Chronicles of Mindless SF Plots

My wife and I couldn't help it the other night. We watched that disaster called The Mutant Chronicles. Wow, that was like those books in the thrift shops that even used book dealers won't take. It was like Geraldo opening the Al Capone vault and finding...nada. It was like John McCain promising that he had a strategy to save the economy. It was like Bill Clinton at the 1988 Democratic Convention giving us three hours of economic policy wonk. It was like going to the dentist and having not one but two root canals. Oh what fun! Well excruciating actually.

The thing is my wife and I enjoy watching silly movies like Godzilla and The Bride of Frankenstein. They're ridiculous, with low production values but fun as in get out the popcorn and kick off the shoes. We loved 10.5 and Deep Impact. Okay, the United States is not going to split down the middle. And it's going to take more than a nuclear blast a few hundred miles from the earth to stop an asteroid. Yes, both those movies were preposterous... but... they weren't boring. The Mutant Chronicles was boring. Worse, if you're going ask viewers to suspend disbelief, then have a story that makes sense. Somehow some Hollywood writers think that finding new ways to mutilate human beings, repeating footage from World War I, jumping from scene to scene and laying it on thick with lame distasteful images are recipes for good stories, TV shows or movies.

I've been watching the ads for Transformers. The ads smell like a bad movie. Ah, but apparently a number of people are catching on who are older than 13. A bizarre site called Topless Robot reviews, demolishes and deconstructs the latest Transformer movie. If half of what is said there is true, Hollywood needs to revamp and start telling real stories. I know, a good movie trailer can rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in profit despite a bad movie—unfortunately, that's one of the absurdities of our era. But maybe, just maybe, people are catching on.