Tag Archives | Science Fiction

Mystery of the Batwoman

I haven’t been able to discover who drew this poster (which I suspect looks better than, and bears little relation to, anything in the movie), but I sure have a hypothesis.

Wild World of Batwoman


Doctor Thing

Swamp Thing and AbbyDuring his famous run on Swamp Thing, Alan Moore turned the hero into an alienated, vastly powerful cosmic being who teleports himself all over the universe – his only remaining emotional link to humanity being his girlfriend Abby Arcane, who lounges around idly in the swamp waiting to provide him with sex and nurturing whenever he drops back in.

In other words, the relationship between Swamp Thing and Abby prefigures the later relationship between Dr. Manhattan and Laurie Juspeczyk in Watchmen – the big difference, of course, being that while the first relationship was presented (somewhat tongue in cheek, I assume – or hope!) as idyllic, the second is portrayed, more realistically, as deeply frustrating and dysfunctional. So in Watchmen Moore in effect took the opportunity to deconstruct, under new names, the relationship he’d previously created.

(In related news, Swampy’s manipulating matter to create his own world on the Blue Planet [Saga of Swamp Thing #56] likewise prefigures Doc M’s doing likewise on the Red Planet – though of course one’s exile is chosen and the other’s is not.)


Hail to Our Martian, or Perhaps Simian, Overlords

Good news! She's real [Lucy Lawless as Xena Warrior Princess] Bad news! So is she [Lucy Lawless as D'Anna the Cylon]Imagine a world where Conan, Xena, and Blackadder were real people while Hitler, Mussolini, and Churchill weren’t. A world where the Battle of Helms Deep really happened but the Battle of Hastings didn’t.

Sounds like a better world than the real one – until we add in that it’s also a world in which humanity has been conquered and enslaved by some combination of Martians, Cylons, and damn dirty apes.

What world is this? According to a substantial percentage of the British public, it’s the one we live in.

So cheer up, fellow Americans – we are not alone.


Atlas Shrugged  Movie Update #96874

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Apparently popular opposition to the bailout may help to kickstart the perpetually-approaching-but-never-arriving Atlas Shrugged movie, which is now being pitched as an anti-bailout movie. (Conical hat tip to Stephan Kinsella.)

Roberts as Dagny?That makes a fair bit of sense; for while both its critics (recently, e.g., Stephen Colbert) and its fans (recently, e.g., the loony Objectivist anti-tipping movement) have often read the book as championing the capitalist class against the proletariat, it actually champions the productive (in both classes) against the parasitic (in both classes); several of the book’s chief villains – most notably James Taggart and Orren Boyle – are wealthy industrialists who are eager lobbyists for special government privileges; and one of Dagny’s chief battles is against regulators who are trying to do her company (well, her brother’s company) a favour by putting its rivals out of business. So it’s really an anti-corporatist novel. (That’s not to say that Atlas isn’t still open to criticism from a left-libertarian perspective; sure it is, in various ways. But that’s another story.) So the present political climate would indeed be a great time for the movie.

Another factor moving the project forward is the need to start production before the rights revert to the Rand estate. That’s a major desideratum, since these days the estate probably wouldn’t approve any film version unless Galt’s Gulch was represented as being ringed by thousands of severed Muslim heads on pikes.

Evidently casting ideas for Dagny are now extending beyond Angelina Jolie, which is probably a good thing too. Jolie’s involvement was a plus to the extent that it made the film likelier to get made, but she never struck me as the right type for the role. Others being considered include Charlize Theron (whose name was once assigned to another never-produced Rand film project, The Husband I Bought), Anne Hathaway, and Julia Roberts – none of whom seem quite right either (though I think I could be persuaded re Roberts; I’ll wait until I see Duplicity to decide).


The Bronze Plain

I just saw an ad for a 1999 production of David Copperfield (the Dickens waif, not the stage magician or the anarcho-syndicalist assassin – oops, you’re not supposed to know about the anarcho-syndicalist assassin), starring a very young Daniel Radcliffe. I was amused to see Maggie Smith (Prof. McGonagall) as David’s Aunt and Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge) as Mrs. Micawber. Making the Potter movies must have felt like a reunion.


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