BEFORE: Well, now I'm feeling like I screwed up. Not only did I get a new Ben Foster film on my list, "Alpha Dog", which maybe could have been included between "The Finest Hours" and "Warcraft" (or maybe not, I'm not sure if it came into my possession a bit too late...) but I also see how I could have worked in the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, which recently surfaced on Netflix. I could have followed the Johnny Depp link out of "Alice Through the Looking Glass", and then linked back to the next film, "The Man Who Knew Infinity", via Kevin McNally. I could have squeezed in another film, crossed it off the list and still be right where I am.
Or, more correctly, I'd be one day behind then - because right now, after a couple other recent additions, I'm scheduled to start the annual romance chain on February 1. Dropping in another film on the January schedule at this point would mess with that - so maybe it's a good thing that I didn't notice that connection. The new "Pirates" film will probably be on Netflix for a good long while, so maybe this is the universe's way of telling me that I should prioritize by putting other films first, especially ones that have been streaming for a while and are likely to disappear. It's tough to say.
Either way, I don't go back and mess with my previous posts, I'd have to slot a film in and re-number everything, and that's counter-productive. So I'll have to circle back later and pick up "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" some other way. That's all part of the challenge I've assigned myself.
Today, Jeremy Irons carries over from "The Man Who Knew Infinity", and he'll be here tomorrow as well.
THE PLOT: Callum Lynch explores the memories of his ancestor, Aguilar de Nerha, and gains the skills of a Master Assassin before taking on the secret Templar society.
AFTER: I know this film, like "Warcraft", is based on a video-game, but it's not one that I've played. (I'm old-school, really, my best games are still "Q-Bert" and "Mr. Do!") Perhaps playing the associated video-game would have helped me to understand this story, but maybe not - I found it to be a complete mess. I can't really find anything here that makes any sense - and I know it's possible to write a fantasy or futuristic story with weird teach that still makes sense, but this is beyond the pale, it's gone away from science to form complete non-science - or "nonsense" for short.
Let's start with the main character, Cal Lynch, who at a young age witnesses his father killing his mother. That's a fine jumping-off point, but then most kids' fathers aren't part of a league of assassins. But while you might think that would just screw a kid up, in this alternate movie universe that just makes him a great candidate to join the league. Because he's got some kind of connection to an ancestor from 500 years ago, who might have known the location of a particular mystical object. (I'll get to that object in a minute...) So this shadow corporation fakes Cal's execution, which is NITPICK POINT #1. They either did this by putting him in a state that mimics death, which is not possible, or by letting him die and then bringing him back, which is also impossible. Hey, at least the writer didn't let reality hamper his creative process.
The Abstergo Foundation needs Cal because he's some kind of "genetic match" with his ancestor, Aguilar de Nerha (this conveniently allows the same actor to play both characters, in the past and the present, I get that.) But here comes NITPICK POINT #2, what do they mean by "genetic match"? Because none of us are genetic matches for our ancestors, the only person you could have a DNA match with would be your clone or your twin. An ancestor from 500 years ago would be separated from Cal by about 15 generations (give or take) and that's a lot of genetic mixing. Did all of his ancestors mate with their twin sisters or something? Because that's disgusting. Imagine finding out that your father and his father and his father all had sex with their sisters to keep a bloodline pure, and you were expected to do the same. Otherwise, I think you'd only expect someone 15 generations down the line to share a small portion of the same DNA, or am I mistaken here?
The Foundation wants to hook Cal up to the Animus, this weird machine that will allow him to access Aguilar's memories, and then the machine will allow him to move around in a VR simulation of sorts, so he can move like Aguilar did and keep the memories flowing, to eventually discover the location of the missing object. Basically, it's a holodeck situation, and that's more tech that doesn't even exist yet. Plus, NITPICK POINT #3, where did the foundation get Aguilar's memories, if he died 500 years ago, before there was any way to record his memories, and all the sights and sounds around him. What the hell were they using to program the machine, and if they somehow, impossibly had all this data about what was said and done back then, then why do they need Cal to act it all out? Don't they already have the information they need, if they're using it to program the machine?
Ah, but maybe the information is inside Cal's head, like in some kind of genetic memory, but if so, then that's NITPICK POINT #4, because that's not how memory works. Memories don't get "stored" in our DNA to be passed on to the next generation, and the one after that, etc. so you can't crack open Cal's brain in order to access Aguilar's memories. And even if it DID work that way, which it doesn't, there's a chance that Aguilar would have had a child and passed on these "stored memories" BEFORE the time of these critical events that the Foundation needs to see. And even if this VR machine could somehow read Cal's thoughts and his ancestor's memories, which it just can't, is the machine moving Cal through the simulation according to Aguilar's memories, or is Cal moving the machine, which is moving him? There's just no good way to approach this that seems to work.
Now, the object itself is NITPICK POINT #5, because it's supposedly the famous apple, the "forbidden fruit" from the Garden of Eden. Jeez, last night people at Cambridge believed that the same tree that dropped an apple on Isaac Newton's head could last over 200 years, and this is even worse. How did this apple survive since the beginning of time, unless it's not really an apple at all, it's some kind of magic object and the whole apple thing is just a metaphor. Either way, these Templars believe that if they can find the apple, they can use it to undo humanity's free will (since it's supposedly the thing that gave humans free will in the first place) and create a new, harmonious world where there is no violence of any kind. That seems like a big leap in logic - and even if that's the way it works (which they couldn't possibly know, because they DON'T HAVE THE APPLE YET), the humans won't be killing each other all the time, but we'll all be mindless followers? Thanks, but I think I'd rather have the free will, violence and all.
I guess this is some kind of commentary on how people are willing to sacrifice their civil liberties in order to be guarantee their safety, but that still seems like a nonsensical contradiction to me. What good is being safe if your freedoms are eroding?
I'm going to add one more, NITPICK POINT #6, because the lead female in the foundation is portrayed as a brilliant scientist, someone who wants to control humanity's more violent impulses, and on some level that seems like a noble goal. But it makes no sense for a scientist to say, "I'm going to do this with the help of a mystical object and a shadow group of assassins." Searching for the lost forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden is in no way "science", and in fact represents the opposite. I just can't resolve all the contradictions here, which compound on each other to make a vast, unintelligible pile of junk.
Also starring Michael Fassbender (last seen in "Steve Jobs"), Marion Cotillard (last heard in "The Little Prince"), Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "Albert Nobbs'), Charlotte Rampling (last seen in "Stardust Memories"), Michael Kenneth Williams (last seen in "Triple 9"), Denis Menochet, Ariane Labed, Khalid Abdalla, Essie Davis (last seen in "Australia"), Matias Varela, Callum Turner (last seen in "Victor Frankenstein"), Carlos Bardem, Javier Gutierrez, Brian Gleeson (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), Hovik Keuchkerian, Crystal Clarke, Michelle H. Lin, Gabriel Andreu.
RATING: 3 out of 10 eagles overhead
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