Dune: Part II

 This Thursday, my Mom and I went to the cinema together and watched the second part of Denis Villeneuve's Dune adaptation. Here are my brief (largely spoiler-free) thoughts on it.

As an adaption, Dune: Part II, is not completely accurate to its source material (though that was, perhaps, to be expected). Among other things, it reduces one fairly prominent character to a cameo and drops another completely. The Movie also diverges from the book in some significant ways, particularly in its depiction of Paul's and Chani's relationship. As a result, the film also ends on a different note from the novel.

Would the purist in me have preferred it if the film had stuck closer to its source material? Yes. Did I enjoy the film in spite of these liberties? Absolutely. 

Though I personally believe that the ideal format for a Dune adaptation would be an animated series, Villeneuve's films are the best adaptation of this classic work of science fiction that I can think of. 

Like its predecessor, Dune II looks great (this is a movie that demands to be watched in theaters) and, taken as a whole, the duology does capture the epic scope of Frank Herbert's novel. Acting is uniformly good and the only character who feels significantly different from their literary counterpart is Chani.

One quick final note: Part II does nothing to make sure that the viewer is up to speed. If its been awhile since you've seen part I, I recommend that you either re-watch it, read the novel (or, if you already have, re-read it). Alternatively, if you are feeling lazy, you can just look up a synopsis online.

Final Space

Sorry about the lack of new content the past few months. It was not my intention to let the blog go on hiatus for quite this long, but unfortunately, sometimes these things happen. Nonetheless, I offer you my apologies.

Anyway, not too long ago I wrapped up the eight season of Friendship Is Magic and originally, I had intended to write something about it. However, nothing I wrote really satisfied me, so I decided to put that idea on ice. However, I will briefly, give my opinion on this; the show's penultimate season, before we move on to the main event. 

Basically, while season 8 did feature several episodes I really like, I can't deny that MLP at this point is getting a bit long in the tooth and I don't feel as strongly for the series as I used too. Still, I will probably watch the final season, if only to see how the show ends.

But enough about miniature equines, its time to talk about another cartoon I watched fairly recently: Final Space. 

For those of you not in the know, Final Space is an animated series, which aired earlier this year., created by Olan Rogers. 

I first became aware of this series thanks to a video by Youtube cartoon reviewer EyeofSol, titled Final Space And the " Adult" Animation Myth (found here, in case you are interested), which piqued my curiosity in the show and upon seeing that it was available on Netflix, I decided to give it a go.

Set in the distant future, Final Space is the story of Gary Goodspeed, a young man who, due to certain circumstances, is currently serving a five year sentence aboard the prison ship, Galaxy One. Gary's routine is abruptly shattered when an adorable green creature crashes into him. Taking a liking to the critter, Gary names it Mooncake and adopts it as a pet. 

Unfortunately, it turns out that there are other people interested in Mooncake and soon, Gary finds himself caught up in a mission to keep his new friend out of the clutches of an alien warlord known as the Lord Commander and save the universe from complete destruction. You know, the usual stuff.

That's the basic plot of the show. So, what did I think of it? 

Well, I'm going to start by touching briefly on what is, in my opinion, one of the weakest aspects of Final Space: The Comedy. Now, of course I know that comedy is one of the most subjective things ever and if you found this show to be hilarious, than good for you. Personally though, I found the humor to be very hit & miss. Does that mean I sat through the first season of Final Space more stone-faced than a peeved Clint Eastwood? No, not at all; there was the occasional moment that made me crack a smile, but for the most part, the comedy of Final Space didn't tickle my funny-bone: I knew I was supposed to find certain scenes or exchanges funny, but they did not do it for me. 

Another aspect in which the show falters a bit is in the depiction of its main character, Gary. Voiced by Rogers himself (who also does the voice of Mooncake), most of Gary's dialogue consists of him either yelling in a high-pitched voice, rambling and otherwise being pretty obnoxious. In fact, watching Final Space I got the feeling that Gary could have stepped out of a web-comic and not one of the good ones either. 

To be fair, Gary gets a bit more tolerable as the show progresses and he has his moments that prevented me from completely disliking him, but there were still plenty of times when I wished he would shut up.

That's pretty much all the negative stuff I have to say about this series, because when push comes to shove, Final Space has far more strengths than flaws. 

The show's comedy may be uneven, but it definitely succeeds when it comes to its more serious and dramatic moments.  For example, I may not really be a fan of Gary as a character, but that doesn't change the fact that an early scene showing us his loneliness and isolation made me feel for the guy. Other moments, such as the death of a major character are handled very well. Furthermore, the plot is consistently engaging across the ten episodes that makes up the show's first season.

Finally, the voice actors all do a good job bringing their characters to life. The stand-out among the cast must be David Tennant, whose performance helps make the Lord Commander one of the more memorable villains to appear in a cartoon recently.

Despite a few quibbles, I do genuinely recommend Final Space and am looking forward to the second season and hope that it will prove as entertaining (or more) as this one. If you are in the mood for a serialized space-opera adventure, I say check it out.

Last Days Of An Immortal

Despite the fact that I haven't read nearly all of his work, I feel confident in saying that the French comic-writer Fabien Vehlmann, has quickly become one of my favorite people currently working in the medium. The first thing I read by Vehlmann was The Isle of 10.000 Graves, drawn by Jason; a really good comic which was followed by Beautiful Darkness, drawn by Kerascoët (I'm going to point out that both Jason and Kerascoët are pseudonyms, just in case you were wondering). Oh, and I can think of few comics that live up to its title as well as Beautiful Darkness does. Kerascoët's water-color drawings are indeed beautiful to look at and as for the "darkness" part of the title? Well, let's just say that the comic features enough death and callous cruelty for it to qualify as dark by any definition of the term.

That said, while both of the above comics are well worth reading and come highly recommended, my favorite title that I've read from Vehlmann so far is Last Days Of An Immortal, which (surprise) is the subject of this post.

Last Days Of An Immortal takes place in the very distant future. Humanity has long since travelled through the distant stars and are now living side by side with various alien species. In addition, mankind now possesses the technology to create 100% complete copies of an individual. These copies, called echoes, retain all the personality-traits and memories of the original. Once the echoes have finished carrying out their task, they merge with the primary body, which gain all the knowledge and memories that the echoes have acquired. Oh, and if the primary  should happen to die, than one of the echoes can be turned into a primary body, meaning that humans have basically become immortal. There is a catch to this however, whenever a person creates an echo they loose some of their oldest memories. In addition, Elijah, the main character of the comic is a member of the Philosopher-Police, an organization dedicated to resolve what ever conflicts or cultural clashes that will inevitably occur when humans and aliens interact with one another. The plot of the comic revolves around Elijah being put in charge of investigating a murder that occurred many centuries ago, but is now causing conflict between two vastly different alien-species, both inhabiting the same planet.

While the plot and characters are really good, what truly stands out in this comic, as far as I'm concerned, is the setting. The various extraterrestrial civilizations presented to the reader are especially fascinating. Most of them do indeed come off as a completely alien, with customs and traditions totally different from those on Earth. For example, there's one civilization whose entire culture is basically a gigantic play, with each citizen receiving a script, which assigns them their status, sexual orientation, etc. There's another whose members communicate by taste and those are just some examples.
Finally, a few words about the art-work. The artist, Gwen de Bonnevall does a great job at bringing life to this world and its inhabitants, humans as well as alien. At first glance, Bonnevall's artwork may seem sparse, but there's an elegance to it that I find appealing. He's also very good at conveying the emotions of the characters; whether its sadness, joy or rage.

All in all, Last Days Of An Immortal ranks for me among the best works the genre has to offer. If you want a truly engrossing piece of science-fiction mystery, set in a creative and visually interesting setting and featuring a highly engaging protagonist, I strongly urge you to check it out.

The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge

Although I like owning physical copies of books, I'm not all averse to reading books in electronic format, which is one of the reasons I bought an ipad. Now, one series of books that I've been interested in for some time, is Stephen Donaldson's Gap Cycle and when I discovered that there was an ebook version that collected the first two books in the series available at an affordable price, I decided to jump on it. Having now read both books; The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge respectively, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on them.

The setting for The Gap Cycle should be familiar to anyone who has read or watched any Science-Fiction and/or Space Opera: Mankind has colonized space, encountered at least one alien race and so forth. As the first book opens, we're introduced to our three main characters; the repulsive and villainous space-pirate Angus Thermopyle, his beautiful and helpless captive, Morn Hyland and finally the dashing Nick Succorso, another space-pirate and Angus' rival. A classic setup for a story, wouldn't you say? Naturally, it doesn't take long until Nick has rescued Morn from Angus' clutches and is riding of into deep space with her, while the villain gets his just desserts. All's well that end's well.
The end? No, this is not the end, this is just the beginning.

One of the most interesting things about the Gap Cycle is the way Stephenson takes three characters, all who fits into a specific archetype; hero, villain and victim respectively and gradually have them switch roles. Take Angus for example; when we first meet him, he simply comes across as representing all of humanity's worst, most awful traits. In short, he's as pure a villain as you can meet in fiction. However, as the story progresses, we get more insight into Angus' character and the events in his life which shaped into becoming the monster he is when The Real Story begins. Turns out that Angus' chief motivation is fear. Simply put, Angus spent most of his childhood being a victim of abuse and his fear of ending up in that situation again, is so great that he will do anything to prevent it from happening - including victimizing others. Of course, due to the way Donaldson structures his story, Angus eventually ends up in the victim's role again and I have to say that some of the treatment he undergoes at the hand of the corrupt and seemingly all-powerful United Mining Companies Police, made me feel genuinely bad for a character for whom I at first had felt nothing but loathing.

I've talked a lot about Angus in this review and mostly that's because I found him to be the most fascinating out of the three main characters. That said, Nick Succorso and Morn Hyland are certainly no 2-dimensional cardboard-cutouts either. Morn, for example, may start out as a simple damsel-in-distress, but soon reveals herself to be far braver and more resourceful than she may have seemed like at a first glance. As for Nick, well, it turns out that he underneath his charismatic swashbuckler persona, he possesses a cruel and vindictive streak a mile wide.

Amusingly, although the first book is titled The Real Story, it's not until Forbidden Knowledge that one gets the feeling that the real story of The Gap Cycle has begun in earnest, with the first book serving as a prologue of sorts. Forbidden Knowledge adds more characters to the mix, such as the members of Nick's crew and the alien-race called the Amnion among others.

In his afterword to the first book, Donaldson mentions that The Gap Cycle is loosely based on The Ring Cycle. I've never seen Wagner's opera, but I am familiar with the story and it's quite interesting to see which of Donaldson's characters corresponds to the ones in the opera. For example; the character of Warden Dios with his cybernetic eye is clearly meant to reference Wotan/Odin, who gave up one of his eyes in exchange for knowledge.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed both The Real Story and Forbidden Knowledge and will definitely read the other books in this series. Reading them has also made me eager check out more of Donaldson's work. I do remember trying to read the first book in his The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series as a kid, but couldn't get into it. I think it's time I gave it another shot.