An Argument for Fan Cuts
Jun. 17th, 2019 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenite0I'm a fan of Robert Heinlein. No shock to anyone who's been reading me for a while. One of the hazards of being a Heinlein fan is watching the movies made of his works. Puppet Masters could have been a lot worse. Starship Troopers I've actively avoided--the reviews make me worry I'd blow multiple blood vessels watching it. So I was hopeful but wary when I heard a movie was being made of "All You Zombies." EDIT: A movie called "Predestination." I should include titles in my movie reviews . . .
It vanished from the theaters before I made up my mind to see it, but a friend loaned me the DVD recently. This past weekend I finally watched it.
My reactions are . . . mixed.
For those who don't remember the short, and aren't willing to go read it right now (worth doing), here's the timeline of "All You Zombies":
Baby Jane left at orphanage.
Jane grows up, wants to join Space Corps.
Seducer knocks Jane up.
C-section reveals Jane is a hermaphrodite, surgeon makes male organs functional after female are too damaged.
Jane's baby is kidnapped.
John (formerly Jane) becomes a writer.
John enters bar, tells Bartender the above (where the narrative of the story begins).
Bartender offers John chance to kill Seducer, time travels him back to meeting.
John can't find Seducer, meets Jane, seduces her.
Bartender grabs Jane's baby, drops her off at orphanage twenty years earlier.
Bartender grabs John, takes him to future to become timecop.
Bartender reveals he's older version of John, closing loop.
(Wikipedia has a great diagram of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_you_zombies_timeline.png)
All of that is in the movie. They tell it long, but it works.
Where it starts to go off the rails is that the movie interleaves a second plot about a mad bomber. The first scene is Timecop John (face never shown) trying to disarm a bomb and being horribly burned, needing a face reconstruction that turns him into the Bartender (ie, justifying actor switch). This has running references through the movie and another action scene where Bartender tries to stop the bomber again.
The end of the movie is John/Bartender retiring (with a shirt-off scene showing the c-section and mastectomy scars for anyone who hadn't made the connection yet). He follows up a clue on the mad bomber and confronts him. Turns out this is an even older version of John/Bartender who'd gone crazy from time travel and is killing hundreds and thousands of people with bombs, justifying it as preventing alternate timeline disasters. John/Bartender shoots mad bomber, the act the mad bomber predicted would send him down that path. Fade to black.
My teenage daughter wandered in for the last act, I gave her a summary. She correctly pointed out that if John/Bartender wanted to prevent the bombings the correct move was to commit suicide, not shoot the bomber afterwards.
What bothers me . . . the entire movie has us focused on this person, sometimes two at a time, and shows us someone who's trying to make the right choice, working hard, and ending up as a time cop willing to sacrifice himself to save lives. And then it's "Psych! The hero is actually the villain!" WTF. What, Hollywood can't handle an actual hero without brightly colored spandex? Seems not (remembering the treatment of Aragorn in LOTR).
I think some of it was just padding out the plot to make it a 90-minute movie rather than 30 minutes. (Actually came out at 97) But I would've liked the 30 minute version better. This calls for a fan edit. Strip out all the mad bomber references and just give us "All You Zombies." That's what I want to see--and they did a good job of it.
It looks like there were some Heinlein fans involved in the production. When John was starting out as a writer he had a copy of Stranger In a Strange Land on his desk (which also resonates with the character just moving to New York after the sex change). The doctor who performed the sex change operation is in the credits as Dr. Heinlein.
I'm honestly unsure of whether to recommend this to anyone else. It's a well done movie. It's a good portrayal of "All You Zombies." It's a good SF story. But the ending is a gratuitous slap at the audience.
So here's my advice: watch it. When you see the Bartender's scars, turn off the movie and say, "Then he lived happily ever after."
It vanished from the theaters before I made up my mind to see it, but a friend loaned me the DVD recently. This past weekend I finally watched it.
My reactions are . . . mixed.
For those who don't remember the short, and aren't willing to go read it right now (worth doing), here's the timeline of "All You Zombies":
Baby Jane left at orphanage.
Jane grows up, wants to join Space Corps.
Seducer knocks Jane up.
C-section reveals Jane is a hermaphrodite, surgeon makes male organs functional after female are too damaged.
Jane's baby is kidnapped.
John (formerly Jane) becomes a writer.
John enters bar, tells Bartender the above (where the narrative of the story begins).
Bartender offers John chance to kill Seducer, time travels him back to meeting.
John can't find Seducer, meets Jane, seduces her.
Bartender grabs Jane's baby, drops her off at orphanage twenty years earlier.
Bartender grabs John, takes him to future to become timecop.
Bartender reveals he's older version of John, closing loop.
(Wikipedia has a great diagram of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_you_zombies_timeline.png)
All of that is in the movie. They tell it long, but it works.
Where it starts to go off the rails is that the movie interleaves a second plot about a mad bomber. The first scene is Timecop John (face never shown) trying to disarm a bomb and being horribly burned, needing a face reconstruction that turns him into the Bartender (ie, justifying actor switch). This has running references through the movie and another action scene where Bartender tries to stop the bomber again.
The end of the movie is John/Bartender retiring (with a shirt-off scene showing the c-section and mastectomy scars for anyone who hadn't made the connection yet). He follows up a clue on the mad bomber and confronts him. Turns out this is an even older version of John/Bartender who'd gone crazy from time travel and is killing hundreds and thousands of people with bombs, justifying it as preventing alternate timeline disasters. John/Bartender shoots mad bomber, the act the mad bomber predicted would send him down that path. Fade to black.
My teenage daughter wandered in for the last act, I gave her a summary. She correctly pointed out that if John/Bartender wanted to prevent the bombings the correct move was to commit suicide, not shoot the bomber afterwards.
What bothers me . . . the entire movie has us focused on this person, sometimes two at a time, and shows us someone who's trying to make the right choice, working hard, and ending up as a time cop willing to sacrifice himself to save lives. And then it's "Psych! The hero is actually the villain!" WTF. What, Hollywood can't handle an actual hero without brightly colored spandex? Seems not (remembering the treatment of Aragorn in LOTR).
I think some of it was just padding out the plot to make it a 90-minute movie rather than 30 minutes. (Actually came out at 97) But I would've liked the 30 minute version better. This calls for a fan edit. Strip out all the mad bomber references and just give us "All You Zombies." That's what I want to see--and they did a good job of it.
It looks like there were some Heinlein fans involved in the production. When John was starting out as a writer he had a copy of Stranger In a Strange Land on his desk (which also resonates with the character just moving to New York after the sex change). The doctor who performed the sex change operation is in the credits as Dr. Heinlein.
I'm honestly unsure of whether to recommend this to anyone else. It's a well done movie. It's a good portrayal of "All You Zombies." It's a good SF story. But the ending is a gratuitous slap at the audience.
So here's my advice: watch it. When you see the Bartender's scars, turn off the movie and say, "Then he lived happily ever after."
no subject
Date: 2019-06-19 02:08 pm (UTC)And that's the least-bad thing about it.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-20 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-21 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-22 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-22 07:47 pm (UTC)