Parenting, And The Butterfly Effect. Or How I Learned to Start Worrying and Stop Watching Time Travel Movies

Or, to put it another way, I wish, I wish, I didn’t kill that fish.

My wife and I had a conversation a few weeks ago about, of all things, the apocalypse. We deal with cheery topics of discussion in our house. I think we were watching Children of Men.

And my wife told me that since becoming a parent she doesn’t think she can watch movies that deal with it anymore.

I sort of laughed it off a bit, but as she went into detail I came around to her way of thinking. We - used to - watch and - also, used to - enjoy The Walking Dead (show me someone that doesn’t love a zombie apocalypse and I will show you a liar) and its depiction of the misery upon misery upon misery of survival in a post collapse world.

She told me she had a dream that such a thing had actually happened and that we, as a family, were trying to survive in that world, and that it scared the bejesus out of her, so much so that she doesn’t really want to continue watching it for fear of adding yet more nightmare fuel to the fire.* Fair enough. It is a fairly terrifying notion but in my head I thought that it was only a dream and that nothing like that would ever happen. *crosses fingers, touches wood* I think myself pretty good at suspending my disbelief and disassociating real life with the movies and TV shows I watch.**

Or so I thought.

You see, I recently watched the Back to the Future trilogy, and while it’s still the only perfect trilogy out there (not my opinion, just a stone cold FACT) unspoiled by fourquels or worse, prequels, something in it struck a chord with me that had never been struck before.

When Marty goes back to 1955 and accidentally torpedoes his own parents meet-cute, he sets in motion a chain of events that, as his family photograph attests, will cause him to simply disappear unless he fixes things. He will be “erased…from existence.” In the movie, its fun and played for laughs, the threat never entirely serious in this sort of knockabout time travel romp, but the notion of it chilled my bones.

I’ve always thought that time travel would be great fun (show me someone that doesn’t love at least one time travel movie and I will show you a liar) but now, since becoming a dad, I’m not so sure. Ignoring all sorts of paradoxes that real world scientists have hypothesised and dealing strictly in movie science, there are a myriad of ways I could monumentally alter the course of not just my life, but the lives of those I love, by doing only the tiniest thing in the past. Given that this is the basis for the film The Butterfly Effect, I know have two reasons for never watching it ever again. Mostly because it’s terrible though.

I’ve not even seen About Time, and I’m not likely to now, but I’ve heard that a small decision Domnhall Glesson makes in the past changes his son into a daughter upon his return, and only he (and Bill Nighy, because Bill Nighy knows all) knows that anything is different. That truly terrifies me. My son is a year and a half. If such a thing happened to me now, I would be distraught. Even the thought of it gives me a knot in my gut. Not to take things in too maudlin a direction and I hope this doesn’t come off as flippant, but as I was explaining this (admittedly dumb) fear to my wife she brought up as a comparison her/our miscarriage. Had things gone differently, we would have had a baby a few months before we did, and while that would have been brilliant and we would have been thrilled, my son would never have existed. If for whatever reason I could travel back in time and “fix” what happened, a wish that at the time no doubt passed through my mind, it would lead to my son never being born. And while the pain of that experience still exists I wouldn’t change it for the world because I have my baby boy.

Which is why time travel movies and the usual problems that befall the protagonist, not just losing those they love but them never having existed, give me the heebie-jeebies more now that I’m a father.

Like, imagine I wanted to travel back in time to before I had a child, before I was married even, to have one night of responsibility free fun times (or two nights. Or a fortnight.). Assume that we aren’t dealing with a causal loop here and that anything I do in the past affects the future. What if something I do directly affects me meeting my wife, or conceiving my son? That is the stuff of nightmares for me, all because I wanted a few days of no responsibil…oh, God. This is the plot to Shrek 4! My wife is now some warrior woman and I’m stuck with a donkey.

Even in the playful, nearly consequence free version of time travel Back to the Future showcases, Marty returns to 1985 with a home life vastly different to the one he left pre his 1955 diversion, a published author father, a loving mother, successful siblings and, somehow, a brand new 4x4. He doesn’t know these people, his entire life has been rewritten, Marty’s lucky he even exists in this timeline and that his ‘new’ parents decided to have kids (oddly, exactly the same kids) in the first place. Imagine if Marty returned to 1985, climbed into his parent’s house and they didn’t know who he was and ran him out of the house. Marty is now without a home, without a family. That, to me, is scarier than the Biff Tannen ruled alternate 1985. That we never see anything post trilogy is probably for the best as Marty gets committed for constantly reminiscing about things that never happened in this new timeline.

So, yeah, time travel movies have taken on a whole new aspect in my head lately. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll be holed up in a bunker avoiding becoming my own grandfather, killing Hitler and waiting for the Morlocks to come.

Your friend in time.
Jonathan Cardwell

* She continues to watch countless shows about serial killers and terrorists though, but nope, zombie apocalypses are the real threat.
**Although she did also mention Contagion, a movie whose apocalypse is so bowel looseningly plausible I just ignored that she’d even brought in up, lest I curl up into the foetal position with a gas mask and some disinfectant spray.

Defending D'Movie

The negativity that Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie is getting annoys me. Not because I have any great affection towards the film (just typing D'Movie just about took all my inner strength) or the television series it stems from. I've never watched it and have no desire to do so. I've absolutely nothing against it; it just doesn't seem like my cup of cross dressing tea. But the way it's been received, critically as well as amongst my friends, both online and in real life, would lead you to believe that it’s a blight on all humankind. It's really not. At worst, it's an unfunny - in your opinion - comedy you’ll never watch yet whose existence baffles you. I don't see why it should though. You may hate it, although I'd wager most that do seem to hate it have never watched it and yet deem themselves to be somehow 'above it,' but there are people that do watch it, and find it hilarious. More power to them.

A cross dresser, yesterday.

It just strikes me as odd that people, like myself, who in the past (and sometimes still today) have been castigated for liking something that's not the popular thing to like, to look down our noses at something someone else might enjoy. Mrs Brown's Boys just seems to be the whipping boy du jour, as for example Doctor Who was in the past. Or as in some quarters, gaming and comic book reading still is. You can't expect people to treat your likes as a legitimate source of entertainment if you're unwilling to accept that others get enjoyment from things you, personally, do not like. I've written about these sorts of things before, and although I'll admit I sound like a broken record, I like sticking up for the underdog. Again, by all accounts, Mrs Brown's Boys D'Movie isn’t very good, especially if the trailer is anything to go by, but if others get enjoyment from it, who am I, who are we, to deny them that? Or question their (in this case) sense of humour if what they find funny isn’t to my tastes?

Countless times, I've defended things I read or watch from those who dismiss them outright because of REASONS. I'll accept the fact that they dislike it if they've watched/read it but not before. I likely won’t ever see it so I can’t - won’t - offer an opinion on the movie, sorry, D’Movie, even if all signs point to a cinematic misfire, although I will admit that one joke in the trailer made me laugh. As an example, I feel I can offer an opinion on the films of the ‘_____ Movie’ genre (Scary Movie, Date Movie, Disaster Movie) directed by cinematic serial killers Freidberg and Seltzer, because I have actually, sadly, seen a few of them. Date Movie is probably the most awful thing I’ve seen in my entire life. But those films – somehow - earn money, terrible as they are. If it puts bums on seats in cinemas and the people that the movie was made for, those that watch the TV series, enjoy it and make it a success then Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie is laughing all the way to D’Bank.

If we look at the top twenty highest grossing movies of all time, which by using maths one can assume the vast majority of Planet Earth has seen, it shows that there is an in built audience for almost anything, because critically most of these films aren’t what anyone would consider classics. I mean, Alice In Wonderland is 16th? Fucksake. But then again, maybe some people do. That’s what’s makes the world simultaneously wonderful and infuriating. I could argue til I’m blue in the face about why Alice in Wonderland is cinematic dreck, yet there’s probably some (poor deluded) soul who’ll argue right back that it’s a masterpiece. I mean, they’re wrong, but that’s by the by. 

Alice's acid flashback.

I’m not saying I’ve never dismissed a film I’ve not seen. Who knows, Scary Movie 6 might be a revelation in comedy that breathes new life into the parody genre. The previous five films would indicate not though. But whatever happened to being optimistic that movies might be good no matter what? In the age of the internet, things are either totally amazing or total shit. As another example, I had never watched a Fast and Furious movie after the first one because I assumed they were all the same and therefore rubbish. Then my missus dragged me along to the cinema to see Fast Five. Which as it turns out was fucking awesome. I was first in line for number 6 which was also fucking awesome, and am now filled with optimism for any future installments. [Although I was dead right about all the others but that sort of disproves my point.]

I can’t pretend to be above a film that isn’t made with me in mind when I’ve shelled out hard earned pounds for things that in my own head even I know are awful. So, fans of Mrs Brown’s Boys, go see your movie. Don’t let any opinionated arseholes dissuade you from seeing it.

If you like it, be proud in that fact.

It’s tailor made for you.

Enjoy it.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Internship

This extended advertisement for Google hopes to have the same kind of success as stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn’s previous collaboration, Wedding Crashers, did.

It won’t. 

Laid off from their job as face-to-face salesmen, Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson), down on their luck and desperate for a job, apply for an internship at Google’s San Francisco HQ, despite knowing nothing about computers. Once there, they are put into groups and made to complete various Google specific tasks in the hope of being offered a permanent post. If you’ve read that paragraph you’ll know exactly how the movie will play out; and it doesn’t deviate from the template too much.

Our protagonists are teamed up with a walking bunch of clichés; the sarcastic cool kid, the uptight Asian kid, the token girl and the socially awkward nerd. Together after a rocky start they must learn to work as a team if they’re to stand a chance of winning the job of their dreams. The nerds Nick and Billy are teamed up with will learn life lessons and discover there’s more to life than sitting in front of a computer screen, while the nerds will try to bring Billy and Nick into the modern world. It wouldn’t really be a spoiler to tell you the ending of the film. I won’t, but you can take a wild stab.

The two leads are basically playing exactly the same characters they’ve played before, with Vaughn doing his confident motormouth schtick (becoming ever more tiresome) and Wilson the relaxed surfer dude thing (likeable, but boring). Each of the kids, despite having predictable and archetypal roles to play, are endearing rather than annoying even if the Asian kid cutting loose cliché is present and correct here. Rose Byrne barely registers as a Google employee and love interest for Nick. 

Hilarious, said no-one.

It’s as predictable as they come, and sadly there aren’t many laughs to elevate proceedings during the first half of the film; all the jokes are fish-out-of-water gags, like having Billy not knowing how to work a webcam (which might have been funnier ten years ago) or constantly saying ‘on-the-line’ instead of ‘online’ in a joke that goes on far longer than it should. Thankfully, the second half of the film picks up, starting with a Quidditch game of all things, and there are a few decent laugh out loud moments once the film gets it’s set up out of the way.

However, outside of those few big laughs the film is only chucklesome for the most part when you want to be full on belly laughing. The cynical use of Google doesn’t help matters either, being constantly reminded that it’s an ‘amazing place to work’ and continually seeing Google products and Google apps and services everywhere and Google this and Google that makes it feels less of a film and more of a brainwashing exercise first and a comedy second.

Verdict:

A diverting enough 90 minutes, but it won’t live long in the memory.

2 stars

MOVIE REVIEW: World War Z

This movie adaptation of Max Brooks’s book of the same name really only takes the premise of a worldwide zombie pandemic and not much else. The film itself is a disparate mish-mash of a whole load of different genres; political thriller, zombie movie, horror flick, globetrotting spy story and it rolls many of the books characters all into a Brad Pitt shaped ball. Yet somehow, it works.

Pitt stars as Gerry Lane, a former UN envoy who is used to going into extremely dangerous situations, and gets dragged back into service after the undead start to take over. All this information is given to you in the first five minutes because that’s all the time it takes for things to kick off. And they do, in spectacular fashion. This isn’t your usual zombie apocalypse where things slowly but surely get creepier and creepier, where characters start to notice little signs of something strange starting to happen, or where the zombies slowly but surely start to outnumber the living. This is BAM! Zombies are here, right now. There’s a lot of them. And you better run.

The opening scenes of mass panic are hugely effective and really get the heart pumping as Gerry and his family struggle through the crowds trying to get to safety. It shows a world gone to Hell in the first fifteen minutes. The film does well to show just how you’d imagine the world would react to such an outbreak, with a standout scene in a shopping mall with two moments involving a police officer and the other with a showdown with a gunman in a pharmacy being highlights. These little moments of humanity really help the film.

When the film eventually settles down is when the cracks start to appear; the scenes with Gerry and his family are perfunctory at best, when all you really want to get back to is more zombie carnage. But thankfully it doesn’t take long. With Gerry flying all over the world to find answers and possibly a cure we’re treated to a variety of locales in which you don’t normally see zombies; a run down military base shrouded in fog for one. And when the zombies do arrive en masse, surging through the streets of Jerusalem in the films standout scene, charging after the living with not a care for themselves, knocking over buses, smashing their bodies into windows and walls to eat the juicy humans on the other side, they’re like a tidal wave of death, and their sheer speed and numbers is TERRIFYING. 

Terrifying.

Smartly, after so many scenes of mass hysteria the film doesn’t go over the top for the climax, culminating instead with a quieter but no less tense set piece that wrings maximum tension from it’s sparse surroundings. Much has been written about the troubled production of the film and how the ending was hastily rewritten. And while, yes, it is a little on the cheesy side it also works (Although I could have done without the Moses parallels).

A small criticism would be that the film feels very by the numbers, as the whole film could be summed up by ‘Brad Pitt goes here, finds a clue, zombies show up, he just escapes, repeat to end’ which makes it feel very much like a video game. But you’ll forgive it as whenever the zombies do show up, those scenes are too exciting to care. Another minor complaint is that despite being a 15 rated film, there’s nothing here that looks particularly worthy of the rating. It’s a zombie film with zero gore or gruesome scenes. I should point out that it doesn’t need them, the film works fine as it is, but certain moments do feel as though they’ve been watered down a touch and feels more like a 12A film than a 15. And at a few points (although not many), the CG joins detract from the spectacle, but not enough to spoil the enjoyment of seeing millions of zombies attacking cities.

Verdict:

Fans of the book (myself included) might feel a little short changed but the film is scary when it wants to be, tense as hell in parts, and hugely ambitious in its scale combining elements of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (global pandemic) with the crazy zombie carnage of Zack Synder’s Dawn of the Dead remake. World War Z does more right than wrong.

4 stars

GAME REVIEW: The Walking Dead Episode 5, No Time Left

The Walking Dead, Episode 5, No Time Left

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS EPISODES

And so, the first season of Telltale Games The Walking Dead comes to an end, in an emotional, cathartic, highly satisfying installment, that just might be the game of the year. 

Picking up right where Episode 4 left off, Lee is on a mission to rescue Clementine from her kidnappers but he’s been bitten and only has a little time left to do so. I have never been more emotionally invested in a game as I have been in this one; so credit to the makers for being able to craft a believable relationship between Lee and Clem to make this episode feel personal not just to your character, but to the player as well.

More so than any other episode, the choices you’ve made previously (not just this episode, but all the way back in Episode 1) will come back to help or haunt you. Any time you noted a ‘____ will remember that’ but thought it inconsequential…could be the very thing that shapes how this episode, and season, ends for you.

Once again, the choices you make don’t really affect the outcome of the game much (all players will play more or less the same game) but what they do affect is your own soul. Bold statement, maybe, but this is the only game that has ever made me feel guilty for making a certain choice. No more so than in this episode where the decisions you make come thicker and faster than they have in any of the previous episodes, and most of them are life and death decisions. You don’t have time to think them through, you just have to react.

Everything about the episode is a triumph; the plot, which brings together various strands from every episode to date; the music, which at certain points swells and may cause you to tear up a little; the voice acting, which is full of emotion and will genuinely break your heart at points. Yes, the little niggles from the previous episodes are still present and correct here; some frame rate problems, slight juddering, out of time lip sync and music cutting out. But they’re all minor quibbles that don’t spoil the atmosphere or the mood in what is the best game I’ve played this year.

Oh, and stick around after the credits. If you can see through the tears.

Films You SHOULD Like

Recently, I saw Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film The Master. I thought it was alright, nothing as great as a lot of the glowing reviews have suggested. It’s certainly not a bad film; it just didn’t set my world alight. Yet, PTA is a filmmaker whose films always leave me with this nagging feeling; a feeling that I’m somehow wrong for not loving his films. That for whatever reason, I should like them. For no other reason than this director commands my respect.

There are a few other filmmakers that give me this feeling, the most prominent among them being the Coen Brothers. I have seen most of their film output and can honestly say I wouldn’t rate any of them with anything more than an average score. I really do not understand the love for The Big Lebowski. Aside from a few weird characters and an admittedly endlessly quotable script, I don’t rate it as a cult classic or even that good of a movie.

Not me.

Now I don’t consider myself a cineaste at all. I watch, like and review a lot of films, but I’m not steeped in film knowledge, so maybe there’s something that I’m missing with these directors and their films. I get that Lebowski is a pastiche to the noir films of old, but just because there are homages to that genre while the director has also put his own spin on it, doesn’t make it a good film. Can someone tell me why they think it’s a good film? I’m actually asking here.

Closer to me.

Are the back catalogues of these directors too niche? Or at least too niche for my tastes? Other directors that can be considered artistes would be Fincher and Nolan. I love nearly all of their films, but when you look at them all you realise they for all their attempts to be art, they’re still very commercial at heart, and in particular Nolan’s Bat Trilogy, they’re downright blockbusters. Admittedly, not blockbusters in the Transformers mould, but blockbusters nonetheless. Is it this that I miss from the films of PTA and the Coen’s? A commercial bent. Perhaps it is, as my favourite Coen Brothers film is Intolerable Cruelty, easily the most accessible of their filmography.

So, is it my fault? Am I wrong? I understand that film is a subjective medium and all, but general consensus is that I am. Completely 100% wrong.

Then again, I love Darren Aronofsky. So maybe I’m just awkward.

Skyfall Snobbery

I’ve been writing film reviews over on the Belfast Times recently, so there haven’t been many updates here. From now on, the entries will probably be more like this. And there’ll be game reviews from time to time as well. 

If you want the movie reviews, clicky on the linky above.

Anyway, here’s a coupla short observations for you.

Skyfall Screw-ups

So, since I saw Skyfall this thought has been running through my head. In the movie continuity it’s usually assumed that the name James Bond is a codename (it is, isn’t it?) as a way to explain away different actors portraying Bond. The book continuity obviously doesn’t need this. But Skyfall messes with that but taking James Bond back to his roots; the titular Skyfall estate where we’re told the names of his parents, Andrew Bond and uh…Mummy Bond. So that now James Bond becomes his actual birth name.

But then you have M, who muddies the waters to a stupefying extent. It’s spelled out in the film that she has been doing this job for a long time, since at least the Hong Kong handover, and as we’ve seen she was in charge of Bond during Brosnan’s tenure, does that mean that Craig is Brosnan (and by extension Connery, Lazenby, Moore and Dalton)? And then does that mean that the Craig films are prequels?

Well, no.

Obviously. 

Wait, that's not right.

But I think this is what bothered me the most about Skyfall. It posits that Bond has had this long history, by throwing in little nods to the franchises past (the Aston DB5, the Q branch exploding pen gag) which means that these things have happened in the past to previous Bonds, but at the same time expects us to believe that Craig’s Bond is the only Bond there’s ever been.

Well, it’s either that, or MI6 hired a guy whose name just happens to be the same as the codename they’ve been using for 007 for the past fifty years.

Unlikely though.

TV Snobbery

One thing that has been really getting on my nerves recently is snobbery, specifically when it comes to TV. More often than not I’ve been told I should watch one or all of the following; Community, Parks and Recreation, Louie, Girls. I haven’t watched any of those besides a few episodes of Community which I couldn’t get into. I’m sure these programmes are fine and all, but people constantly telling me that I should watch Show XYZ are ever going to change my mind. 

It especially grinds my gears when people tell me I should watch Show XYZ rather than shows I do watch like The Big Bang Theory. I love The Big Bang Theory. It makes me laugh. A lot of people (internet folks mostly) tell me that I shouldn’t watch it for no other reason than it’s popular. I always counter with the fact that it’s popular for a reason. Mostly because it’s funny. (Two and a Half Men is the exception however) And yes, while it may not be as cutting as other shows, and most definitely broader in its humour, it doesn’t mean it’s not good. People these days seem to think that for a show to be considered good it must be as niche and as cult-y and as watched by as few people as possible. The irony being that they never stop telling other people to watch it.

Fucking hipsters.