Arctic Light

Yes, this is a Star Wars icon, but it has a desert in it.

I enjoyed it, although -100 points for lack of orange-haired, knife-fighting Sting. It's absolutely wild to me how much I remember of the original David Lynch version, because I know I haven't seen it since I was a teenager and I didn't think I had watched it more than once or twice. If you had asked me to describe basically any scene from the original movie cold, I don't think I could have, and yet I remembered nearly all of it as I was watching - allowing for adaptational differences, of course. There were some scenes (e.g. the box scene) where I could even anticipate most of the dialogue.

I had absolutely no idea the new movie wasn't the entire book, though! At roughly the point when I was thinking "Wow, if we're no farther along than this, this must be one heck of a long movie," it just stopped. So, uh, I guess I'll be watching the next one at some point.

It's a pretty movie, although I would have liked more colorful, less generically sci-fi visuals - it's very monochrome, not just because of the desert but also because everyone dresses in shades of black or brown most of the time. (The future apparently spends its budget on floating tactical monoliths and not on paint.) But the visuals are really beautiful other than that, the ornithopters are really cool, and there was genuinely quite a lot of character focus, more than I was expecting. Lots of well-known actors in this, at least known for niche SF things; it was a constant parade of "Hey, it's them!"

Then I looked up the fic on AO3 for both this and the original movie just out of curiosity to see what kind of things people are into, and was amazed that Feyd/Paul isn't the runaway pairing for the original movie. Either fandom was really different in 1984, or it's out there but not on AO3. The dominant pairing? Paul/Jessica. Also kind of a surprise. (The fic for the remake is very unsurprisingly dominated by Paul/Duncan Idaho.)

I rewatched Gattaca last night for the first time in years, and yep, except for That One Thing at the end (I'm sure anyone who's seen the movie knows exactly what) it's still one of my all-time favorites, as well as the movie that originally sold me on Jude Law back in the '90s. Although all I can think now is how incredibly young he is. He's a BABY! His face looks so unformed! It's really wild watching it now, because he's just a few years older than me, and I saw this movie around the time it originally came out - probably just a year or two later - so obviously he didn't look that young to me then, because I was ALSO A BABY. I am also having a certain amount of trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman's daughter is all grown up now (she's Robin in Stranger Things).

But yeah, the movie is still lushly beautiful, and thematically very much my kind of thing. As much as I hated Jerome's ending and still do, I can't deny that it was set up from the opening scene with Vincent in the incinerator. This movie is so intricately constructed; it's one of those movies where you keep noticing new things and seeing new ways that even seemingly random details fit into the bigger picture. (The DNA-helix staircase!) I still want my happy OT3 ending though, dammit.

I went looking for deleted scenes on Youtube for the first time ever, and now I really wish they'd kept two of the ones that got cut, the one with Vincent's former boss from his janitor days, and the one with Anton and the detective. The final cut of the movie seems to have gone for a cooler, less emotional tone overall (there's a version of the script floating around out there with a warmer goodbye between Vincent and Jerome, too, including a hug) but I feel like both of these scenes would've given closure to those characters' emotional storylines - the janitor in particular feels like a dangling loose end, and both of these scenes underscore the movie's general themes of people connecting with each other, and helping each other, and being more - and sometimes less - than the sum of their genes.

And also, it's simply a gorgeous movie, with a limited color palette and a very unusual retro-future 1950s aesthetic. I noticed watching it this time that the deliberately retro sets and clothes and cars also make the now-dated 1990s computer tech and lack of cell phones seem less jarring - because it's all like that, and it simply fits in with the overall blend of advanced tech and retro stylings. The movie feels timeless, in a way, like it's floating in time instead of being anchored in either the time it was made or the time it's supposed to be set in (whenever that is).

I rewatched Megamind while working on comic pages tonight and I still just love that movie so much. I know it's not perfect, but nothing is, and I keep forgetting it was made almost a decade ago. The animation holds up well, the music's great, and aside from the fact that I think we all know I'm a sucker from a redemption arc, I tend to forget just how good the movie's twists are. You can obviously see the general direction that it's going from a mile away, but a lot of the smaller twists along the way are just genuinely really well done and surprising.

Also, I absolutely love ( this kinda spoilery thing )

I just ... really like this movie, and I always forget how much I like it when I haven't watched it in awhile. I like the way it deals with romance, and heroism, and potential and self-determinism. I appreciate that it doesn't end up on either extreme of "how people treat us determines what we become" or "you can be absolutely anything you want to be" but instead ends up in an interesting middle ground where it's actually a little of both.

... plus, I can't think of any other media I've seen, certainly no other kids' movie, that not only shows that thing where someone who's kind of socially sheltered/isolated tends to pronounce words phonetically because they've never actually heard other people say them, but does it in a sympathetic way.

This is really more a post to mention that I watched Zootopia on the flight home from England, and absolutely adored it. I think it might be my favorite of the various Disney/Pixar/computer-animated movies since Finding Nemo. A buddy-movie about an adult male and female character without a romance in sight, multiple female characters doing stuff and interacting with each other (including some very atypical female characters, like the polar bear drill sergeant, and a main female protagonist who didn't feel stereotyped or sexualized), loads of sight gags and jokes that are genuinely funny (THE DMV OMGGGGG), a plot that hit a lot of unique beats and (to me at least) didn't feel as formulaic as the Pixar-style movies sometimes can ... it was basically just a really fun, distracting movie that hit loads of my character-related happy buttons. Definitely one to be rewatched.

coulda used more h/c though, given the premise

Edit: Movie spoilers in comments!

And so, I'm 39. When I was about 14, I remember making one of my characters 39 because I wanted him to be old and world-weary, but not too old to relate to. Hi, 14-year-old me, from just this side of unrelatably old! XD

Thank you for the birthday wishes, emails and gifts, everybody. ♥ It was a mellow day in which I didn't get anything done, but in a good way - had lunch with friends, chatted with my family on the phone, and saw a movie (Ant-Man). Which, since this is ostensibly a blog for talking about pop culture and media, I will discuss under the cut.

( Ant-Man )

ETA: ( Some spoilers for Civil War )

Here is a really interesting link on Pacific Rim that I found via frith_in_thorns's Tumblr and decided to post here, with commentary, rather than just reblogging, because I wanted to SAY THINGS.

The link:
http://frith-in-thorns.tumblr.com/post/60389583284/peardita-starseedjenny-a-couple-days-ago-i

Shortest version: The author hypothesizes that Pacific Rim appeals to the millennial generation because it addresses concerns that resonate with them.

And this really made me go "hmmm" because -- well, first of all, obviously this isn't going to be true (or untrue) of EVERYONE. But I kept feeling there was something about the appeal of Pacific Rim that I just didn't get -- I mean, I get the character love and that it's a fun movie, but for me it was just kind of a middle-of-the-road summer action movie. I didn't feel the off-the-charts squee that so many people seem to have gotten from it. It's not like I've never been left behind by the fannish juggernaut before, but in this case I kept feeling like I should have liked it, it should have hit my buttons, but it just didn't.

And when I think about it, most (though not all!) of the people I know who really latched onto the movie are somewhere around the millennial ageset, while I'm back there on the trailing edge of Gen X.

It seems like a plausible theory to me -- and again, not trying to generalize to all people in all age groups -- because 10-15 years ago, I was ALL OVER shounen team fighting anime, like Ranma and Dragonball and Bleach and Gundam Wing. These days, they've lost a lot of appeal for me; whatever used to make me wallow in them isn't quite there anymore. I still enjoy an occasional dip into nostalgia, and I'm certainly not going to rule out the possibility of a new team fighting anime coming along and sweeping me off into the deep squee end, but it's just not really what I'm into these days. (The one anime that I've really enjoyed in the last few years, Fullmetal Alchemist, was mostly appealing to me for its glorious worldbuilding and plots, as well as the older characters rather than the teenagers.)

On the other hand, I latched HARD onto Iron Man 3 this summer, and I think a big part of that is because I felt a lot of resonance with what the characters were going through in the movie -- Tony especially, but also Pepper: the whole theme of learning to live with damage and deal with the cumulative mistakes of the past and just keep moving forward. It's a movie about learning to be a decent grownup, rather than a movie about growing up. One is not a better narrative than the other, but I think the first one is the narrative I relate to more strongly at this point in my life.

And again, it's not an either-or thing; I'm not saying I feel like I've outgrown coming-of-age stories, or that someone who's 15 or 18 or 21 couldn't relate just as hard to the aspects of IM3 that appealed to me. It did make me think, though, about the fact that sometimes you just have to hit a particular story at the right point in your life. A recent example comes from my reread last year of Bujold's Vorkosigan novels, and the way that my opinions on the books flip-flopped from the first time I read them. Back when I discovered the series, I was in my early 20s and going through a lot of mental health issues, and I went for Mark, as a character, in a really big way. Mirror Dance, with Mark's struggle for self-identity, was my favorite book in the series. In contrast, I remembered thinking Memory was dull and slow-moving and basically a huge disappointment compared to the early Miles books and the Mark books.

Fast-forward 15 years, and while I did still enjoy Mirror Dance (and still love Mark), I was absolutely blown away by Memory -- a book I'd remembered as slow and boring was actually brilliant and insightful and amazing! I just hadn't been at a position in my life where I was able to appreciate Miles's struggle to deal with the changes in his own self-image as he left youth behind.

Again, I want to emphasize that I don't think this is necessarily a function of age, or at least not age alone. People move through their lives at different speeds and in different ways; they find different aspects of books and movies and TV shows that move them. For all I know, 15 years from now I will have hit a mental place that will take me right back into appreciating team anime and other coming of age stories, if maybe for different reasons than I did the first time.

I also think you can go overboard analyzing this stuff. Sometimes what clicks with you is just what clicks with you.

But it's really interesting to me to think about it from that perspective. Maybe I would have absolutely adored Pacific Rim if I'd seen it 10 years ago (or if I saw it 10 years from now), but I'm just not in whatever headspace I need to be in for it to have really deep resonance for me the way it obviously does for a lot of people right now.

ETA: I want to emphasize (because it seems that some people are reading the post this way) that I'm not trying to imply you can't like the movie if you're over 25, or that there's something wrong with you if you do. Actually, quite a few people I know who are in my agegroup (mid-30s) and older really enjoyed the movie. I'm also not saying that I agree 100% with the Tumblr post I linked to. But I do think it's worth considering that there might be generational differences in how people react to and interpret this movie. (Well, any movie really, but I don't think it's completely outrageous to suggest that this might be one of the first big-budget movies -- but by no means the last -- that specifically addresses Millennial concerns & thought patterns in a way that is targeted at them, as opposed to "this is what we think kids ought to like".)

Saw Pacific Rim this afternoon, and while I'm a lot less enthusiastic about the movie than most of my flist (sorry flist), a little while back frith_in_thorns had suggested a White Collar-Pacific Rim fusion with Neal & Diana as Jaeger pilots, and ... all evening my brain has been busily writing the story. Which I SWEAR I AM NOT ACTUALLY WRITING, because a) it's Frith's idea, and b) it would be really long and I DON'T HAVE TIME.

( But if I did write it, it would go like this [MAJOR SPOILERS FOR PACIFIC RIM] )

Phew, so, yesterday I did an art show (it went well; there was a good turnout and I shared a table with the ever-awesome ellenmillion) and then somehow got talked into going to the 9:45 showing of Iron Man 3 with some friends. At one point I was wondering what the hell I had been thinking, because I was exhausted and hungry and my feet hurt, and mostly I just wanted to go home and decompress. I figured there was about a 50-50 chance that as soon as I got settled in a dark theatre seat, I'd fall asleep. But ... IRON MAN!

( Long, spoilery, a bit of RL ick at the beginning )

ETA: Another thing I hadn't realized until I ran across someone on Tumblr talking about it: ( More very spoilery spoilers! )