Monthly Archives: September 2018

The Predator

I’ve been distracted lately.

Like, sometimes I’ll be too busy to post reviews in a timely fashion. But this isn’t that. I went to see The Predator, and I liked it quite a lot. Army Ranger (or some other special forces guy) and a group of military misfits vs., you know, the predator. Right? Lots of in jokes from previous movies (at least, from the original one), a cool autistic kid (which sounds implausible, but yeah, this may be the best use of a child in an action movie), a 90% valuable use of a token female scientist, plus lots of blood and explosions.

To be clear, my standards are not very high. The movie is what it is, but this was a solid example of its type.

My point is this: I liked the movie, but I still just forgot to write a review until I was thinking about watching a movie today. “Wait, I can’t do that until I’m not behind!” I guess I’m just glad I remembered at all?

Popcorn is also a fine example of what it is, ie, empty calories that taste pretty okay in context, but it’s not like you’ll be telling someone in a week or so how great the popcorn you had last week was. Which is maybe what I actually thought about the movie? But I’m sticking with “I’ve been distracted.” Because I have, even if the other explanation is pretty valid too.

Genesis Echo

Cool story: Genesis Echo is either the third or fourth in a series of Deathlands cliffhangers, and pleasingly also the last. I mean, of the series of cliffhangers. There might be more cliffhangers later. There’s like a hundred books left in Deathlands the series.

Anyway, aside from cliffhanger resolutions, this was mostly a medical horror story. Because, if you take a bunch of scientists from apocalypse era and mostly cut them off from everything for a hundred years (because that’s how they survive the post-apocalypse) but they lose a lot of their knowledge because of a fire, and also the world is terrible, but they’re determined to keep being scientists a hundred years later? Yeah, it’s like that.

So, different topic. A thing I like about these books that I probably haven’t mentioned yet is the willingness to do random things that feel more like real life than like a plotted book. In this case (spoilers, but you know you don’t care), last book and into this book, Doc (the guy from the 1890s who was pulled forward in time by scientists in the 1990s, but he was too much of a pain so they sent him forward another hundred years to the beginning of this series to get rid of him) met a nice lady while on walkabout in the mountains of western New Mexico, and brought her home to meet his friends. She was not fond of the idea of going into a teleporter (partly because, reasonably, she didn’t really understand what was going on) and ran away at the last second.

Her ultimate fate is unknown, but a chunk of her boot was left behind because it wasn’t clear of the teleport circle when the rest of them went off to the aforementioned medical horror story. So, like, did she live, or is there a border zone where you just get teleported into nothingness? If she did live, is she okay? Is she angry? Will they ever meet her again? I have no idea, and neither, for now, does the author. But someday, I bet I’ll get some kind of answer. Which, I’ve lost track of my point.

My point was, it doesn’t matter, it’s just a thing that happened and maybe they’ll never know, because usually you do never know. The only reason I think I’ll get an answer someday is because, like I said, there’s a hundred more books and that’s a long time to go without revisiting a person who left on a giant question mark.

I also still want them to go back to one of the space stations and/or moon bases that are out there that they found once before, but tragically depressurized and therefore not possible to explore. (Or, y’know, maybe people would still be alive if not. Well, descendants. Whatever. Either way, that would be cool.)