Action

Gravity: In Space No One Can Hear God Scream

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Space Action. A Russian satellite is blown up and its field of debris, moving at thousands of miles an hour, now threatens the lives of three astronauts working on an American space station.

It’s an amazingly simple premise, almost too simple. One would think “How can three slow moving space suits in a vacuum be an interesting action story? For 90 minutes? One could not be more wrong. Within minutes of its opening, this action movie delivers a rollercoaster ride of thrills and excitement that does not stop until the very end frames.

Sandra Bullock plays Ryan Stone, a troubled engineer who is in space for her technical know-how to help fix the computer systems on the American space station. George Clooney is Matt Kowalski, the care-free experienced astronaut who brings a light hearted teasing and probing of Ryan’s unease for a perfect balance of opposites.

Within minutes we discover that the Russian space station has been blown up and its debris field is on its way toward the protagonists. Matt and Ryan barely survive their first encounter with the debris that has turned into miniature missiles devastating everything they hit and incapacitating their return flight space shuttle. But survival isn’t enough because Ryan is now cast adrift into space, and the debris field is orbiting the earth, which means it is set to arrive again in ninety more minutes. Based on their first encounter, you just know there’s no way they can endure another one. Talk about a ticking clock.

So the rest of the movie is just one complication after another that blocks Ryan and Matt from their goal of getting out of there and over to a Chinese space station to find a way home. Raw yet simple good old fashioned action that keeps you on the edge of your seat with some stunning visuals of earth and space that will change your mind about the emotional potential of such a story. (No large spaceships and lasers and explosions and aliens needed to keep you on the edge of your seat. But it still cost 100 million dollars to make, so go figure)

But it is not without an emotional subplot. We soon discover that Ryan is a troubled soul who has resigned her life to misery and found her way to space because it’s one place to be alone and “not be hurt by anyone” down on earth. Evidently, she lost her young daughter to a “stupid” chance accident so simple as hitting her head on the ground and now she doesn’t care about her life. No mention whatsoever is made of a father to the daughter, as if a man does not matter or ever mattered, a glaring deficiency of the human soul of this story. Look even if the guy was a jerk, that would have affected Ryan through pain. But to completely ignore a man is feminist clap trap. Matt, on the contrary, has learned to take his own betrayal by his woman on earth as one of his many silly stories he tells to keep his spirits high and his soul from facing his own loneliness.

SPOILER ALERT: So when forced with the need to survive in the face of impossible odds, Ryan is brought to the point of giving up and wanting to just go to sleep in the coldness of space. To give up her meaningless life. With one last idea of hope, she finds the drive to keep going and make something of her life on earth if she can only get back. Of course, the odds continue to pile up against her all the way to the very end for a truly exciting adventure.

The personal story of Ryan is a helpful metaphor for her to return to a productive life on earth. The vacuum of space becomes the isolated “space” to which we withdraw to protect ourselves from the pain of human hurt or betrayal or loss. Okay, not bad. I like it.

Okay, now I want to admit that after interacting with some others on the next issue, I have changed my mind and have rewritten this post. I had argued that there was no transcendence in this story, but I was wrong. There was, I just missed it. It was very subtle. But it was there. Thanks to those who corrected me!

Ryan’s quest becomes one of mere brute survival that rings with the angst of today’s typical postmodern. So she survives to go back to work with a new appreciation of being alive? So what? As she says herself in the movie, she’s still going to die eventually. She doesn’t really have a higher purpose for her existence in the face of death. What is the significance or meaning to an earthbound existence? The drive for survival wakes us up to how we have squandered our time, wasted our humanity. But that can only have meaning in the face of a higher truth, transcendence, like Oh… maybe God?

There are a couple references to God in this story. One is a moment where Ryan does not pray because she says no one ever taught her how to pray. So she doesn’t. The other is a visual comparison of two images in two different space stations, a Russian icon postcard of the Trinity in the Russian space station and a Buddha (or Confucious?) statue in the Chinese station. But Ryan has no personal interaction with these visuals. They are alien to her and amount to a postmodern relativistic comparison of empty god images.

Come on, REALLY? A woman in despair over her daughter’s death and facing her own meaningless demise and she doesn’t have a single thought about her Maker and the afterlife? She doesn’t utter a single prayer to a god she may have doubts about? She admits that she doesn’t know how to pray because no one taught her how. Instead she utters a prayer to her departed Matt for inspiration. It’s the humanist’s god substitute. They need transcendence so they create their own imaginative substitute to fulfill that inner vacuum because they don’t want to face God.

At the end when she is finally safe on terra firma, she grabs some sand from a beach and looks up and says, “Thank you.” But to whom does she say this? The film is ambiguous. Now, she had been “praying” to Matt the entire previous situation that she got out of up in space, so consistency would dictate that she was saying that to Matt as well. But I do think the filmmaker was ambiguous enough for those who wanted to believe she had found a simple faith to import their desires into the ambiguity. I admit I like ambiguity sometimes. That’s what art does. It doesn’t always answer all questions and leaves room for interpretation on the weightier or more mysterious issues.

I felt that the spiritual gravity of the situation required we know who she was saying thank you to. But I have to admit that the story structure does subtley point to that prayer being to God. Here is why: Ryan’s character arc would dictate that if she began “not praying” to God in the beginning of the story, then it would make more story sense that she ends praying to him because she is changed and is a new person, as are all protagonists in good stories. Maybe she was “praying” to Matt as her human savior in space, but ultimately learns that it is God who saved her after all, and her “thank you” is now to God.

It’s a tough one. Ah, the ravages of ambiguity! And thanks to those who opened my eyes to what I had missed. The movie is better than I first thought it was.

Elysium: A Preachy Apologetic for Obamacare

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Marxist Utopian Tale told by Greedy Hollywood Capitalists. Coming from writer/director Blomkamp, whose District 9 was agitprop for illegal alien activism, and Matt “Elmer Gantry of Leftism” Damon, one should expect it. I have to hand it to Blomkamp, he is a cunning propagandist storyteller.

It is the story of Max, played by Damon, an ex-con trying to go straight with a job in a futuristic dystopian overpopulated, polluted Los Angeles in an overpopulated polluted planet…

Right there, you have to stop and face the fact that the Population Explosion Myth is a pernicious lie that is intended by social engineers to redistribute power and wealth with themselves in power of course. From Malthus to the laughably ridiculous Paul Ehrlich, who is still shamefully treated as an “expert” in the media, this view still finds its way into belief systems of the ignorant and uneducated. Ehrlich was prophesying 40 years ago of mass famines, no natural resources, and billions of overpopulation, all by 2000! Wow, what a respectable scientist – and a prophet! Or should I say, “profit” since he became one of the “evil rich” promoting his lies. And they still give this destructive man a voice in the media.

Okay, I digress. So, back to the movie — all the poor people are left to fend for themselves and be exploited by corporations down on earth without sufficient healthcare. Meanwhile all the rich people have fled to a giant space station in the sky called Elysium where everything is a rich foo foo party and they have magical medical machines that heal every disease or disfigurement known to man (A tree of life metaphor). Of course the evil rich people want to keep those magical medical machines to themselves and don’t want to share them with all the poor people below. So they blow up any spacecraft of “illegal immigrants” trying to get to Elysium for their cures.

Everything goes wrong for Max in the oppressive system of clichés below. He’s just a guy trying to get back on his feet, but he is a victim of police brutality by robot cops who have no law or justice programmed into them, he is given no understanding by a robot government parole officer for his extenuating circumstances, and he is rejected as disposable waste by the company that employs him when he is a victim of radiation poisoning at his plant.

So he is going to die in five days. It’s no wonder he becomes a revolutionary! Elysium is simply a Classist Socialist parable that inspires more hatred of the rich. I wonder if those Hollywood filmmakers, like Damon would like it if a bunch of illegal aliens besieged his mansion to have access to his excessive riches for healthcare. I. Think. Not. Which is why this kind of stuff is just hypocrisy masquerading as concern for the marginalized. I don’t see Damon or Blomkamp giving up their wealth to help heal the world’s poor. Oh, right, they are preaching about it, so they are exempt. Oh, that makes the poor feel better. Yep, that is the definition of hypocrisy. Kinda like receiving Arab oil money to make a movie libeling fracking. Oh, this darkness runs deep.

It’s a pretty cool sci-fi action premise that enables Max to wear an exo-skeleton suit to give him superhuman strength in a transhumanist world where technology is integrated into the human organism. And I must say, Damon’s character is an excellent vulnerable hero who you really wonder at times if he is going to get out of the jams he gets into. That is good storytelling. In a morally bad story.

But the plot turns on the fact that the evil chief of security on Elysium, played by Jodie Foster as a strangely accented slick, cool headed, and dictator-minded villain, plans a coup where she will take over Elysium under a “national security crisis” in Rahm Emanuel and Eric Holder fashion. But in order to do so she must get the special program that will reboot the computer system of Elysium with her as the new president. The only problem is, that program has been stolen and downloaded into Max’s brain. So she sends a vicious bounty hunter after him, and thus an exciting chase movie.

Max gets up to Elysium, but his plan, with the help of the “Resistance” is to download the reboot but do it in such a way as to make ALL PEOPLE ON EARTH citizens of Elysium. This is because citizenship is what keeps them from getting their grubby little hands on the magical medical machines which will, in the words of the Resistance, — I kid you not – “Save Everyone.”

This is a Christ Story. But remember, not all Christ stories are Biblical. In the movie, early as a child, Max’s Mary-like Mother tells him he is special and has “one thing he was born for.” So, Max ends up giving his life to save the planet to heal all people. Isaiah 53:4-5 says that Messiah carried our sorrows and was beaten up for us so that by his death, we are healed.” Elysium is an example of how the Christ story is subverted by another religion of Leftism to twist it away from relationship with God to a revolutionary heaven on earth. If you really want to see the end result of this false religion you want to read The God That Failed by Koestler.

It is also important to note that the movie does unwittingly show that the act of redistribution is always founded on violence. Can anyone say Karl Marx?

The very notion of utopian magical medicine that will save everyone is of course the dog whistle for nationalized healthcare. On the surface it seems like such an obvious compassionate thing to do. I mean, shouldn’t we pull down the rich and redistribute their wealth so everyone can have healthcare? Don’t you care about the dying children? Should the rich have care that the poor do not?

Well, actually most of us do care about the dying children and good healthcare, which is why nationalized healthcare is evil, because it actually results in less healthcare for all at higher costs, less quality, and hurts the poor most of all. We are already seeing the horrible heinous effect of socialized medicine in Europe and now the US. In America, because of Obamacare, health insurance is skyrocketing, people are losing their insurance — almost as many people will be uninsured under Obamacare as before it — intrusive government control breeds disincentive for medical research which is already resulting in less medical advances, which means worse care for ALL, not better care for all. Even some leftists are admitting that there are death panels to ration healthcare which means less health care for all, and especially the elderly and the poor. You see, the rich will always get the best healthcare, but now, Obamacare is creating the very disparity or gap between the rich and poor that it claims to break down! And those selfish bastards who created the laws are exempting themselves from it because they KNOW it will not be good for them (just like those rich on Elysium). Socialized medicine results in worse medicine, less people provided for, and the poor are hurt worst of all.

THE FACT: The profit motive in medicine created the best medicine in history for the most amount of people and more specifically for the poor like never before. Socialized medicine destroys that. If you care about the poor like I do, you should be against socialized medicine. Does this mean there aren’t problems? Of course not. It ain’t perfect. Does this mean we should be for the rich having the best care alone? Of course not! They will get it no matter what. What it does mean is that if you take away the profit motive from medicine in the name of socialist utopian lies about everyone getting healthcare, EVERYONE WILL NOT GET IT, and the government will control it and you will have worse care for less people at higher cost and the poor will be hurt the most. What kind of person would want that kind of world?

Bottom line: If you care about the poor and about the best medicine for all, you should support free market medicine with profit motive, because that is what helps the poor and provides the best for most. But if you believe in government controlled healthcare, you support hurting the poor and worse medicine for all, while feeling as if you care.

2 Guns: Kant Vs. Nietzsche Knockdown! 2 Good Not 2 See

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A great action buddy cop flick about two undercover agents who stumble upon corruption in the CIA, the Navy, and the DEA, and pretty much everywhere. I have not seen such a rewarding and funny action film like this in a long time.

Denzel is Bobby, an undercover DEA agent working on a sting to get a cartel head, and Mark Wahlberg is Stig, an undercover Navy op trying to redeem his own bad past so he can get accepted back into the military, by stealing drug money stored in a bank. The only problem is, they don’t know who each other really is. So when they pull off a bank heist, they get into real hot water when they discover it’s the CIA’s dirty money. So now, they have the drug cartel, and dirty DEA agents, and dirty CIA after them. Don’t worry, I haven’t told you anything that isn’t in the trailer.

Which is kinda too bad cause it does spoil the movie somewhat. On the other hand, it’s no surprise because it is standard Hollywood cop action stuff that shows two good guys with moral flaws who are forced to realize those flaws and overcome them to become righteous peace officers.

The chemisty between Washington and Wahlberg is phenomenal. Bill Paxton kicks A with a brutal performance as the CIA heavy. Washington plays the straight guy who is a good guy turned cynic and Wahlberg the squirrely jokester idealist. Their playful banter, in the midst of gun fights, fist fights with each other, and torture by the bad guys, is standard action movie fare, but rings with much more authenticity than the cardboard Schwarzenneger type lines because it is character driven, not merely “trailer moment” soundbites.

What I found most interesting was the personal redemption of the characters. Bobby is a cynical older DEA agent who has been working so close for so long to the scum underworld of drug cartels that is starting to affect him. He has a Nietzschean philosophy of “whatever it takes” to take down the bad guys. This is the sort of belief that results in an “ends justifies the means” approach to justice. It reduces justice to power. You have to do whatever it takes to achieve your goal or you won’t get it because the world is so corrupt or evil. And the corruption in all the government agencies in this story seem to support that notion. The problem is that it makes him willing to discard Stig in his effort to catch the bigger fish, AND it spoils his ability to trust anyone enough to love them, such as his love interest, Deb, when he says, “I want to love you” as a way of saying he can’t bring himself to trust enough to do so. Of course, there are moments where we see that Bobby does have a soft spot for good that he cannot escape, such as when he kisses a little baby in the midst of a bank robbery (a unique hilarious moment) and when he saves a Mexican coyote from drowning as they cross illegally into the US. But to find his redemption he has to face his lack of morality as embodied in Stig.

Stig, on the other hand is an upbeat idealist who wants to serve his country by being an honorable member of the military, the Navy. His problem is that his idealism blinds him to the corruption that he is serving, in the form of his superior who is using him for criminal purposes and his Admiral who throws Stig under the bus for the sake of protecting a good image of the Navy. Okay, when you’re surrounded by this much corruption it’s hard not to go solo to clear your name from being a panzy for a conspiracy theory. But he maintains his commitment to a military ethos as he fights the bad guys. There is a significant moment in the film where Bobby confronts Stig looking for a righteous solution with, “You think there is a code. There is no code.” The implication is that there is just the nihilist struggle for power by self interested persons. Everyone is corrupt. But Stig replies, “My code saved your life,” as indeed it did because of his willingness to do what is right even if it harms himself. And in the end, Stig’s morality changes Bobby and brings him back in the family of man.

This is the argument between teleological ethics and deontological ethics. Teleological ethics uses morals as a means to an end of achieving one’s purposes. Which means there is no ultimate right and wrong, only what we create for our use. It results in relativism and the ends justifying the means. If we accomplish what we want (which we define as “good”), then how we achieved it is right and acceptable. But deontological ethics say that there is a moral code that transcends our self interest to which we are accountable. Something is right or wrong regardless of what we want.

So for example, in our current climate, those who believe in teleological ethics or the ends justify the means believe that it is okay for the government to use the IRS to persecute political enemies if they can consolidate their political power, or for the NSA to violate individual liberties if we can catch more terrorists. But those who believe in deontological ethics believe that the high office of the president of the United States (and the head of the DOJ and IRS) does not give justification to violate the Constitution, our transcendent political ethical standard, no matter how much good you think you will achieve according to your politics.

Or in the current George Zimmerman trial, the race hustlers and grievance peddlers denied all the evidence of Trayvon Martin’s criminal guilt and all the evidence of George Zimmerman’s innocence and right to self defense, and even encouraged through their code words and dog whistles in the media to destroy Zimmerman. And they created a false picture of Zimmerman as being white, so that it would be a case of white racism against a black (see here). Why? Because they believe their cause of crying racism and black victimhood is so right, that it doesn’t matter if they destroy or kill an innocent man as long as their “higher cause” is achieved. That is teleological ethics. The ends justify the means. Whereas, those who believe in deontological ethics believe that even though it was a tragedy for Martin to die, we must follow the rule of law and evidence which exonerated Zimmerman, and justice should not be denied anyone just because their race is Hispanic or half-white.

The Wolverine: Eternity is a Curse if You Have No Meaning

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After seeing the previous abysmal Wolverine movie, I almost didn’t go to this one. I am just so tired of these superhero sequels that are boring trash. The first ones are often very good, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Spiderman, and the sequels tend to be typical Hollywood stupidity: Bigger more ludicrous action sequences and many many more villains, too many villains. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Well, not The Wolverine. This one is far better than the first, not just in terms of interesting action but in terms of character and personal drama. The premise is that the Wolverine is hiding out in the forest, grumbling about how he doesn’t want to be the Wolverine, I think because it only ended with him killing his beloved. Okay, makes for a reluctant hero, I guess, which is more interesting. But anyway a Japanese chick in a sexy Japanese school girl’s outfit and a samurai sword tracks him down to bring him to a billionaire Japanese businessman, Yashida, who is dying. Turns out, Wolverine, whose real name is Logan, saved Yashida when Logan was a WWII POW in a Japanese camp near Nagasaki, and Yashida was a guard. It was the fateful bombing of Nagasaki with “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb.

So Yashida has spent his company’s millions developing a way to free Logan from his immortality, make him able to die as he would like. To be able to love, marry, have kids, grow old and die with his loved ones by his side. This is what makes the theme interesting. Because Yashida knows that somehow Logan feels that his immortality is miserable, that “eternity can be a curse.” Logan is described as a Ronin, a samurai without a master, and he’s “destined to live forever with no reason to live.” Yashida says, “You seek what all soldiers do, an honorable death, and an end to your pain.” His pain being evidently his loneliness because as another says, everyone he knows dies, not just through murder, but naturally, as he lives on well past them.

So the Wolverine’s journey is one of discovering meaning and purpose after facing the despair of loneliness and meaninglessness of immortality. This is a quite rich theme to explore and is what makes the movie rise above with transcendence. Logan is a man with gifts to help others but who is a selfish man wanting to be left alone. He has lost the only thing that gave him hope, his beloved Jean from a past movie.

So he is like the Existentialist Superhero who has faced the angst of looking into the Abyss and realizing that life has no meaning because everything dies and is gone and forgotten. So the very thing that all of us would consider the most desire blessing, to live forever, is actually a curse if it is not shared in community, if it is not used to save others.

Here is what I find fascinating about the movie…

SPOILER ALERT: The ultimate villain of the movie is not the mutant Viper, a sexy poisonous mutant who seeks to kill Wolverine, but the very man whom Logan saved, Yashida. Yashida is old and dying and wants take what Wolverine does not want, his immortality so he can live forever to pursue his selfish goal of power. This is akin to the Garden of Eden, where God banishes the primeval couple because if they were to eat of the Tree of Life and live forever in their evil state, there is no end to the amount of destruction that would result.

Two selfish loner men, one who is good and one who is bad fighting over eternal life. When they are locked in a battle at the end of the movie, Yashida tells Logan that Logan has decided that “life without end can have no meaning,” but Yashida has concluded that “It’s the only life that can have meaning.”

Here’s the tricky part. Usually, you put the philosophy that is destructive into the mouth of the villain and we see where that belief ends in terms of consequences. In this case, it might be that those show seek to find eternal life are destructive. But sometimes, the villain is partly right and the hero has to learn from the villain what has been twisted. So in this case, Logan actually learns that he is wrong, and that his eternal life does have meaning if it finds purpose and redemption in serving others instead of solitary selfishness, like the villain would prefer.

This reminds me of a very powerful argument for the meaning of life being found in there being an afterlife. If there is no eternal life, if we all are food for worms, if all we have is what happens in this life, then this life truly has no meaning or purpose, and we are all fools wasting our time. No matter what we think or do, no matter what meaning we try to create or find, there is none transcendent of living itself, and all our “meaning” or “purpose” is a self delusion, created by us to make us feel better.

But only if there is a transcendent eternal life can this life have objective true meaning. Things in this life can only have real meaning if they are rooted in something transcendent to this life. If there is no afterlife, then even eating, drinking and being merry is a waste of time because in the end you are nothing, less than zero, and not even a blip of existence on the timeline of eternity. This life has no real objective meaning whatsoever if there is no eternal life.

A side note I find interesting is that Yashida is a reflection of a very real mentality in some of the older Japanese generation that was saved from total destruction by the West, which they continued to hate even after they lost the War. These few Imperialists still believe in their racist superiority and if in power, would do all over again what they attempted in 1941. It shows you that saving evil people doesn’t necessarily change them into good people. Another insightful moral truth.

R.I.P.D.: Evil Must be Punished or There is No Justice

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Men in Black with evil souls instead of aliens. Or Ghostbusters 2013. Ryan Reynolds plays Nick, a cop who finds himself killed in the line of duty and winds up on R.I.P.D. the Rest in Peace Department of “heaven” or whatever it is. They need his skills to help catch renegade evil souls called, Deados, who have escaped the big sucking wind tunnel to the afterworld, in order to hide out on earth in disguise among the living. What Nick, and his veteran partner, Roy, played by Jeff Bridges as a rascally western style sheriff, soon discover is that the evil souls have their own planned apocalypse, and can I say, it ain’t bringing heaven to earth.

Nick discovers he has about a hundred years to help the RIPD, or “take his chances with judgment,” of which he is not too sure he will do well. So he jumps at the chance. The partners have to hunt down the dark souls, whose presence is revealed by their decaying effect on their living quarters. Electricity flutters, and homes fall apart or are covered with grossness and slime. Their own spiritual decay is manifested in them looking ugly and monstrous, but they are able to disguise themselves as normal humans. Their true natures come out when offered Asian or Indian spicy food (I don’t get that one, but you gotta have some rules for the world you create).

Unfortunately, Nick, himself is not a clean soul, as he was involved in taking a little from the coffers of captured criminal gold when he was alive. But he does it only to be able to bless his wonderful loving wife, who means the world to him. Living on a cop’s salary is a temptation to skim.

So, if they can capture the souls and bring them back into a purgatory like holding cell in the sky, then they will eventually be brought to judgment.

Nick’s journey is one of being able to let go of his wife, and redeeming himself since he was taken at too young an age and would be unable to clear his name to her because he wants to right his wrong. But as his partner reminds him, no one dies at a good time, it’s always an inconvenience for our plans.

The bad guys’ plan is based in something called the “Staff of Jericho,” which has ancient roots in the Old Testament times, but it is not really explained so it becomes a mere plot device similar to Ghostbusters. But the point is that it is an ancient pagan religious device that does evil through the spiritual world. In this sense, the picture painted by this movie is a kind of Christian worldview against paganism.

But it’s really more of a Christian worldview subverted by cosmic humanism.

This movie was a mixture of good laughs, warm romance, humanist redemption and SFX. I love the premise. It’s very clever. Because it is an unavoidably spiritual premise, there is unyielding talk of hell and eternal punishment for “bad people.” This is one of those narrative and ethical “proofs for the existence of God.” You cannot tell satisfying stories and you cannot have a moral or ethical universe that does not include real punishment and reward. C.S. Lewis argued that the notion of punishment, far from being the “unfair behavior of a cruel god,” who “casts people into hell,” the notion of punishment is what actually gives meaning and dignity to the human on both a societal level and by extension a spiritual one. If you do not punish a being, then you are denying them the essential dignity to choose good or evil. You are saying that they cannot but do what they do, whether through psychological or internal chemical manipulation or whatever. To punish is not to be cruel at all (if done justly of course), but to affirm that the being could have done otherwise and had the inherent dignity and capability to do so. To freely choose to do good or evil is the thing that dignifies humanity. If we are but victims of our social groups or scientific natural causes, then we are mere puppets to be socially engineered by the elites. And guess who those elites would be? You got it. The privileged ones who believe in those views: The scientific materialists, naturalists, socialists and other totalitarian utopian left wing radicals (to whom the only “evil” is a God who judges – and his followers).

But if there is a God who punishes or judges, then that means he made us with the inherent dignity and power to do right. Our choice not to do right does not make us diseased or sick, but evil. A God who does not punish or judge evil is the most cruel and unjust being possible because billions of innocent victims are denied justice and recompense in favor of the criminal evildoers getting away with it.

Thus the saying, “Compassion to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” In justice, if you do not punish evildoers, you are punishing the victims (which includes the family and loved ones of those victims). No, worse, you are torturing them by allowing the evildoer to escape justice which intensifies and magnifies the loss of the loved ones for the rest of their lives. It’s like torturing the victims.

Ah, if there was only a way in which our spiritual crimes could be paid for AND we are forgiven, only then can justice and peace embrace. Now, who could be that perfect mediator to fulfill both justice and grace? Who can save us from this body of death? Thanks be to…

Do I digress?

And that is where this movie falls apart. Since the only taboo in some studio movies is GOD, the filmmakers ditch the only logical and reasonable reality of a personal God who judges and replace him with a “universe that judges in its ultimate wisdom.” The universe in this movie is a godless one. It is a pantheistic view that makes the entire universe as if it is the supreme being. Which is ultimately unsatisfying from a story perspective, because now you have a personal story of personal beings who are interacting not with an ultimate person, but with an impersonal abstract force or accumulation of natural laws. BORING. They could have easily used the generic term “God” which would still mean whatever most people wanted it to mean anyway, but it would have been a more satisfying story with a personal connection. Depersonalizing the deity is suicide for storytelling and theology. Impersonal forces do not “judge,” only personal beings do, because “judgment” is an ethical notion between personal beings.

Another half and half movie. Half good stuff about judgment for our deeds on earth, half terrible stuff about a godless pantheistic universe.

And another thing in this movie: What happens when a bad soul doesn’t want to go back in supernatural handcuffs to the “holding cell” to await his judgment? Well, then the RIPD has guns with special bullets that annihilate the soul, destroy them forever. Do not go to Hell, do not collect one hundred dollars, just straight into oblivion of non-existence.

So I got to thinking. The souls who have escaped are all obviously evil, as evidenced by their manifestation. So, if they are going to go to judgment anyway, what would you rather want (as an evil soul), eternal torment or non-existence? And it seemed to me that I would rather cease to exist than suffer forever under punishment. So from the perspective of a spiritual criminal, getting blown away by the RIPD might actually be preferable to judgment.

But from “the universe in its ultimate wisdom” perspective (Ahem, God’s perspective), it seems to me that annihilation would be the ultimate devaluation of human worth because the lack of existence makes the human worth nothing, while continuity of existence, even in judgment, maintains that the human is in the image of God and therefore has eternal value. Kind of an extension of what I was saying about punishment above.

OR would the devaluation of the human into nothing be the ultimate judgment? I can see why some might see it that way. But then again, would God devalue his own image in a human being? I kinda doubt it.

But whatever the case, we do have the promise from God that “He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury” (Romans 2:6–8).

And if you want to see if anyone can actually attain this “righteousness,” go here.

Pacific Rim: Global Warming Causes Godzilla

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Japanese Godzilla movie Hollywood style. Huge monsters created by SUV exhaust, oil pipelines, second hand smoke, and our failure to protect the California Delta Smelt.

The world is being attacked by huge monsters (called Kaiju), not from outer space, but from underneath the sea in the ocean’s crust. So the nations bind together to create huge robots (called Jaegers) to equal their size and fight back. These robots are driven by two pilots whose minds are synchronized in a neural net connection so that they can act as one. The problem is, the giants are getting too big and are kicking robot A., so they decide to drop the robot program and put all their energies into building huge walls to keep out the Kaiju. Obviously stupid decision when the walls are busted like nothing. So they gather a few of the remaining “old school” robots to fight back.

Okay, I don’t care for Japanese Humongous Fighting Monster Movies. But I must admit, I enjoyed this one as a popcorn spectacle. I think Del Toro did a good job of creating a sense of the size of the monsters and the fighting was kinda cool. Yes, this movie is filled with all the cliché formula elements: The hero, Raleigh, is a “top gun” with an attitude who doesn’t follow orders (Hey, when have we ever seen that?), a love interest of a girl who is a combat pilot with just as good fighting skills as the hero so they are equals, two goofy scientist types to provide comic relief and a scientific discovery of how to beat the monsters, and another top gun who hates the hero until the hero saves him! Oh, and also a fascinating bad guy who holds the key to helping them out (played by the inimitable Ron Perlman). But so what. THAT IS WHAT THESE MOVIES HAVE BECAUSE IT WORKS. If you accept that they are primarily about the spectacle, then just sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

But that is not to say that it does not have some character development or thematic intentions.

The whole element of the pilots needing to “mind meld” with each other and therefore enter into their brains and memories sets up a pretty cool thematic element of how hard it is to let someone into your pain and hurt, and how we must let people in or we will ultimately fail in our humanity. There is even a line by one of the characters, “It’s hard to let someone in to really trust them.” After Raleigh loses his brother (his copilot, since siblings are prime cases for synchronized minds), he of course gives up and has to learn again how to let someone in again, and YES, it has to be a girl pilot, because we want ROMANCE! (An interesting side note is that Del Toro deliberately avoids the romantic subplot implications at the end when the hero and girl DO NOT KISS. It is a kiss scene for sure, but they just lean their foreheads out of happiness that they are alive.

There is a thematic conflict between obedience and respect as Raleigh must face the consequences of his own rule breaking that leads to his heartbreak in his life.

And of course, individualism versus being a team player. The hero has much to offer with his skills, but he must learn to work as a team and ultimately to offer himself as a sacrifice or he will never be the full human he needs to be.

SPOILER ALERT: Anyway, my “agenda gripe” for the day is that we ultimately learn that the aliens are colonizers who have been waiting to take over the planet and kill us so they can move onto another planet. The problem was that in the days of the dinosaurs, we are told, the planet was not able to sustain their life forms. But then the crazy scientist says that thanks to our ozone and carbon output, we made terra firma livable for them.

This is a common thematic element of sci-fi movies, and it follows the formula from the olden days. The monstrous terror is the consequences of our own hubris. (Remember Frankenstein?) Okay, fair enough. We create the monsters that hurt us, so we must change. It’s a sociological and political statement. Just like all the monsters in the olden days were caused by atomic radiation, thus causing the terror of end of the world destruction that lay over our heads like the sword of Damocles.

Just know that every single movie about every global end of the world scenario will always now be about global warming and the accusation that humans are causing the catastrophe by our use of energy and our carbon output. Even though these anti-science flat earth like claims are demonstrably not true in our real world, every movie, every TV show and all entertainment will always make the claim. (Already happening: 2012, Day After Tomorrow, After Earth, Oblivion, probably Elysium too). And the ignorant that make up the masses will be believing it and accepting it as an assumed truth because they’ve been told it over and over. You are being propagandized through the media and entertainment. That is how propaganda works. You repeat the slogan over and over in all forms of media and entertainment and suppress all skepticism: “We are causing the end of the world through our carbon output,” “We are causing the end of the world through our carbon output,” “We are causing the end of the world through our carbon output.” And hey, wouldn’t you know it, people are thinking, “We are causing the end of the world through our carbon output.” Gee, I wonder why they think that? It ain’t cause of the facts, folks. It’s because you’ve been propagandized.

This is the new puritanical religion of environmentalism. It projects guilt for “sins” and demands repentance or the end of the world. It has a vast institution of power called Big Government that controls a multi-billion dollar empire of propaganda and control, High priests of “scientists” who damn you if you question their dogma. And it has its fanatical terrorists called Big Green who engage in inquisitions that end up killing people by withholding help in the name of their religion (the DDT scandal, genetically modified foods for the poor, and energy sources for blacks in the third world and on and on). And anyone who denies it is an “other,” a heathen, a polluter who wants to pollute the earth or being paid by Big Oil. In the movie, a guy says that some believe “The Kaiju were sent from heaven to punish us” (for our carbon output).

I would have to say though, that there is a very interesting truth embodied in this story that I am not sure the filmmakers intended because it does not fit their typical left wing paradigm. The solution in this movie (as in all these End-of-the-World scenarios) to overcome the villain, and save the world is NUCLEAR BOMBS. It kinda has to be since we have nothing bigger. But if you see where I am going… The Bad Guy Boogieman of yesteryear is now the hero solution, literally AND metaphorically, which should really tick off the environmentalist flat-earthers. Because of course, Enviromentalists successfully suppressed the expansion of nuclear power with their radical activism. But now, nuclear power is THE CLEANEST source of power we have, with virtually ZERO CARBON OUTPUT. Uh oh. That doesn’t bode well for religious science-denying dogma.

And on the other side, Nuclear weapons are the only ultimate source of being able to stop global human evil of the Kaiju kind (Islamism, Communism). Why? Because evil only respects power and force. And the bigger power and more totalitarian a monster gets (Iran, N. Korea), the only thing that will stop them is the threat of nuclear weapons. You know, those things that the current administration is trying to do away with. So, who are the real Monsters?

One word: I am not being paid by Big Oil, but if any of them would like to help fund my work, I would gladly consider offers.

The Lone Ranger: The Noble Savage Vs. Greedy Capitalist

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Comic book action movie of the beloved hero of yesteryear and his trusty sidekick the Lone Ranger. Yes, you read that right. Tonto is really the lead in this movie, as played by Johnny Depp, who does tend to steal movies with his sly cool presence. In true Hollywood fashion, this movie subverts the old storyline with a Politically Correct version to make appeal to the false conscience of the American public.

The movie is WAY TOO LONG at 2 hours and 20 minutes. It should have been cut by 20 minutes. And it could have saved almost all that 20 minutes by deleting a “modern” day hook that bookends the movie. We see a young kid in 1933 in some carnival freak show watching a wild west exhibit where Tonto is now very old and on display as a “Noble Savage.” Tonto then proceeds to tell the kid the story of how John Reid, started “as a man of law,” but ended as “a man of justice” as the Lone Ranger. At least that’s how the filmmakers see it. Completely worthless waste of time, this book end. And it ends with the kid asking Tonto if it is really true, the story he told. Tonto says in “It’s up to you, Kemosabe.” Legends are not about the facts, they are supposed to be about the truth.

Anyway, the actual movie is not as terrible. It is a popcorn fun action comic book movie after all, so you don’t make your expectations high. The final action sequence was lots of fun and even brought back emotional memories when they played the William Tell Overture, saved for that climactic ending. They play the characters against their original types, Tonto is the stronger personality and the Lone Ranger is a goofy bumbling prosecuting attorney who provides the humor against Depp’s straight man.

The character arc of this story is all about the Lone Ranger being a man of the law, who seeks to do everything the right way and according to due process. No matter how bad the criminal, he believes every man has the right to his day in court. A particular phrase of his “Bible,” John Locke’s Treatise on Government is quoted at the beginning, which captures his worldview: Men must “quit the laws of nature and assume the laws of man,” in order to maintain civilization. Tonto, however, as his ally foil believes that “justice is what a man must take for himself.” He believes in working outside the law, the way of nature so to speak.

So the theme of this movie is about Law vs. Nature, and which of these views can lead to justice. One of the recurring thematic memes in this movie is “Nature out of balance,” and how to achieve that balance again.

The white man is the evil menace because as Tonto says, “Indians are like coyotes (nature). They kill and leave nothing to waste. What does the white man kill for?” In the movie, the white man kills for power and money. So, in short, the white man believes the Indian to be savage, and civilization to be achieved through lawful means and “progress,” but what we see in this story is that the white man is the savage, progress is exploitative, and that the Lone Ranger ultimately comes to believe that if men like those in power represent the law, then he’d rather be an outlaw. He gives up his belief in due process to stay an outlaw at the end because “there comes a time when good men must wear a mask.”

This heart change is reflected when the Lone Ranger finally has the chance to kill the outlaw who killed his brother (and ate his heart, if that wasn’t bad enough). Reid does not shoot him in cold blood. Instead he seeks to take him in to face a trial, because Reid considers himself “not a savage” to kill outside of the law. But Tonto tells him, “No. You are not a man.” (Again, the laws of man versus the laws of nature) And after all that energy to do the right thing, it backfires on Reid because the law and the outlaws are all in the hands of the greedy capitalist, and so the outlaw gets away and the Lone Ranger becomes captive to the bad guys. So, later when Reid has the chance to shoot the unarmed outlaw, he finally does, only to find his gun is out of bullets, and he has to fight him physically. But we see the hero is changed. He has given up on lawful means of pursuing justice. And when he is offered a new gold watch as a reward by the new greedy capitalists in charge, thinking they can buy him just like they buy others, he rejects it and decides to keep on his mask to stay an outlaw.

But it seems in the movie that everyone is in the hands of the greedy capitalist and there are no good capitalists. The “engine of western civilization,” the railroad, is the goal of the greedy capitalist, as the ultimate bad guy of all bad guys. He is the one who exploits nature carelessly with the expansion of railroads as the emblem of progress. The cliché ugly outlaw thugs are hired by the greedy capitalist to do his bidding, the military (led by a cliché General Custer look alike) are controlled by the greedy capitalist to kill Indians. All the evil and abuse that occurs in this movie all seems to come back to the greedy capitalist businessman as the ultimate villain.

Well, there are plenty of those in our world. If you can find the balance of nature within yourself to understand that not all progress is evil, not all capitalists are greedy exploiters and not all white men are evil, you can enjoy this film for what it is with its faults: A ridiculous action comic book movie that is politically correct, but fun at times.

White House Down: Obama as Action Hero Vs. Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

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Die Hard at the White House as Obama propaganda. Okay, now you know the entire movie. Well, not really, because this movie has what Die Hard did not: An invulnerable hero, played by Channing Tatum. What made the original Die Hard so good was John McClane’s weaknesses and real injuries. In this movie, Channing plays John Cale, who seems to live unscathed through a thousand poorly aimed bullets by sharpshooting criminals, deadly falls, and even a grenade. I know, I know, even the new Die Hards have become that. But I mean not even a scratch on the guy. Makes it rather unsatisfying because you never really believe he can be caught or hurt by the bad guys so your emotional investment is lost.

John Cale is a security agent for the Speaker of the House who is trying desperately to get a job with the Secret Service because his daughter worships the President as hero, and no longer feels that way about him. He’s divorced, and he’s messed up one time too many, but he figures if he can protect the one person his daughter sees as a hero then maybe he can gain her trust back. And that is the emotional power of this story of a father and daughter in the midst of a terrorist take down of the White House. It’s actually quite touching and it’s what makes this story rise a little above its otherwise excessive action movie set pieces.

But the political and moral worldview of this movie is abysmal.

If you want to understand the moral worldview of the storytellers, look at the villain. The villain’s goals and rationale are what the storytellers believe are the dangerous beliefs in this world that must be stopped. And in this movie, the real enemies that exist in this world — the Islamic regimes and Muslim terrorists killing tens of thousands of innocents around the world, with the intent of imposing Islamic Law on everyone – THOSE villains do not really exist. The very real threat of Iran is just a figment of the vast right wing conspiracy theorizing. NO, the REAL enemy is the tired old Hollywood boogeyman, the “Military Industrial Complex” and “Right Wingers” in America who believe that Iran is a threat and must be stopped from getting nuclear weapons. I kid you not. This is the ludicrous view of the world that could only come from Hollywood.

First of all, Jamie Fox plays President Sawyer, an obvious Democrat Barack Obama President, who just like Obama, makes all kinds of references to himself in connection with Abraham Lincoln. Ironic, since Lincoln was a Republican who would condemn the Chicago mafia politics of Obama, and the slavery, KKK, and Jim Crow of the Democratic Party. But truth is often not important when people try to construct symbolism of themselves. Nevertheless, Sawyer/Obama ends up fighting the bad guys, shooting a rocket launcher and helping the hero save the White House, his daughter, America, and the World. The obvious intent here is to construct a narrative mythology that connects Obama to a superhero persona worthy of obedience and genuflection.

In the beginning of the film we see President Sawyer on TV talking about how “the source of violence is poverty,” in other words, the tired old Left Wing sloganeering that poverty causes crime. Really? So, all the tens of millions of poor people, many tens of millions more than those violent ones, who don’t engage in crime, why aren’t they violent? And since the source of so much violence in the world is actually driven by the rich, where is their poverty? This is the evil foundational belief of Marxism that reduces morality to economic terms because of its desire to control the wealth of others. With Presidents like this, who needs enemies?

In contrast with this religion of Leftism, Christianity claims that the fundamental cause of violence AND poverty is actually VALUES. It is moral values that drive human beings to do good or evil, NOT economic status. Those with good moral values do not engage in crime, even if they are poor. Those with bad moral values DO commit crimes even if they are rich. See Spot run. Duh. The real truth of the matter is, folks, that the most violence has been done upon this world through this very belief that economics causes crime (See: Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, North Korea etc etc.).

SPOILER ALERT: We soon discover that the President has a “Peace Plan” that consists of removing all American troops from the Middle East. Another absolutely immoral belief, since it would create the biggest slaughter and takeover by Islamists in the world. So when the villains first blow up the Capitol and take the White House hostage, we hear that everyone thinks they’re Arabs (Because, don’t you know, we’re all racists who have created an artificial boogeyman of Arabs as terrorists without any reason whatsoever. Just racism, yeah right.) The racist MSNBC newsman, Chris Matthews would love this movie and so do Islamists. But we ultimately learn that the bad guy is a Right Wing conspirator who tracked down a bunch of “Right wing sociopaths,” “racists,” and “White Supremecist” radicals as well as Libertarian nuts who are mad for the laws against online pirating. (One of the bad guys uses the derogatory term “Sheeple” of the hostages, which happens to be a term that right wing survivalist types use) Oh, and just to make sure, they connect the villain to religious Americans, the movie has the villain saying, “God bless us all.” I’m surprised they didn’t add a Tea Partier, a Pro-Lifer, or those “dangerous” types who don’t believe in big government.

But this all just reflects the same bigotry and Islamophilic prejudice that the current White House administration enforces when it scrubs all references to Islam, Muslim, Jihad and terrorist from its government documents and instead proclaims the real dangerous people to be pro-lifers, and “people who do not trust government.” Yeah, those are the REAL bad people we need to watch out for.

Okay, so this villain is taking over because he believes that there are no nukes in Iran, “But there will be,” so the President’s move will allow Iran to move forward. So the villain wants to rain nukes upon Iran in a Pre-emptive strike in the name of protecting the country.

So Iran will love this movie too! Because it shows what terrible victims they are of the big bullying imperialistic America, that we all know is trying to take over the world!

So, you get the analogy with the real world? Those in our real world who are warning that Iran will use nukes as Hitler would use nukes — because they are WORSE than Hitler’s Nazis — THOSE people are the dangerous ones, NOT the actual Islamo-nazis of Iran who will actually start with nuking Israel and move on from there. Those who say that sometimes we are forced by impossible options to stop a bully, or rather a serial mass murderer, by pre-emptively using force, those people are just warmongers and racists. Of course, in the real world, using nukes is the last option for such things. A pre-emptive strike does not require nukes. But this movie’s political posturing is actually an incitement of hatred (and violence?) against those who are arguing for the use of force to stop Iran from getting nukes. The filmmakers create a demonized image of their political opponents as dangerous violent crazy zealots to inspire the suppression of those views from the public debate.

Kinda like Chicago politics.

Kinda like the IRS.

World War Z: Zombies Prove the Existence of God

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I love the zombie movie genre. And when I think of what great things can be done on the usual cheap zombie movie budget like a 28 Days Later, or Rec, or Mutants (the French one), it is a shame to see the monumental waste of money on a megabudget zombie movie like this. I’m not saying WWZ wasn’t a good movie. It was a suspenseful, fast paced horror thriller with a cool new idea about zombies (namely, that they can operate like hordes of insects in their rage). But if that’s all you can offer with a gazillion dollar budget and superstar Brad Pitt (of whom I am a fan I might add), I’ll stick with 28 Weeks Later, The Horde, and even Warm Bodies, thank you.

What I mean to say is that WWZ is a shallow hero’s journey without an interesting character that we care about or any character arc that makes us empathize with him. Beyond a basic set up of Brad Pitt having a loving family of wife and two little girls, we know nothing else about this man’s soul to care about him, other than him being a guy who is trying to find the cure. There’s just nothing else to the story. Nothing much to say about it. It left me with an unsatisfied feeling. And that makes it another shallow big budget misuse of a good genre.

What? You may ask. Is there anything BUT a shallow zombie movie? Oh yes indeed. If you don’t know this, you are obviously not educated on the benefits of zombie movies for cultural enhancement and spiritual values. And I am NOT being facetious. So hang in there.

Zombie movies are a powerful genre to explore some rather penetrating ideas about our humanity and our ethics as a society. The basic thematic playground that the genre explores is:
What makes human exceptionalism? How are we different from mere animals? The ethic of survival versus self-sacrifice is played out in a tale of survival against those who have lost their humanity. When humans become consuming machines (Dawn of the Dead), or mindless wasteful youth (Sean of the Dead), or macho militarism without restraint (28 Days Later), or focused on our own survival over others (28 Weeks Later), then that is what denies our human dignity and turns us into mere animals, which leads to our ultimate demise. The actual cause of zombies is usually some kind of virus or bacteria like a human Rabies, but the way the survivors deal with their dilemma reflects the spiritual ramifications of that loss of humanity at large. By exercising the ethic of self-sacrifice is how we as a society will transcend animal nature and be redeemed (like love in Warm Bodies).

For example, 28 Weeks Later has a main character save himself at the expense of his wife, only to be haunted in his conscience by his selfish actions. Meanwhile, throughout the story, we see that what makes us human is our elevation of others above our own survival. Those who act selfishly tend to die, those who sacrifice themselves to save others, often die, but are the humanized redeemed ones.

In this same sense, WWZ is not without its positive traits. For the very drive of Brad Pitt’s character to protect his family, and ultimately the human race is what causes him, and others in the story, to make decisions of self sacrifice for others. It is love that rises above natural instinct.

Zombie movies are not just about survival. They are usually about a conflict of ethics: The evolutionary ethic of survival of the fittest without morality versus the Christian ethic of self sacrifice. They often encourage values that reinforce human exceptionalism. If humans are more than mere animals, then we have to ask ourselves, what is it that makes us so exceptional? How do we transcend mere material animality? Lurking in the background of that question is the ancient answer that has been dismissed, nay despised, by atheism, materialism, naturalism, and the modern Left of the University and politics: That we are created in the image of God.

When you indoctrinate and condition a society to believe that morality is a social construct, that there are no transcendent ethics to which we are accountable because we are just another animal in the great evolving chain of being, then you should not be surprised when you reap the consequences of a society of people acting like zombies.

And that is why Zombie movies are arguments for the existence of God.

Cloud Atlas: Freedom, Dystopias, and Sex Change Operations

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On DVD. As a movie fan, I have a love/detest relationship with the Wachowskis. Sometimes, they poop out very terrible pieces of excrement with bad philosophy, like V For Vendetta, and sometimes they make visually stunning, thought-provoking films — with bad philosophy, like The Matrix (I give them a break. No one is a 100% hitter). Cloud Atlas is one of the latter. One thing is for sure, they always deliver consistently bad philosophy. However, like Nietzsche, their hero (they are Nietzschean after all), they are great with words. And they are excellent at embodying their bad philosophy into story. They are great storytellers, these two.

Cloud Atlas is an adaptation of the novel by David Mitchell. The film is a quite fascinating intercutting of six stories that all take place in different time periods and sometimes different planets, yet are all interconnected in their theme because as one of their dialogue memes goes, “Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present.” The brilliant hook they provide is that in each story, the same handful of actors play the lead characters in different roles. This is a very creative tactic to embody one of their themes that I will address in a moment.

1) One story takes place in the 1800s about an Englishman’s awakening to the horrors of slavery.

2) Another story takes place in the 1970s about a black American reporter uncovering a scandal by “Big Oil” to ruin the advent of nuclear power.

3) Another story takes place in the Victorian period, I think, about a homosexual music student that transcribes for an old famous composer, who uses the kid’s genius for his own benefit.

4) Another story takes place in the present, where an old geezer is forced into an old folks home by his brother and plans to escape with a motely band of other marginalized oldsters.

5) Another story takes place in the future, where a “fabricant” created for the pleasure of humans becomes self aware and turns into a sort of female messiah of revolution (One of the Wachowskis’ favorite themes)

6) Yet another story takes place in the distant future, after the apocalypse caused by that big oil scam, where a primitive man interacts with an alien humanoid and turns from a coward into a hero.

Whew! That might look like too much to follow, but it really isn’t. They do quite an excellent job of intercutting between cliff hangers of each story and bouncing around between the stories in such a way as to tie them all together in a thematic montage about freedom, oppression, dystopia, and identity politics. “We are bound to others, past and present.”

All the stories are about individuals who discover or live under some kind of oppression, whether its slavery, big corporations, old people in an old folks home, or the government in the future. They each have a unique individuality that causes them to feel constrained by their world and want to break out. Though my personal favorite was the post-apocalyptic story of a man who turns from coward to hero, the most philosophically blatant story is the futuristic dystopia.  There, the society is called “Unanimity,” which obviously represents homogeneity where everyone is the same in one big “unanimous” entity. Wachowskis are GREAT with working quotes elegantly into their storylines, and Cloud Atlas is full of them. Solzhenitsyn, the famous Russian intellect who wrote of Soviet Communist oppression of their own people in the post WWII era is quoted, “You can maintain power over people as along as you give them something. Rob a man of everything and you no longer have any power over him.” Beautiful truth that punches through.

Another beautiful phrase is spoken by the old man in the old folks home: “Freedom is the fatuous jingle of our civilization. Only those deprived of it have the barest inkling what it really is.” Yet another line that echoes through the stories in different character’s mouths as the revolutionary inspiration is the line of a movie, “I will not be subjected to criminal abuse.”

Like good Nietzscheans, they struggle against the very nihilism of a naturalistic world without God as several villains repeat, “Only one principle on earth. The weak are meat and the strong do eat.” The characters in this world are shaped by forces that “began long before we are born and go on long after we die.” In the future, fabricants are “expired” by being told they are going to “exaltation” (read: “heaven”), but they are only being processed into food to be given to other fabricants. In other words, transcendent beliefs are delusion. All there is is here and now and the naturalistic processes of life.

Now comes their magic trick. They attach that naturalism, a philosophy that believes in the existence of only natural causation, and therefore no supernatural, and they attach it to the villains in the stories who reiterate the philosophy that “There is a natural order to this world, and it must be protected.” They ask the question that if God created the world, then what changes and what is sacred and inviolable, and they conclude that our identities are socially, or more importantly, individually constructed.

This is identity politics, and I think is the main thematic thrust of the movie. As one character says, “All boundaries are conventions waiting to be transcended,” and “My life extends far beyond the limitations of me.” And lastly, as another says, “I can feel your heart beating as my own, and I know separation is an illusion.”

I think the import here is definitely the notion that our identities as humans is plastic. It is shaped by our own self-definition, not by God through his natural created order, because they believe there is no natural order of things. To them, the natural order is an oppression. And those who believe in natural law are the villains. So therefore to be a man or woman, gay or straight is oppression and we should be able to craft ourselves as anything we want, an obvious dominant theme in the Wachowski brother’s bad philosophy, and the obvious justification for Lana’s own real world body mutilation to change his gender. I suspect it will be a theme of just about every movie they make since it is at least Lana’s religion.

The way they embody this belief of theirs in the story is quite ingenious though. The same lead characters play the different leads of each story. But more importantly, just about every character plays both a male and female character (with make up of course), and a different race as well in the different stories. So Blacks and Asians play whites and visa versa. They incarnate the plasticity of human identity into their very filming, in order to show that there is no difference between men and women, different races, or even good guy and bad guy, as characters are good guys in one story and bad guys in another. While this certainly holds true for race because race is itself an artificial human construct that is of no significance, it is also applied to things that truly are significantly different, such as gender. So we create ourselves according to this postmodern nonsense.

Now, of course, this is a mixed bag, because the question of freedom and the individual is clearly a powerful and beautiful theme to reveal oppression and totalitarian control of the collective. There is much truth to this story and much beauty in its revelation of the abuse of power and order and the collective. Unfortunately, the filmmakers provide an answer of equal monstrosity, namely the absoluteness of the individual without accountability. They don’t realize that their statement about all of us being connected from womb to tomb by forces beyond us is in fact a statement about the very natural order, boundaries, and collective reality they condemn. Either we are connected to a transcendant order or we are not. Make up your minds, Wachowskis.

It represents the perpetual quest of man to reject God’s order and God’s Law as boundary conditions for our betterment. It is the Edenic rebellion of personal autonomy from our Creator.