Let's Talk About Movies: The Uncanny Valley

Alo Party Peoples.


Today, filmmakers can do anything. Computer effects have become advanced enough and inexpensive enough for them to create any creature, device, or world they imagine. You can make an audience feel like they are really in space with a green screen, or make a suburban town into the garden of Eden through Photoshop. In short, you can depict the impossible in a way that feels possible.

One fairly recent example of this has been motion capture animation. The art of taking an actor's motions and facial expressions, and translating them into an animated character. Sometimes, it can look almost real such as Lord of the Rings's Gollum, or Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' Caesar, you may have noticed that Andy Serkis specializes in this sort of role. Other times, attempts at this style go badly, very badly.

This is because of something called the uncanny valley effect, when a non human entity looks similar enough to a human that the inhuman parts stick out even more. For example, that creature to the right from The Adventures of Tintin. Note the dead eyes, and how the more photorealistic face to the right clashes with the more cartoonish features of the man in the bowler hat.

The term goes back to 1970, when Japanese robotics professor Mashahiro Mori published a study on it. He was notable for his work studying the emotional responses humans have to non human entities. He found that, as his machines looked more like people, actual people tended to respond more positively to it, we like it more. Until they hit a certain point, when they were almost human, but the details weren't quite up to snuff. Humans are very good at recognizing other humans, and we can tell if something isn't quite right, and when it is, we become creeped out and repulsed by it, until it looks identical to a human and we like it again. That dip, between stylized and realistic, is the uncanny valley. It's also the reason why dolls are so useful for horror, and why clowns are so often unintentionally terrifying.

This dip isn't always a bad thing, sometimes that uneasy feeling is entirely intentional. For example, CGI young Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy. In that film, Jeff Bridges' character has made a digital replica of himself to run his pet project reality simulator for him, but it's obsession with "creating a perfect system" goes to his head and he snaps. Here, the uncanny figure is supposed to be an imperfect copy of something real, and while it might have partially been the result of the technical limitations of the time, it works.

Why did I do an article on this subject? Well, the dark gritty reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hits US theaters this weekend, and the designs of the titular creatures are right in the center of that dreaded dip in empathy. I thought it was a good jumping off point to discuss something that might have been affecting you even if you had no idea why. In a summer that has had two movies where brilliant motion capture resulted in genuine emotion on the part of the audience, either by conquering the valley or stopping just before the drop, that's unacceptable.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Go Out To The Movies: Guardians of the Galaxy (PG-13 - Marvel/Disney - 2 hrs, 1 min)

Alo Party Peoples.

Directed by James Gunn
Written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman

Each of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films has been a financial success, but while the idea of a live action comic style continuity spread across several disparate genres might seem to be an insane risk, or at least used to, each of it's component parts has had something to draw on as far as an audience is concerned, aside from comic fans that is.

Sure, Iron Man might have been a character that not many people outside of comics fandom had ever heard of, but the movie had Robert Downey Jr's star power to get people in seats. The Incredible Hulk had fans of the 70s' TV show, Captain America was known as a cartoonish symbol of wartime American patriotism, even Thor might have been known from Norse mythology if nothing else, and The Avengers had the novelty of seeing all those suddenly well known characters in the same movie together, and writer/director Joss Whedon's passionate following. A following that carried over to TV spin-off Agents of SHIELD, not for very long, but it was there when the pilot ran.*

Guardians of the Galaxy on the other hand, will be the first real test of whether the Marvel name alone is enough to fill a theater at this point. There aren't many name stars besides Vin Disel, who is never on screen, and maybe Chris Pratt, people usually don't see space operas in theaters unless they are named Star Wars or Trek, and the comic it's based on isn't very successful even by the standards of modern comic sales. It probably helps that it is opening basically unopposed, and that last week's action holdovers have had mixed word of mouth.

Anyways, our story concerns one Peter Quill, a man abducted by aliens as a child that has made himself into a Han Solo by way of Indiana Jones adventurer by the name of Star Lord. After he steals a particular magic rock, he finds himself the target of Ronan the Accuser, a villain that needs said artifact to destroy a planet that he has a grudge against. Quill is hunted by Ronan's assassin Gamora for the magic rock, and bounty hunters Rocket the space raccoon and Groot the tree man for a price on his head. They all end up being arrested and taken to prison where they meet Drax, a massive man with a grudge against Ronan. They decide to team up, escape, and sell the rock and split the money. Then they find it contains an Infinity Stone, an all powerful macguffin that explains why Ronan wanted it in the first place.

This is probably the most out there Marvel movie to date, abandoning the superhero sub genre entirely for a space opera in the mold of Star Wars or The Fifth Element. It accomplishes this very well courtesy of writer/director James Gunn, who I now want to handle a Star Wars picture somewhere down the line. The design of the various locations, starships, and devices are bursting with imagination, and it's easily some of the most original stuff I've seen on screen all year.

The cast is terrific, Chris Pratt does a fantastic job as Star Lord, perfectly embodying the archetype of a charismatic space outlaw. Dave Batista as Drax gives off a likable charm and his hyper literal affectation provides some of the film's funniest moments. The real standouts however, are Vin Disel and Bradley Cooper as Groot and Rocket respectively. They are, pardon the pun, marvels of voice work and motion capture, and it's amazing how much emotional attachment they get out of a raccoon and a tree man. Groot in particular becomes the emotional center of the film, Disel and the animators play him as a cross between a gentle giant and a loyal guard dog, and it is unbelievable how well this works. If there is a weak link among the main cast, it's Zoe Saldana as Gamora, but that's no fault of the actress, the script just doesn't give her much to work with.

Guardians of the Galaxy is the best kind of summer movie, putting likable characters in thrilling situations amid gorgeous 3-D justifying spectacle. It's the kind of stuff that usually doesn't come out anymore, and it's a welcome change of pace from the usual fare. Eventually, one of these things is going to not be up to snuff, but probably not for a while.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B



*Seriously though, SHIELD got a lot better after Winter Soldier came out. When it gets to DVD, just skip episodes 2 through 9 and you'll be fine.

Archivis Update: 8-1-2014

Alo Party Peoples.

Here are my plans for the next few months.

August

Marvel's space opera Guardians of the Galaxy will be covered this Sunday (I've heard really good things from the professionals), followed by either natural disaster thriller Into The Storm or restaurant drama The Hundred Foot Journey next weekend, as well as a probable essay on the uncanny valley effect. The not especially good looking YA dystopia The Giver, which evidently has a press embargo in effect until release day, the weekend of the fifteenth, and I'm probably closing out August with a couple of holdovers from the preceding month.

September

This is probably going to be a slow month for me since, as the year's blockbuster cycle closes out, and Oscar bait season starts rearing up, not much is coming out. All I could find was YA dystopia The Maze Runner on the ninteenth, and animated fantasy The Boxtrolls on the twenty sixth. That leaves two weeks with no big releases. I think it will probably be a month for some essays, the subjects of which will be revealed on release date.

October

After either another essay or something from my DVD shelf, we kick the month off with Robert Downey Jr courtroom drama The Judge. Followed by historical fantasy action romp Dracula Untold the weekend of the seventeenth. On the twenty fourth we have what my father described as "Jimmy Bond" when he saw the trailer, Kingsman: The Secret Service. 

...and that's what you can probably expect to see covered here before my most anticipated thing of the year Interstellar comes out.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Go Out To The Movies: Lucy (R - 1 hr, 30 mins)

Directed and Written by Luc Besson

Alo Party Peoples.

One of the film news stories of the last twelve months is that Hollywood may be realizing that female targeted and/or led movies can in fact make all of the money, but that wasn't apparent because they weren't putting them out very often.

Once upon a time, the idea of releasing the indie scale romantic tragedy against the Tom Cruise action movie would have been insane, now the romance makes four times it's budget in one weekend, and the action flick still hasn't made it's money back domestically and is relying on overseas markets to turn a profit. One week earlier, the shockingly dark reworking of a Disney fairy tale headed by a nearly forty year old mother of six made over 70 million in one weekend, and kept the Tom Cruise action movie in third the next.

From The Hunger Games, to Frozen, to most of the YA phenomenon, to Maleficent, it's become exceptionally clear that there was an audience that the studios were overlooking. Now, sort of following this trend, we have Lucy, aphilosophical ramble smuggled into theaters as an R-rated Scarlett Johansson action vehicle, and the most bizarre and ambitious movie I've seen so far this year. Sorry Aronofsky's Noah, you were definitely trying, but Lucy takes the cake as far as insane arthouse blockbusters are concerned.

The story of this film concerns Scarlett Johansson as Lucy, an American student studying abroad in Taiwan that finds herself caught up in a drug ring. They kidnap her, and force her into smuggling an experimental new drug into Europe by surgically implanting a pouch full of it in her intestines. After one of her captors gets abusive, the bag bursts and she gets a massive overdose that essentially turns her into Neo.

Note-Incidentally, if you were worried about this film spreading long dis-proven bits of folk wisdom, don't be. Not only does the actual film make it clear that she's unlocked higher percentages of the brain's potential, which is slightly closer to reality, it's just how they explain each new set of superpowers and the actual mechanism behind her transformation is largely irrelevant. They could have claimed she merged with the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and it would have changed nothing about the films plot.-End Note

Anyways, since she has essentially become a living god, she calculates that she only has about a day before she ascends beyond corporeal form. So the bulk of the film is about her trying to get to Morgan Freeman as a neuro-scientist working on a theory that she has become proof of to pass her newfound omniscience onto.

If nothing else, Lucy is one of the most visually inventive films of the year. The first twenty minutes are inter-cut with stock footage of, whatever the director felt would go with the moment. A scene of Lucy being stalked by the drug ring has footage of of a cheetah stalking a gazelle cut in for instance, but after she contacts Freeman's scientist, that gimmick stops entirely. To be replaced with, I kid you not, her brain percentage being put up on screen in white block numerals on a black background. I mean it when I say that this is the most bizarre film of the year so far.

I have never seen a film that is at once so blatant yet so difficult to identify a central theme of. As I discussed with those I saw it with, Luc Besson is definitely trying to make a point, but we have no idea what that point is supposed to be. From what the professionals have said, apparently the idea that the pursuit of knowledge is the ultimate good, but I just wonder what film they were watching because this is just madness.

There isn't actually that much action in it, and what action there is, while definitely well composed, takes a back seat to the mad philosophical ramblings of Luc Besson. The trailers for this film made it look like a 21st Century version of The Matrix, and while there are definitely elements of that film present, as well as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Limitless, and Cosmos of all things, it manages to come off as it's own entity entirely. This is not an action movie, it's an arthouse movie with a blockbuster budget that has some action scenes sprinkled in.

Lucy feels like a film that was conceived of by a genius but realized by a lunatic. One that feels like, with a few runs through the editors, it could be brilliant, but the actual product is something that could only be the result of mad creative hubris. I'm not sure that I can in good conscience recommend it, but I'm not going to forget it any time soon.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Talk About Movies: The Marvel Cinematic Universe And Post-9/11 Allegory

Alo Party Peoples.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a great financial success. None of it's components have failed to make a profit, two of them have made over a billion dollars in total, and they tend to be well received by audiences and critics alike, myself among them. I would say that much of that success is deserved, they have tried something that's never been done before on the scale they've done it. Bringing comic book style continuity to the silver screen, and sowing such disparate genres as cosmic fantasy, spy thrillers, pulp adventures, action-comedy, and soon a space opera together into a whole greater than the sum of it's parts.

Ever since Avengers however, the films have gotten a bit more serious. Iron Man 3 is about Tony Stark dealing with PTSD from his work as one of the first respond-ers to Loki's invasion of New York, characters regularly intone that "New York changed everything", and Stark is hunting the Mandarin, a terrorist mastermind that has designed his public image to be an amalgam of all the things that 21st' Century Americans fear. Captain America: The Winter Soldier deals with how S.H.I.E.L.D, i.e. the U.S. government, responds to Loki's invasion. With a massive military boost in the form of a fleet of weaponized helicarriers, and a secret program designed to monitor the world's communications to find potential threats before they become a problem.

The titular Captain finds himself in the position of exposing said program in a way that destroys the public's trust in SHIELD and gets him declared a traitor. Thor: The Dark World, is a more serious film than it's predecessor, but the allegory doesn't quite extend to it.

Marvel Studios obviously isn't the only entity engaging in this allegory. 2008's The Dark Knight also alluded to the Patriot Act when it's hero wiretapped Gotham's cellphones to find the Joker, 2005's War of The Worlds drew on 9/11 imagery to invoke a feeling of insecure terror in the audience, and last year's Man of Steel depicted the citizens of Metropolis outrunning dust clouds, but made the decision to so with a pre-9/11 approach to destruction. What's my point in writing this? I propose that perhaps enough time has passed since the World Trade Center attacks that it's no longer in poor taste to allude to them.

Granted, part of that feeling has to do with personal experience, I was three when the attacks happened, and thus have no conscious memories of them from the time. I know of them from my family recounting their reactions, and from history class. Maybe I only don't have a gut reaction because I have no real personal connection, but there is an entire generation just entering high school that doesn't have one either.

Either way, I look forward to seeing how the US History curriculum of the 2030's discusses this era.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Go Out To The Movies: Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

Alo Party Peoples.

Directed by Matt Reeves

Reboots can be a funny thing. Sometimes you get a work that takes existing characters and settings and gives a new and intriguing perspective on them, like the 21st' Century Battlestar Galactica, or at least the first two seasons. Other times you get a work that just takes existing characters and settings and uses them to get people into the theater, like the Amazing Spider-Man films. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, despite its awkward title, belongs in the prior category, taking the route of a character focused drama that just happened to be about a chimpanzee.

Said chimpanzee was a test subject named Caesar, played by motion-capture specialist Andy Serkis, who was granted human level intelligence by an experimental drug meant to treat Alzheimer's disease. After a rather rough experience with animal control, he liberated the other apes there, granted them super intelligence as well, and lead a charge out into the forests around San Francisco.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes picks up a decade later, after said drug has started a plague, dubbed the "Simian Flu", which has wiped out most of humanity. Caesar's colony of apes has continued to grow, and as far as they are concerned, it doesn't matter whether there were good humans, they haven't seen any of us in two years. Until one day, a chance encounter with a group of survivors seeking to restart a hydroelectric plant where the apes have built their home rekindles old conflicts. Caesar wants peace with the humans and thinks that if he just lets them fix their lights, they will go home and leave the apes alone. His general Koba, an animal testing survivor that has only ever seen the bad side of humans, believes that they cannot be trusted and desires to lead an invasion of their colony.

One of this movie's strong points is that it doesn't paint either side as entirely right or wrong. Koba has good reason to mistrust humans, and not just his personal experiences as a test subject. When he sees that one of the human repair crew brought a gun with them, he interprets it as war and decides to frame them for an assassination attempt against Caesar. The human's commander, played well by Gary Oldman, has good reason to not work the apes. The humans have almost run out of fuel for diesel generators, and he is determined to get that power running again, and he's not going to let a bunch of animals get in the way. A major theme of this film is how fragile peace is, and that all it can take is one madman, or ape, with a gun to shatter that peace.

The film looks amazing, the motion capture animation used for the apes manages to climb out of the uncanny valley on the side of realism, and the actors underneath do a fantastic job. Most of the action is set aside for act three, much like the first Apes reboot, but said action is thrilling. It's well shot, the effects have never looked better, and it manages to be taken seriously despite the image of a chimpanzee dual wielding assault rifles on horseback. One critic described it as "a war movie, but with monkeys".

There are problems to be sure, a subplot involving Caesar's mate giving birth to a second son feels like most of it was cut for time, and understandably since at 131 minutes it pushes the tolerable length of non-fantasy blockbusters, and it is odd that after the first film was so un-subtly pro-animal rights, that the apes are now using horses as beasts of burden. However, those are only minor issues in what is one of the best films of the summer. As far as reboots go, Planet of the Apes has certainly gotten a better treatment than say, Star Trek has. I strongly recommend it.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Go Out To The Movies: Earth to Echo

Directed by Dave Green

Note- I apologize for not covering a movie last weekend. That was unprofessional of me, I failed to do my job, and I'm sorry. As for what played last week, Snowpiercer didn't play in Dallas, and Transformers: Age of Extinction, by all accounts, is either horrible, or only as good as the low budget toy commercials it's based on. -End Note


Alo Party Peoples.

I didn't see that coming. It isn't like I didn't know that Earth to Echo was coming out, I saw plenty of ads for this, but those ads are really underselling the resulting production. Judging from the promotions, this film was just E.T. shot on a webcam, and it is that, but it's also a bit more than that. I've seen other critics describe it as a "Millennial E.T.", but the cinematography, writing, and performances strike me as distinctly post-Millennial, i.e. after the year 2000.

We set our story in a small town in Nevada that is about to be bulldozed to build a highway. Our leads, a bunch of local kids, are rather annoyed by this. A few days before they have to move, their phones start to display random blue static, which they discover is actually a map leading out into the middle of the desert. They follow it and find Echo, an alien that's been looking for an aid in rebuilding it's ship so it can get home. It would have done this sooner, but it's been blocked by the construction crew, actually conspiracy theory-esque alien hunters looking to disable the ship permanently.

It really does feel like a post-Millennial E.T., the whole thing is shot to look like a video blog filmed on webcams, cellphones, and spy glasses, and the way the leads are written is spot on in capturing the lingo of today's youth. They deliver it in the way that most modern children would speak among themselves, and it manages to be timely without feeling immediately dated or obnoxious.

Earth to Echo is a movie that I probably wouldn't have seen if it wasn't my job, and now I find myself recommending it. It's a solid script, the child actors are really good for their age, and Echo himself is charming. It was a pleasant surprise, your kids will probably love it, and parents nostalgic for the like of E.T. will enjoy it too.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B