Ex Machina (2014)

Tagline:
To erase the line between man and machine is to obscure the line between men and gods.

Wide Release Date:
April 10, 2015

Directed by:
Alex Garland
Written by:
Alex Garland
Produced by:
Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich

Starring:
Domhnall Gleeson
Alicia Vikander
Oscar Isaac

Ex Machina

PREGAME THOUGHTS

I watched the Devs miniseries and I wasn’t too impressed. This Alex Garland guy seemed like a total hack! Boo!

Then I read a lot of opinions that Garland’s first real feature film, Ex Machina, was a masterstroke of cinematic brilliance! Well, not quite, but it was apparently supposed to be a good chaser after Devs leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

So I though, why the hell not? I like stories that brush the subject of artificial intelligence, consciousness, and the moral ramifications therein when the twain meet! So let’s give it a shot.

THE 550(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Meet Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), who works as a computer programmer at Blue Book. The company is founded and owned by Nathan (Óscar Isaac). Well, as “luck” would have it, Caleb “wins” a week-long stay at Nathan’s remote home where he lives in isolation with a servant named Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno). Cool beans, right? Sure. Sure it is.

Nathan makes Caleb uncomfortable with his extraverted bluntness, but they are civil. Nathan tells Caleb that he has been accepted to his home for the privilege of interacting with Ava (Alicia Vikander), Nathan’s humanoid robot with artificial intelligence. Perform a Turing test. He’s excited! Yeah, in his pants.

Ex Machina

Nice to meet you. My creator gave me big titties.

Over the course of the week, Caleb and Ava interact with one another in her locked quarters. Nathan observes through cameras. Topics of discussion include Ava’s desires to see the world. Caleb is impressed with the AI, and even starts to grow a crush on her. A crush turns to infatuation when she puts on clothes and a wig, looking exactly like the kind of woman who lonely Caleb desires. Boners are popped all around. Occasionally, Ava will cut power to her quarters (rendering the cameras useless) and, direly, will tell Caleb that Nathan is not to be trusted.

Following this, Caleb also begins to lose respect for Nathan after experiencing days worth of his excessive drinking and cruelty toward Ava and Kyoko. When Nathan informs Caleb that he intends to upgrade Ava following the Turing test, essentially killing her current personality, Caleb really starts to lose his mind. During an evening when Nathan drinks to the point of passing out, Caleb steals his keycard to gain access to the off-limits areas. He discovers security footage of Nathan treating past androids — all women — as tortured prisoners and slaves. The ever-silent Kyoko peels off part of her face, revealing to Caleb the machinery beneath. Caleb goes nuts enough to believe the possibility that he, himself, might be an android too. He slits his forearm to confirm, and he bleeds.

Caleb forms a plan to bust Ava out of the joint after telling Ava that Nathan intends to shut her down — “kill” her. He’ll get Nathan drunk, steal his keycard, reprogram the security system and open Ava’s locks. And she and Caleb will get to fall in love and die together or whatever other happy horseshit is running through his mind.

The movie then follows a tense back and forth between Caleb and Nathan where they try to prove that one was one step ahead of the other. In the end, it’s Caleb that wins. The security protocols are reprogrammed and Ava is set free. Nathan knocks Caleb out and runs out of the computer room, leaving Caleb locked in there. Kyoko and Ava meet up and form some cahoots to kill Nathan. Stab him with a big ol’ knife, causing one very dead computer genius. While Nathan dies, he is able to destroy Kyoko and rip off Ava’s arm.

Once the threat is eliminated, Ava finds old models of androids and fashions herself a new arm. Then she proceeds to outfit herself with some flesh and clothing. The audience thinks she’ll return to Caleb, but she instead leaves him locked in the room. She escapes the facility, and we end with her walking amongst the humans at a busy street intersection.

Ex Machina

Keep an eye out for Ex Machina 2: Sex and the City.

Presumably, Caleb dies. We don’t know for sure. lol

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — General Movie Thoughts

What a fantastic movie. Great performances by all three of the main cast: Gleeson playing the lonely, slightly cringey, easily manipulated geek. Isaac as the billionaire genius tech bro. Vikander’s movements made a more plausible android than Brent Spiner. The plot progression was intense on a lowkey level, building mistrust on both sides to the point where you started to really empathize with Caleb’s situation. There was even some semi-gratuitous full-frontal nudity! I wasn’t supposed to like it because the whole point of it was to display the negative side of literal objectification, but I developed a thing for Sonoya Mizuno so how hard can you really blame me? I’m no better than Caleb!

Ex Machina

I have been programmed to, as you humans say, “give happy endings”.

There’s more nuance to the story than “AI is going to take over the world.” Let’s go over how each character was trying to manipulate another to their advantage:

-Ava used sexuality to manipulate Caleb into helping free her from the prison Nathan created.
-Nathan used his desire for technological progress to manipulate Caleb and Ava into interacting with each other for his research.
-Caleb used his sexual desire for Ava to manipulate Nathan into the series of events that led to Ava escaping.

Who’s really the bad guy here? The movie makes you sympathize with Ava until the twist at the end, where a slight subversion tips the scales toward Caleb (who is left to die in Nathan’s facility). Never in the movie do you feel sympathetic toward Nathan, who is “the bad guy” who created and imprisoned — and killed — the artificial beings. In fact, you hate him once you learn that he’s basically taking advantage of his own intelligence by making a bunch of what he perceives to be lifelike and sophisticated sex dolls. You root for Kyoko and Ava when they kill him. I personally wouldn’t have wanted Caleb to be left behind at all, but it was necessary for Ava’s self-preservation.

I guess in the end Nathan’s the true bad guy! Hard to argue with that one too hard!

Ex Machina

Stabby stab! Take that, nerd!

My take is that Ava, for all intents and purposes, is human. She is able to think freely, hold a conversation, have wants and desires, and use people to get what she wants. Sounds pretty human to me. I know some people who aren’t able to think freely or hold a conversation at all! But this movie is more about humans vs. AI, it’s also about men vs. women. All of Nathan’s artificial beings were women, so that speaks volumes about his own intentions. Try as he might’ve against it, Caleb fell prey to his own sexual desires and intentions. He didn’t care much about freeing Kyoko. In fact, there’s a scene where she lied naked on the bed and he walked right past her. Never gave her a second thought. His only interest was freeing Ava. Caleb’s intentions were, in the end, entirely selfish. And so were Ava’s. Self-preservation is one of the most, if not the most, basic human instinct.

However, I didn’t actually expect Ava to be completely uninterested in Caleb. Perhaps a part of her was, but I was legitimately surprised at first when she got dressed and then left him in the locked room instead of busting him out. Perfect ending, though. It left one’s first gut feeling to be “AI Bad” instead of just “Human Bad”, which I thought was brilliant.

TOPIC 2 — Turing Test

I spent some time thinking about putting myself in Caleb’s position. How would I perform the Turing test? What would I do if I sensed that a conscious robot was crushing on me? Man, that’s a wild thought experiment.

First of all, it’s sort of unfair out the gate because Caleb and I have the same taste in women. If I were single and 26 there’s no doubt in my mind that I would’ve fallen into the same goddamn trap. I admit it, I’m not ashamed. Dressing up like Twiggy? I would’ve been powerless! And it would’ve hurt me profoundly to learn, in the end, that I was taken advantage of. It’s hard for me not to sympathize with Caleb, and perhaps that’s a learning experience for me.

I feel that knowing you’re performing a Turing test biases yourself in the first place. Try as you might, if you were going into a conversation knowing you’re talking to AI, you’re going to treat that entity as AI instead of a human being. You’re not going to approach it with as much social grace and tact that proper etiquette dictates when you meet someone new. You’re gonna be like “DO YOU KNOW YOUR OWN NAME?” and “DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW?”

Ex Machina

Or, in some cases, “DO YOU WANT TO TEAR UP THE DANCE FLOOR?”

I would make an honest effort to treat the AI as if it were a human being I haven’t met yet, which means I would be incredibly socially awkward about it and I would be looking forward to when I can get out of the conversation! Wish I were kidding. Thank you for your time.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Director Alex Garland has described the future presented in the film as “ten minutes from now,” meaning, “If somebody like Google or Apple announced tomorrow that they had made Ava, we would all be surprised, but we wouldn’t be that surprised.”
Director Alex Garland was also heard to say “If Google or Apple created a AI sex slave, we would all fuck it, but we wouldn’t fuck it that hard.”

Even though the movie stars famous Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, the movie was never shown in regular Swedish cinemas. The cause of this was said to be a lack of quality and not enough potential for screenings.
Marketers were like “HEY, THIS WOMAN IS SWEDISH, GUYS! SHE’S JUST LIKE YOU!” but the Swedish population was too busy eating their pickled herring plates and shopping at IKEA to give a damn about some British guy’s medium-budget movie.

“Wink.”

Throughout the film, the colors red, blue, and green are prominently displayed in each scene (the green forest, the red brick hallway, the keypad’s red and blue functions, etc.) This is a nod to the RGB color model, which is used to display images in electronic systems, such as computers. Ava, of course, being the main computer in the film.
Fun fact: The movie makes extensive use of the three primary colors of light, as well as several other mixtures of light. Ava, of course, is a robot. Connect the dots yourself.

Ex Machina

Bonus photo of Nathan and his luscious beard. You just wanna run your fingers through it, don’t ya?

Elina Alminas’s debut.
Who?

*checks Wikipedia*

Yeah, I don’t know. She must have been one of the naked robots in the closet. For her involvement in the film, she was likely paid in cookies.

In the end, Ava Session 7 appears on screen even though Caleb isn’t administering the Turing test and Nathan is already dead. This may suggest that Ava was testing the two of them the entire time.
THE TESTERS HAVE BECOME THE TESTES! That’s a joke about balls. Thank you again for your time.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

Hell yes. Thought-provoking and suspenseful. I want to watch it again! Hold on, let me watch it again…

…yep, still good.


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Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #12 – “Loki in Love”

* Standalone Issue *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #12 – “Loki in Love”! In the previous storylines, Ms. Marvel befriends Wolverine while crawling through sewers and discovers a runaway teenage girl whose body was being used to help power the Inventor’s underground base. She also gets assigned a giant Inhuman dog named Lockjaw. Everyone becomes fast friends.

Some more snooping reveals that many teenagers voluntarily donated their bodies to become human batteries for reasons of a) global warming, and b) entrenched beliefs that their generation isn’t useful anyway. It was heavy-handed.

The Inventor gets thwarted. For now. The teenagers become empowered. For now.

And now Loki is involved? Shit. [INSERT MORE ABOUT LOKI HERE WHEN YOU LEARN ABOUT LOKI]

I left the above in as a reminder to learn more about Loki. I have not learned more about Loki. lol

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #12 [April, 2015]
Written by: G. Willow Wilson
“Loki in Love”

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #12

Loki returns to the Kingdom of Asgardia with a big mopey frown. “Thor did it,” he says. He was supposed to stop the frost giant incursion, but instead of tearing them up with swords and daggers Loki decided to charge across the sky in a chariot of stinky, smelly sun horses and shed an enormous amount of light and heat on the frost giants, melting them into disgusting puddles!

But then the horses didn’t do anything but poop.

The Kingdom of Asgardia’s King and Queen, I guess, make stern faces at Loki (who is covered in turds). They don’t like how things have been going for him, so they’re reassigning him to a post in New Jersey! “Jersey City was recently attacked by a man calling himself the Inventor. He used school children as his proxies. Some of them may still be at large in a place called Coles Academic High School.”

Loki sneers haughtily. Such piddling little New Jersey-related shit is none of his concern! I guess “Midgard” is, like, the known universe, because New Jersey is in Midgard and the Inventor was creating a device that could breach the barrier between Midgard and Asgard, and that would really suck for some reason. “Find a way into that school,” says the Queen of the Asgardians or Some Such. “If there is still a threat, neutralize it.”

Then Loki is sent through a lightning-tinged portal and dumped out of the sky on a Jersey City street! A passerby looks at Loki’s horns and asks him if he’s a hipster from Brooklyn, which Loki does not deny. The passerby points him in the direction of the school and suggests stopping by the Circle Q to ask any of the burnouts for help with being a weird sexual predator. Have fun!

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #12

This is a bit of “local humor” for the folks back home!

Meanwhile, at the Circle Q where Kamala Khan’s buddy Bruno works, he’s practicing mustering up some courage to ask Kamala out to the Valentine’s dance. Like this: “hey bitch you wanna go get laid on 2/14?” Vick, Bruno’s degenerate brother, tells him to give it up. For one thing, she’s too good for him. For another thing, her strict-ass parents would never let her set foot outside her house on Valentine’s Day, of all days. That’s just asking for pregnancy!

Bruno is like F You Man, how is he supposed to live his life never knowing if Kamala feels the same way that he does? Vick the Dick tells him that she doesn’t anyway, ha! While the hissy fit ramps up, Loki enters the establishment with a look of triumph on his purple chiseled face.

“Whoa. Check out the Viking dude over there,” Vick says in awe.

“Probably one of those Williamsburg trust fund kids. They all dress like Martians,” Bruno responds.

Loki orders a cup of coffee. Kamala bursts through the entrance like Kramer. “I am gonna fail P.E.,” she moans. She can’t fail a class! What would her dad say?! He would say “BLAARRHBB NO VALENTINE’S DANCE FOR YOU UNTIL YOU’RE 56.”

Bruno smoothly tries to wedge in an idea: go to the Valentine’s dance for extra credit! LOL! That sounds plausible, right? Kamala is onto him immediately and bursts out laughing at his little ploy. Good one, Bruno, you scamp! Well, see ya later!

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #12

Loki knows how to fuck, my friend! Let Loki teach you how to fuck!

“Mio ragazzo, you have just been friend-zoned,” says a sly Vick.

“Friendship is not a zone, you idiot!” replies Bruno, this woke-ass mothafucka. Loki, an innocent bystander, is eating this all up for sure. He offers to help Bruno with snaring the ladies. “Get out a piece of paper. I am about to become your new best friend,” he says. Bruno grudgingly removes a little notebook and writes down the schlock Loki has to offer.

“My darling heart,” dictates Loki, “one glance from your night-dark eyes sets my soul alight with cold fire.”

“What does that even mean?” Bruno sneers.

“Quiet.”

Loki continues his wooing words and then grabs the notebook out of Bruno’s hand before he can even say “boo!”, which is not a very Valentine’s thing to say in the least. “I will deliver the letter myself. When this Kamala is languishing in your arms on the dance floor, you may thank me.”

The only thing Loki asks for in return is help with his scouting expedition! i.e. spying on high school kids. It’s only fair.

Loki billows away before Bruno really has a chance to protest! Someone’s gonna get a face full of embarrassment and it’s going to feel like so much humilation semen.

Later, Kamala is hanging out at her house with her friend what’s-her-name. Nakia. “’Cold fire’?! Am I being stalked? Should I give this thing to the FBI?”

Nakia thinks so. Kamala needs to shut this down ASAP before she gets axe murdered! But what if it’s real? Arrrrghhh!! Teenage years!! “Nobody’s ever been in love with me before…” Kamala smiles dreamily while Nakia maintains a disposition of intense boredom. “Oh come on, Kamala. Don’t tell me you’re falling for this nameless creepster.”

Falling for this nameless creepster she indeed is! Gonna have to find out more about this serial killer! Kamala Khan is now on a mission!

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #12

Bruno! Over here! A couple of fine young ladies who have no romantic interest in you whatsoever! HELLO!

The Valentine’s dance is here, and Bruno is frowning up a veritable storm! Loki is there to tell him to buck up, the night is young. Your young lover will surely show up!

And she does. “I can’t believe you let me drag you to this patriarchal capitalist display of fake affection,” Nakia says grumpily. Kamala isn’t listening to her whining, she’s trying to scope out the room for anyone who looks like he would be remotely interested in having a good time with Kamala Khan hubba hubba.

“I recognize that guy with the horns,” Kamala says as Loki grins seductively near the punch bowl. “He was at the Circle Q yesterday.” Looks like we’re in for a romantic mix-up! I can’t wait to see the foibles and shenanigans that will come out of this!

Nakia catches Loki spiking the punch with Asgardian truth serum in order to try to “weed out the culprit” with respect to his “find the Inventor” mission. She thinks he just poured in a hefty vial-full of a date rape drug. Kamala “suddenly remembers” she has something to do at home and cuts out of there.

A bunch of kids drink the punch. Two of them are Josh and Zoe. I think they were two airheads from the earlier storylines, but I don’t remember anymore. One sip of the heady elixir causes them to start lashing out at each other.

In fact, all the couples start lashing out at each other. Loki has a very strong “bitch and moan” potion.

Ms. Marvel (Vol. 3), Issue #12

Just another normal Valentine’s Day in the books.

Before all hell REALLY breaks loose, MS. MARVEL SHOWS UP TO SAVE THE DAY! “Everybody stop!” she yells, crashing through the fucking ceiling. “This guy is not in high school!”

Loki smiles and waves.

Ms. Marvel raises her gigantified fists! “What did you put in the punch?” she demands. Loki honestly answers the question and indicates that he’s checking to see if the Inventor is still running around. Ms. Marvel is like LET ME WORRY ABOUT THE INVENTOR, YOU PIECE OF SHIT and then she puts up her dukes.

Ms. Marvel leaps out to punch Loki, but he splits into six identical copies. Punching proves fruitless; she goes right through them like air.

“I dunno about God of Mischief,” Ms. Marvel thinks, “but anybody who can make six of himself is prolly not human.” She does end up connecting a punch right to Loki’s face, which irks him a tad. He breathes dust in her face and she crashes to the floor.

Bruno ain’t havin’ it! “Hey, Hipster Viking,” he snarls, putting a couple of his own noodly dukes up. “Have a taste of your own medicine!” Then he splashes Loki with punch. Loki is now fully irked, but Ms. Marvel grabs him up with an enormous hand before he has time to react in kind.

Some of the punch got into Loki’s system, because he starts fessing up: “I was only trying to help. Did it ever occur to you that there might be ways to solve a problem without smashing things? You remind me of my brother.”

Ms. Marvel says that Loki has to let people make their own mistakes. Loki argues that one person’s mistake can be devastating to another person. Ms. Marvel strikes a deal: put a ward on the school so that it doesn’t get attacked by robots again. Loki thinks it’s a fine idea! So he does.

“Goodbye Ms. Marvel,” Loki says walking out of the school. “I will tell the All-Mother that I found no evidence of Inventor spies at this school.”

And that’s a wrap!

Bruno asks Ms. Marvel if she’s ok. Ms. Marvel, who is Kamala Khan very cleverly disguised with an eyemask, tells him that if Kamala were here she would tell him that she’s very grateful for their friendship. Bruno gets the hint and they both fistbump. Ms. Marvel books it out of there.

“Good thing I didn’t drink the punch. Happy Valentine’s Day, Ms. Marvel.”

Final Thoughts

COME ON, KAMALA! YOU’RE NOT GONNA PUT OUT FOR BRUNO?! HE’S A NIIIIIIIICE GUUUUUYY!!!

At the very least you can do it to stick it to your parents! This is what being a teenager is all about!


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East of West, Issue #36 – “This Is a Real Revolution”

* Part 7 of 16 of the The Apocalypse: Year Three storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #36 – “This Is a Real Revolution”! In the previous installment, we catch up on what Death and Babylon are up to. And guess what? They’re bonding! Skipping stones and fishing and swappin’ stories. Why, Death almost becomes sick of the little shit. I mean, he kind of does. Thinks that boy ain’t right.

Xiaolian sends a message through her one-way walkie-talkie that she’ll be leading her army. Babylon wants to help, and by God, they’re both gonna help!

Looking forward to seeing just how in the HELL they’re going to do that exactly. But right now I’d rather watch Andrew Archibald Chamberlain eat his own butt.

East of West, Issue #36 [March, 2018]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“This Is a Real Revolution”

East of West, Issue #36

From afar, high up in the air in their crazy ships, Wolf and Crow observe the burning Union. He asks some weird robotic creep what it knows of the White Tower. This weird robotic creep may be a human for all I know! Maybe I’ve even seen him before and written six paragraphs about his eating habits.

What he knows about the White Tower is that it’s currently burning, so we can check that one off the list. There has been an uprising and chaos is tearing the city apart. “As ordered, we have completed a cursory drone reconnaissance. There are power outages. Shortages of food. And what little hold the rebels have on the city, they are losing quickly.”

So, in short, the Endless Nation can stomp right on in and take if they so wish. Crow isn’t as optimistic. Wolf is very optimistic! So it’s settled.

Bodaway chastises everyone present about their ignorance about the Union being “bones and bonded”. No pureblood Nation native can enter the city for reasons that aren’t explained (shock collars). They can’t send their machines either, as the Union has countermeasures for automatically stopping an automaton invasion. So let’s go home! Fun’s over!

Wolf still stares at the burning city and starts waxing poetic about yada yada yada. “When a conquering nation has no external enemies, it turns its aggression inward. A kind of natural schism occurs… and the enemy becomes yourself. The old ways start to fear the new ways. And the new ways have contempt for the ones that came before.”

“The Machine City. The Sea of Bones. ‘Bones and Bonded’,” he continues. “I know what that means better than you, Bodaway.”

So there is, apparently, a whole vault of skeleton stashed away somewhere in the Union. The Nation sends in a UFO-type automaton to crash through into Bone Storage and abduct all the bones. “I am bringing our lost brothers and sisters home. I am breaking the spell… and ending this madness of hating ourselves.”

East of West, Issue #36

…Baba Booey Baba Booey Baba Booey!!

Wolf stands importantly.

“I have not come to tear down what our people have become… I have come here to heal the old wounds… So that together we can become something greater than we ever were.

Bing bang boom win.

“Your end will be the same as theirs. There is nothing special about you.”

Two days later, creepy Endless Nation robot dude announces that they’ve gained control of the power grid, the automated functions, and suppressed more of that pesky uprising behavior. Now that the people have been subdued and tranquilized and stuffed into lockers, the Nation is ready to secure the perimeter of the city limits. “Tell the elders the Union is ours.”

Wolf rides in on the Hellbeast. The one, of course, that Ezra Orion was connected to until Wolf ate him. It hisses and asks Wolf what he will be doing with the population. Will he show them mercy or will he show them reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos?

“…I don’t know,” Wolf responds, rather sheepishly I might add.

They pass by the skeletonized remains of Madame Antonia LeVay, burned at the stake. Looks tasty!

East of West, Issue #36

WHERE is the America’s Funniest Home Videos we were promised?!

Wolf gets up on some high overlook and addresses his new batch of people, introducing himself and telling them that he is the end of conflict. He is peace… yeah, a piece of ass that is… “I don’t care which side you were on – or what you fought for. From here on out, mine is the only side that matters.”

“NO!” screams a tiny little voice from the large crowd. It’s the Resistance Girl, I don’t remember her name! I don’t think I learned it. She is demanded to be silenced, but SHE WILL BE HEARD!

“This is wrong! All wrong! We fought against corruption and oppression… We fought to free ourselves from those who saw us as inferior… subhuman. They… they treated us like animals… They starved us! They murdered us! And now you want to pretend we’re the same?”

All good points! She tells them all to fuck off. Bodaway calmly tells her that their little resistance and the history of the Union in general is just a blip in a much larger, colder history. As in, straighten up and fly right or they’re going to do to you what all the white people did to them hundreds of years ago. You feel me?

Bodaway turns to Wolf. Wolf stares back. “My words were clear… peace for all.”

Resistance Girl is not happy. This still stinks to high heaven. She has lost the fight in her… she hangs her head, and, in a meek voice, she says: “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We… we won.”

“These are the end times, child… there are no righteous left among the living,” replies Wolf.

“And what you’re feeling… that’s the hopelessness of a conquered people,” explains Bodaway solemnly. “Fight it… don’t fight it… we leave it to you.”

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Or not.

Or maybe?

“I will never fucking kneel,” she says.

“Good for you. Dying as you lived is a just end,” says Bodaway as a couple of guards pick the girl up and take her away, presumably to make her watch America’s Funniest Home Videos until she dies of a gut-bursting laughter.

“Let this be a lesson.” Wolf addresses his new people once more. “Tearing something down is easy. Holding on to it… building something better… that demands more than rage.”

“We have taken all that you have. We will erase all that you were.”

I love how nihilistic this series is! Really melts my butter!

East of West, Issue #36

Nothing pleases me more than watching that silly goose Bob Saget, actually, sir.

Bodaway snidely praises Wolf on, frankly, some actual impressive accomplishments. “Should I expect an encore? Or are you finished.”

…

“I ask, because I’m beginning to feel like a foil,” Bodaway frowns. What good is a council of elders if you make no mistake?”

Ahhh, the claws come out! Hisss! Meow! Woof! Blub! Wolf assures the stinky old man that his services are valued, actually, and shove a cork in it. Bodaway doesn’t believe Wolf. Wolf assures him further that, perhaps, maybe, uhhh, perhaps he could get a place above his current position. Want to run the Union?

“Ha!” Bodaway spits, not too keen on running any union, let alone the Union. But so it shall be, for Wolf leaps out the broken window gracefully, cape billowing in the wind. “My role here is done. But the Prophet’s? That remains unfinished.”

We turn to the Atlas, which I think was ol’ One-Eyed Barkeep’s place of business. It has that big globe-like thing that can track… Babylon, I think it was? This was many issues ago and I have Alzheimer’s. The Three Hapless Horsemen enter and take a look at the globe. The place is full of skeletons, including the barkeep’s. “Monkeys… Monkeys… Monkeys as far as the eye can see,” says War.

Famine peers at a blip on the map. “I think I have something,” she says, eyes all kinds of buggin’. And yes, I was right, this was all to find Babylon. The last directive, according to THE ATLAS, was a group of four bounty hunters sent over to find the child (I do remember these schmucks) and then… nothing.

“Well…” War downs a shot of what I can only assume is FUTURE BOURBON. “Sounds like we have some catching up to do.”

MEANWHILE, Death and Babylon are camping out for another night. A whiny Babylon asks his exasperated father how much longer until they get to where they’re going – finding the Maoist army. Even Balloon can’t pinpoint that with all its whiz-bang gadgets and hoo-hahs.

East of West, Issue #36

Good thing I brought Parcheesi!

“Hey… can I ask you something?” Babylon looks at his father with his no-eyeballs.

“…One question. Then bed.”

“Okay. What’s she like?”

Oof. Well, she’s got candy-coated hands that can crush your little peanut skull to oblivion! She’s perfect. Strong. Beautiful. Confident. She smells like potpourri, the kind you put in a bathroom to eliminate the, you know, the stench. “To put it plain… your mother is the most impressive woman I’ve ever met. But that’s not the best part.”

What is the best part? Getting that adamantite handjob?

“For the first time ever, someone made me not wanna be a monster. And now, I get to do somethin’ for her. Bring you home. How’s that sound, kiddo?”

“Can’t wait!” Babylon grins.

Elsewhere, Wolf and Crow (and some muscle) are also traversing the desert. “The Message is itching under my skin. I hear that fool Orion screaming in my head.”

Time to go to the old Armistice. Time for the final days of the Prophet.

Final Thoughts

We’re really building up to something, ain’t we, folks? Time to see how the HELL a little white kid can help his warmongering mother. Maybe “I LOVE YOU” cards scrawled in crayon?


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Devs – It’s All Happening Anyway

Through the Idiot Glass Disclaimer: There will be spoilers. If you’re even remotely interested in this show and you haven’t yet seen it, or if you’ll be mad if you accidentally read any possible spoilers about it, I’m going to chalk it up to “not my fucking problem”. You have been warned.
Discussion Subject: Devs, Miniseries (2020) (FX on Hulu)

Devs
Once again, I turn to a series that focuses predominately on philosophical matters. It’s the kick in I’m until I get tired of it and return to My Little Pony and Frasier.

This is yet another recommendation based on my love of Severance, and until I dove in I thought it was a half-hour comedy! Oh, how wrong I was. This show is dreadfully unfunny.

The Premise

The Amaya company is owned and operated by a burly bear of a man named Forest (Nick Offerman). The top-secret “Devs” project, Forest’s baby, is headed by Katie (Alison Pill) and comprises a small team of the best minds of the Amaya company. Devs follows Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno), an unwilling participant in a conspiracy following her boyfriend’s death at the hands of the Amaya company after he tries to record and steal code from the Devs computers. All sorts of shit starts happening, mostly because head of security Kenton (Zach Grenier) is a ruthless motherfucker who just decides to kill people kinda for no reason. He considers Lily a threat to Devs and Amaya. Lily just spends the majority of the series hyperventilating.

My Half-Baked Thoughts

I’m really torn on this. I think Devs builds a fascinating concept — that the future and the past can both be resolved essentially as a filmstrip that can be viewied in the present with the right equipment and code. The theme of determinism is hit over your head constantly, constantly, constantly, specifically making a point to disregard free will as a option. They make a pretty strong case for it until Lily throws that gun out of the transporter and all hell breaks loose! And then the show fails to explain that moment with its own internal logic, but I digress already! I love the plot. It’s a really cool idea. And I spent the entire show fascinated by what I was watching. And I didn’t feel like any of my time was wasted.

Devs

Just make a right at the giant girl statue. You can’t miss it.

The acting was disappointingly substandard almost across the board. Everyone had two settings: calm and monotone, or freaking out and crying. I’m biased and gave Sonoya Mizuno somewhat of a pass because she’s cute as a button and she had a super-hot haircut, but goddamn was her performance the most abysmal pile of warm turds I’ve seen from a lead in a long time. Maybe they shouldn’t have forced an American accent on her. And speaking of that, Sergei, Lily’s boyfriend (played by American Karl Glusman), was obviously faking his Russian accent like a faking faker and it bugged me. Alison Pill’s performance was annoying and pretentious, with not much room for an emotion or reaction of any kind during every sentence she spoke and every sentence spoken to her. Even Nick Offerman was woefully underused to his potential, but he carried the show with what little freedom he was given beyond answering every question asked of him with a simple, stoic “yes” (Pill did this too). My props go to Stewart (Stephen McKinley Henderson), the guy on the Devs team who was the only good actor in the whole series. Congratulations, Stewart, you didn’t sound like you were reading your lines straight from a script. Have some cake.

Devs

Set a course for a show with better acting. Warp speed. Engage.

The storytelling was frustratingly slow at times, too. Here’s some dialogue for you:

“Is this Devs?”
“…yes.”
“Is this where the Devs team works?”
“…yes.”
“On Devs projects?”
“…yes.”
“And the goal is to go back in time to kill Hitler?”
“…not exactly.”
“The goal is to go back in time and bone Jesus?”
“…yes.”

Characterizations also seemed to be off. Lily is supposed to be an incredibly smart software engineer, and the only display of incredible intellect was her rattling off Fibonacci sequence numbers to her friends. I was hoping at the beginning that they would put a lot of focus on her abilities to weave through the mystery, but she spends the entire series helpless and clueless. She needs her ex-boyfriend Jamie (Jin Ha, who had the worst beard I’ve ever seen on TV) to do everything for her with respect to software, i.e. cracking the password-protected fake Sudoku app on Sergei’s phone, or finding fakery clues in Sergei’s self-immolation footage.

Devs

“There’s only one thing I hate more than lying: skim milk. Which is water that’s lying about being milk.”

Storytelling and acting aside, some real and interesting questions arise from whole determinism vs. free will philosophy. Forest’s entire motivation is to somehow, in any way he can, “resurrect” his dead daughter, Amaya. He’s lost between the blind hope and the logical realization that whatever happened had happened, and it’s the only thing that happened. And he’s a bit of a sociopath about it too, sacrificing others in pursuit of his own interests (and repeatedly apologizing to them for it). But the bulk of what we see in Devs involves resolving these fuzzy, static-laden images of the past — and the future, in some cases, when the rules are broken. I see it as Forest trying to maintain complete control AND determinism allows him to avoid accountability for some of his awful actions. This is why he freaked the fuck out at Lyndon when his contributions gave strong support toward the multiverse theory, aka “free will is a thing, actually.” No determinism. No control. Many universes where Amaya didn’t die.

I want to talk about Lyndon for a moment. I found it abundantly distracting that Lyndon was portrayed by a woman for several reasons. 1) Lyndon didn’t have to be male at all. Make him a girl genius prodigy instead. We needed another female character in the cast anyway. 2) If the idea was to make Lyndon be some pre-pubescent boy genius, then they shouldn’t have had Stewart call him a 19-year-old. Weird. 3) They not only didn’t allude to a transgender situation (which they obviously didn’t have to, but that’s not the point), Alex Garland specifically during an interview said that Lyndon isn’t transgender. The only explanation I have that would sit well with me is that Garland chose a woman to play Lyndon due to child labor law restrictions, but Lyndon is a fucking 19-year-old. Suck my dick with that shit.

Good series overall, though!

Devs

Or maybe not. Watch Mr. Robot instead.

Worth the Watch?

Hold on, I didn’t get to talk about ME. MEEEEEE. What do I believe, determinism or free will? Since I don’t pretend to be a philosopher except all the other 900 times that I did for money, I can’t speak on this subject with any sort of intelligence or poise. I do have a hard time believing in free will, though, considering what I know about science and physics and entropy. I do believe that every cause has an effect, and that every effect is just an event that happened because of a prior cause. This repeats indefinitely. And if you are the camp that believes that time is just the fourth dimension, and that fifth-dimensional beings are able to see the entirety of time from beginning to end, then it stands to reason that that string of time from beginning to end is fixed. Even if there are branches jutting out from the string of time, they are still fixed and pre-determined. Even if there are an infinite number of strings all jumbled up in a big mess, it’s fixed. The string of time would have to observably grow before the fifth-dimensional being’s eyes in order for free will to exist. I don’t think I believe that.

Devs

Put the gun down, I’m not done talking about the 5th dimension yet!

Even the multiverse theory doesn’t support the idea of free will the way that Devs professes. You’re just talking about an infinite number of separate jumbled messes of string. They already exist! Determinism wins again!

Anyway, the show is thought-provoking enough to be worth it. Get past the bad acting and the clunky pacing of the storytelling and you’ve got a good show on your hands. If nothing else, the visualizations and the soundtrack are both pretty. Did I mention Sonoya Mizuno’s really attractive pixie cut? Ooh baby.


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Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #3 – “Chapter Three: Christmas”

* Part 3 of 13 of the Batman: The Long Halloween limited series *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #3 – “Chapter Three: Christmas”! In the previous installment, it’s Thanksgiving Day and Jim Gordon is away from home interrogating Mickey “The Mink” Sullivan, leader of the Irish, about the alleged murder of Harvey Dent. Harvey Dent is alive, though, and goes undercover as Mickey to attempt to get some info out of the Irish. It doesn’t work. In the end, the Irish get killed by the still unknown murderer who killed Johnny “SPAGHETTI” Viti.

A killer is still on the loose, and Carmine “The Roman” Falcone still wants to take out Harvey Dent! Chaos reigns supreme! Halloween continues this Christmas!

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #3 [February, 1997]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter Three: Christmas”

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #3

Oh shit, Joker Time. Sit on his lap, kids! He’s got a present for you! *wink*

Our favorite joker, the Joker, reads a newspaper proclaiming a LOOSE KILLER ON THE LOOSE in everyone’s least favorite city, Gotham. He sings Christmas carols to himself maniacally. Then he shreds the paper up into seven trillion little bits. “I hate that song,” he frowns. He actually frowns. I didn’t know the Joker could frown! Is that canon?

Joke Boy is playing the Grinch; stealing Christmas from a family who are tied up with strands of Christmas lights. He recites lines from the famous song! You know, the Grinch song. Don’t tell me you don’t know the Grinch song! What are ya, Jewish? Yeah, me neither.

It’s Christmas Eve. God didn’t make Christmas Steve. Batman and Jim Gordon pay a visit to Arkham Asylum, knowing that the Joker has escaped yet again and is terrorizing the town. The media is calling the unknown serial killer “Holiday” since he/she struck on Halloween and Thanksgiving. Christmas isn’t looking good for somebody. Probably Superman. That guy has it coming.

Batman thinks that Jim Gordon is blaming him for the influx of asylum-caliber wackaloons in the city. Batman is like “NO”, because Batman is Batman and Batman is here to protect his favorite city. They might as well call it Batman City. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

They visit Julian Day, “The Calendar Man”. They need to ask him a few question, perhaps even commute his sentence if he cooperates. “Our feeling is with your interest in committing crime to coincide with the calendar – you might have some insight?”

“Tomorrow is the big day,” Mr. Calendar Man says. “She’ll be killing again.”

“What makes you think it’s a woman?” Batman snarls.

“Because he likes it. The attention. No one knows who she is and already he has made a name for himself. Or herself.”

We’re getting somewhere already! Logic and coherence, that’s what I enjoy from my mental patients and inmates. Calendar says they’ve been lucky so far with the sparse holidays. February has a bunch. Gordon insists they’ll have the killer caught by then. Then Calendar just keeps rattling off holidays, and Batman is already fed up. It took them 45 minutes to drive here and they’re leaving already? Before dessert???

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #3

Catch my dick in your mouth, sir.

In Maroni’s Italian Restaurant, Salvatore Maroni wants someone planted in Harvey Dent’s office day and night! His conversation partner, Toots, is on it boss. Then he suddenly starts laughing. Cackling. Uncontrollable mirth! “HEEE HO HAA HEE HOO” he says, which doesn’t sound much like laughter to me. Say it out loud, is that how you laugh? Maybe it is how you laugh, nerd. It’s not how I laugh. I laugh like this: “SNOORRRRRRRT”

Toots collapses in his plate of spaghetti, mouth stretched impossibly into a rictus grin.

“Care for some more wine, Mr. Maroni?” asks his white-faced, green-haired waiter. Clown! A fuckin’ clown in Maroni’s restaurant? Undignified! No clown comes into Maroni’s place and fucks up his Toots. Joker brings out a comically large gun and points it at Maroni’s forehead. Then he accuses Maroni of being Holiday. “You’re the number 2 man in this burg. Carmine “The Roman” Falcone is numero uno. Holiday only whacks the Roman’s men, so you’ve got the most to gain–”

Pretty lucid for someone who’s supposed to be cuh-razyyy. Maroni claims that this is about business and Holiday is screwing up business for everyone. Joker grins with about 400 teeth. “Then… who is Holiday?”

Who wants ta know?! Some fuckin’ clown-ass piece of shit? No mas.

Later, a couple of goons drag Toots’ body to the trunk of a car, intending to drop him off in the river for a nice swim heh heh. Heh heh heh. Heee ho haa hee hoo. Batman suddenly lands on the car and gives these goons a nice stare. A really good stare. Such a good stare that their eyes bug out of their heads.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #3

A Clemenz Opening??? Are you some kind of chess idiot??

Maroni comes out in a few minutes looking for his goons. Batman shows up all like “MUH-RONI”. Maroni pulls out his gun, and Batman slaps that bitch right out of Maroni’s hot little hand.

Maroni fesses up to the events of the evening. Joker showed up, we all had a good laugh at Toots’ expense. Especially Toots. “What’s his connection to Holiday?” Batman asks of the Joker. And why the fuck would Maroni know? “He’s a lunatic, like YOU,” Maroni yells, clutching his wrist. “This whole town is full of lunatics ever since you came here.” And Batman has already disappeared. He doesn’t want to hear the truth. Can’t handle the truth, you see.

Speaking of wheelchair-bound wives of District Attorneys, Harvey Dent has a surprise for Gilda. A NEW HOUSE! One that hasn’t been blown up yet! Merry Christmas! Harvey carries her over the threshold. She asks if it’s the right time to try having children again. “We’ll see…” Harvey replies romantically. Gilda wants her husband to do great big cums inside of her. He doesn’t wanna.

Gilda, now out of her wheelchair, shuffles slowly up the stairs to get a look around. Dent hears a sound in the next room and investigates (it’s Joker). “GET OUT!” Harvey screams to the sound in the next room (it’s Joker). Then he (Harvey) starts trying to pummel him (Sinbad). “You’re good, Dent,” Joker smiles. “But, you’re no Batman.”

“The question is…” Joker continues. “what sort of man are you? This town isn’t big enough for two homicidal maniacs. And if I found out that the buzz is true…” Joker points a 15-inch long finger at Dent, “That Harvey Dent is Holiday. I’m not going to be as forgiving as next time.”

Gilda comes back downstairs like “whuzzat” and finds Harvey on the floor alone. She caresses him. The window is wide open.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #3

A bong sounds good about now. I love me some lowkey bong time.

Joker breaks into The Roman’s penthouse, finding him sleeping alone in his king-size bed. “Wakey, wakey.” Joker sticks a playing card in his face. A playing card of the joker variety, as it were. “Falcone. You find this ‘Holiday’. Or I’ll kill everyone in Gotham City until I find him.”

Loud and clear, boss! I’ll just put on my Holiday-Finding Goggles and scour the streets, good sir!

Joker passes through the hallway where he killed two more of Falcone’s goons. Right outside the front door of the penthouse, another Falcone goon shows up with a gun and calls Joker a jerk. Joker throws a pile of playing cards at the goon, stymieing him but good, and runs off.

Then someone shoots and kills the goon on the street. Happy Christmas.

“Milos. The Roman’s personal bodyguard dies on Christmas Day.” Batman picks up a joker playing card. “Holiday has another victim. Have a merry Christmas, Joker. It will be your last.”

Final Thoughts

Batman isn’t joking around, heee ho haa hee hoo. See you next time, suckers.


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