I recognise you from the cast shot, don't I?"

It's 2043, and Cole is very confused, as apparently West 7 is in charge of the facility under a one-eyed Ramse's command. The absence of Railly's message meant that Cole was killed on arrival, and a vengeful Ramse now runs the place as a shelter for his people. In addition, the virus was released a year early, in 2015, as part of something called Operation Troy (some people think Trojan Horse, but even if this is a TV meaningful op name, I am minded more of Apollo striking the hubristic Greeks with plague.) Persuading Ramse and Jones to risk everything by burning out their core to send him back, Cole returns to 2015 and recruits Railly's ex, the rather hapless Aaron, to help him rescue her from the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

While they are successful - despite Aaron at one point shooting past-Cole in the shoulder, and then leaving the gun in the car - there are a couple of other changes that are not undone. Railly is subjected to a hallucinogenic brainwashing attempt, led by the Pallid Man's female colleague, in which she seemingly meets with 'the Witness', plague-masked leader of the Army. The unnamed woman leads Railly's brainwashing with a repeated mantra:

"You are walking through a red forest and the grass is tall. It’s just rained. Most of the blood has washed away. There’s a house in the distance, cedar and pine. You’ve been there before. You’re not alone. There’s a man. You see him, you go to him. You know him, like a memory of tomorrow."

"Are we remaking Twin Peaks already?"

I'm calling at this stage that the Witness - who 'has plans' for Cassandra Railly - as well as the corpse, is Cole. The woman also refers to a 'Brotherhood' who 'will know what to do', which suggests that the Army is not the extent of the Witness's forces; unless the Witness answers to the Brotherhood.

Perhaps of more immediate import, Jennifer 'Head Full of Codes and Secrets' Goynes is picked up by corporate security. We are told that the corpse Cole destroyed was just the source of the virus, and that the refined version is still in play somewhere. Aaron's senator boss mentions Operation Troy in reference to an overseas crisis. Jennifer could put the virus back in play for the Government as a weapon, and thus back into the reach of the Army.

Oh, and there's a cyberterrorist doing a publicised whistle blow, more Julian Assange than Chelsea Manning. Not sure what he's about yet.

12 Monkeys - 'The Night Room'

"One guy, three girls, multiple timelines... I'd probably be more weirded out
by a love tesseract if I wasn't already crazy."

This is it, the culmination of Cole's quest to eliminate the plague which ravaged humanity, which happens to coincide with the Army of the 12 Monkeys' charge to liberate the plague. The Night Room has been located by both sides, the secret laboratory housing the precursor to Leland Goines' viral strain, but who will get there first?

We open with Cole and company celebrating the last night of their timeline. It is clear that they are getting increasingly desperate as the time machine breaks down. We then proceed to the usual cross-temporal division of the episode into the siege of the Night Room and some hard truths in 2043.

"Funny story; we're totes the good guys. Go nature!"

In 2015, Cole and Railly are captured by the Pallid Man and his masked commandos, who torture first Jennifer and then Cole until Jennifer opens the vault, only to be defeated by a secondary failsafe system. With time running out and corporate commandos on the way, the Army seem to leave, only to dummy Jennifer into opening the vault for Cole, the only person she trusts, leading to a desperate gambit.

In 2043, Ramse, frustrated that none of their efforts seem to be paying off, learns that Jones has sent others back in time, with horrific results. Their confrontation is actually the emotional core of the episode. Ramse believes in having standards - it's what got them hounded out of West 7 after all - and that their actions matter even if they are going to erase this timeline; Jones also believes in standards, specifically of life, and holds that the loss of learning and culture wrought by the plague is unacceptable, and that a thousand years of reconstruction just to return to where they began is not enough to constitute 'survival' for humanity.

This also hints that the precursor, a partial corpse held in the Night Room vault, may be the infected remains of a previous traveler, if not of Cole himself.

"I'm just a soul whose intentions are good..."

The Pallid Man - in between sliding bamboo splinters under Cole's fingernails, explicitly for shiggles - affably explains that he serves the cause of 'the Witness', the Army of the 12 Monkeys' prophet. He sees the precursor and its viral descendants as a divine weapon to scourge the Earth and restore 'the natural order'. Tom Noonan is working his mojo hard on this one, and the taut rage behind his eerily avuncular exterior is a big part of what sells the episode.

As he tries to set Cole's allies against him by revealing his crimes (the murders of Leland Goines and Henri in Haiti,) Jennifer's reaction ("That is... awesome!") has more punch to it than Railly's disappointment. Her anger doesn't really have enough edge, given the level of trust she has put in Cole and how much she has sacrificed for his cause.

'The Night Room' isn't as good an episode as 'Atari', but it's not without its strengths. In particular, with the core concept of the story flagging over series length, it shakes things up by closing with Cole sucked back to a very different 2043, Railly captured by the Army and Jennifer Goines free of all constraints and, apparently, possessed of every one of her father's security codes. The show's game was sort of played out, and as Ramse noted the future is not being erased, even by the incineration of the precursor. At this critical moment, the show has changed the game.

Sleepy Hollow Series 2 - 'The Kindred' and 'Root of All Evil'

And he's the good guy.

Following on from 'This is War', Abbie and Ichabod's campaign against the end times is dealt a blow with the arrival of the new sheriff, whose skepticism sees Captain Irving (series 1 regular Orlando Jones) moved to the local psychiatric hellhole and Ichabod and Jenny removed from active involvement in investigations. Meanwhile, Henry Parrish makes his presence felt and Katrina plays a dangerous game with the two horsemen; her ex-fiance and her vengeful son.

In their attempts to rescue Katrina from the Horseman of Death, Ichabod and Abbie clash over the former's decision to summon the titular monster in 'The Kindred', a Frankensteinish construct created by Benjamin Franklin, completed with the head of the Horseman and empowered with a spell which begins 'That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.'

Lovecraft FTW.

There's what? About thirty of those pieces of silver?

In episode 3, 'The Root of All Evil', Parrish deploys another weapon against the Witnesses; a Tyrean scheckel which invokes seething feelings of betrayal. Interestingly (I thought) although the characters believe that it causes people to become traitors, what is actually shown is that those affected perceive themselves as the victims of betrayal. This may or may not become relevant, especially as Katrina seems to be working some he said, she said mojo on the Horsemen.

A minor subplot involves Captain Irving being manipulated by his new lawyer, Henry Parrish, while a larger one revolves around his replacement. Sheriff Reyes has history with the Mills sisters, having been responsible for sending their mother to everyone's favourite Arkham-esque asylum, and is not convinced by claims that the end times are upon us. Whether her aim to restore sanity to Sleepy Hollow is reasonable yet misguided, or part of Moloch's plan B remains to be seen.

Sleepy Hollow is a little predictable in parts ('The Root of All Evil' opens with an uncharacteristic spat between the Mills Sisters which belongs in mid-Season 1 and exists only to set Jenny up as a target for the coin), but continues to be suspenseful. It's drama is effective, and the humour - primarily in Ichabod's continuing fish out of water stance - works. Highlights of the latter include his rant against the credit culture and the following from 'The Root of All Evil':

Crane: Is that considered acceptable now?
Abbie follows his gaze to see two men in a cafe, holding hands
Abbie: Oh... lots of attitudes have changed since your day. Not everyone's, but the Supreme Court has upheld the Constitutional right of same-sex couples. And more and more states are even legalizing gay marriage. 

beat
Crane: I meant gentlemen wearing hats indoors. I know about homosexuals, thank you. I trained under Baron von Steuben. His affections for his own sex were well known. Also, I watched the finale of Glee.

Sleepy Hollow - This is War

The main thing to note about War is that he may have the body of Denethor of
Gondor, but he is well metal.

At the end of Season 1, Henry Parrish was revealed as Ichabod and Katrina's rogue warlock son Jeremy (and also War, the second horseman,) sealed Ichabod in his grave, gave his mother to her spurned suitor (now Death) and left Abbie trapped in Purgatory. Season 2 opens with an apparent non-sequitur in which Jeremy learns the location of a key which can unlock Purgatory, but inadvertently tips Ichabod off to a means of rescuing Abbie.

The series takes major points for linking a plot-important occult key to Benjamin Franklin's kite experiments. Ichabod turns out to have been Franklin's rather reluctant apprentice for a time and has a few choice words for that Founding Father, providing a welcome change of pace to his reverence of Washington and Jefferson.

'This is War' kicks the tension up a notch, while maintaining the series' humour (Ichabod records a touching last message on Abbie's phone, only to discover that the recording has failed due to lack of memory.) As he proved in both The Lord of the Rings and in 50-75% of Fringe, John Noble makes a truly sinister villain with a flare for soft-spoken craziness. If the forces of Moloch are to have a face, then his is as good a face as any.

Noah

Darren Aaronofsky made the film π. It was small, incomprehensible in parts, and deeply bizarre, assuming a techno-magical basis to Jewish mysticism. Aaronofsky's Noah is like that, only huge.

The film describes the antediluvian civilisation of the descendants of Cain as a vast, world-spanning technological empire based on the exploitation of 'zohar', a mystical stone holding a spark of divine power. Having corrupted and destroyed both Creation and the Watchers, fallen angels who once tried to help them, men have proven unworthy and the Creator decides to wipe them out.

It is to the line of Seth that God entrusts the saving of the innocent; the creatures that have never fallen from the grace of the Garden. Aided by the surviving Watchers, Noah and his sons create the Ark, and place two of every animal in a drugged stupor to ride out the coming flood.

Antagonism is provided by Tubal-Cain, last king of the people of Cain, and by the clash of Noah's conviction that all men must die and his family's hope to begin anew in the new world.

The film is a weird mashup of Biblical narrative and pseuod-divine science fiction, and there is a weird inconsistency that comes from not really cleaving to one in preference to the other. Overall, it is an interesting film, with some fantastic cinematography and production design married to decent performances from a strong cast. The palette of the film is predominantly grey and brown, which can be a bit wearying on the eye, but in that palette the design is sumptuous, and the exceptions are striking for their contrast. On occasions, the actors are shot purely in silhouette against a vivid sky, while the green land where the Creator (never God, at least not from the descendants of Seth) still has some sway stands out starkly against the barrens of the Cainites.

Thor: The Dark World

Euro-posters FTW.

So, here it is; the long-awaited sequel to Thor. This review is, as usual, going to be pretty spoiler-heavy, but I will start off with my spoiler-free impressions, which pretty much boil down to five or six lines of the letter E and more exclamation marks than is dignified.

I liked it; a lot. It managed to balance the absolute menace of the Dark Elves with competence on the part of the Asgardians (so often the new big bad just makes the supporting goodies look like chumps, and that's no fun), the romance with the action, and balls-to-the-wall adrenaline with plots and counter-plots. It's no Inception, but there are enough turns to keep things interesting, and pretty much no-one in the film is extraneous.

Except perhaps Hogun.

Okay; the details.

We open with a very familiar bit of narration, which is pretty much the opening of Thor with 'Jotun' replaced with 'Dark Elves', 'Odin' with 'Borr' and the frost casket replaced with the Aether, which is the worst thing ever, okay.

Flash forward, and with the Bifrost repaired, Thor is busy re-establishing the Pax Odin in preparation for his own rule, while pining over his inability to return to the girl he loves. There are a few hints that his friendship with Sif might have grown into more without his time on Earth and that Odin hopes it still might, but thankfully this never becomes a big drama, and Sif's primary motivations remain friendship and loyalty.

Jane Foster, meanwhile, is tracking holes between the nine worlds, and accidentally releases the Aether, which takes root in her body. Thor whisks her to Asgard, but the Dark Elves wake and follow, unleashing an invasion on Asgard itself, which is the first big action set-piece of the movie.

It is fricking awesome, the more so for managing to make the Dark Elves a serious threat - and, with their blank-faced masks, creepy as hell - without turning the entire battle into a curb stomp.With another attack impending, their mother dead and Odin paralysed by grief and rage at the loss of Frigga, Thor teams up with the imprisoned Loki to draw the Dark Elves away from Asgard and destroy the Aether.

This gets us into one of the dramatic foci of the movie, as the possibility of Loki's betrayal is teased, realised and reversed more than once to arrive at the final payoff. It's twisty enough to be satisfying and convincing, without going too far and just becoming silly. It is also part of an effective false-climax, and plays out Loki's mix of courage and cunning nicely.

The final act moves to Earth, specifically to London, and a world-hopping duel between Thor and the Aether-possessed Dark Elf leader Malekith, in which Foster and Selvig - aided by their interns - manipulate the fateful convergence of worlds to their advantage, which is actually something I haven't really seen very often, so kudos for that.

Overall, this was a very satisfying movie.

Oh, and then we get the epilogue and credit scenes. The epilogue is both heartwarming and has a delightful, if somewhat predictable, twist. The first credit scene sets up Guardians of the Galaxy, and the second is the big aww moment, with a kiss and a Jotun frost hound chasing pigeons in Docklands.

Problems: Well, I feel that Darcy is overdue an awesome moment. Everyone else got one in this film, and she kind of lost out to new British intern Ian in the finale of this one so that she could fall in love with him. It was a very sweet scene, but she was kind of cheated (although she did get my top line of the movie). Maybe she can get to kick Ultron in the fork in Avengers II or something. I am also aware that the Warrior who was sidelined was Hogun, the Asian, which makes sense having established him as a Vanir and giving him some off time with his own family, but it would be nice to see some payoff on that sometime beyond a shot of him looking up at some lost jet fighters.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World is not the film advertised by its trailer, hence my inclusion of the trailer here instead of the poster, so we can look back at the merry jaunt through the end of existence we were promised, but not delivered. It's not a fault of the movie; rather this is a movie that could probably not have been properly trailed and the trailer makers did what they could.

Bittersweet is a word that I don't use too often; like 'comedy drama' it's usually used idly to describe something that doesn't fit into the usual categories.In this case, however, both of those terms are apt. Seeking a Friend... takes a serious subject and treats it with appropriate dramatic weight through comedy. It balances fatalism and hope, even in the most hopeless of scenarios, in a sedate exploration of the things that are truly important.

It is a film, one of the few, that actually made me cry.

Steve Carrell is perfect here, his trademark hangdog expression evoking with Dodge the passive despair of a man whose life fell apart years ago but he's only just starting to realise it, especially compared to the brittle energy of Kiera Knightley's unfulfilled extrovert Penny.

The supporting cast are equally effective, each group representing a different response to the coming apocalypse: Dodge's friends desperately trying to escape the futility of what they've worked for, the manic energy of the Friendsies crowd, the stoic avoidance of the survivalists; William Petersen's brief turn as a truck driver with a terminal illness who has found new life in knowing that his prognosis is now longer than the world's. And then there is Martin Sheen in a quietly affecting almost-cameo as Dodge's father.

There's no flash, even the end comes without effects shots, and it's the stronger film for it.