Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

Kathryn and I have been watching The Crown on Netflix recently, something we did because Kathryn twisted my arm to do so (she’s been working out you know). I am a (big) bit of an anti-royalist and generally have little interest in the goings on of the royal family these days or any other days. Kathryn is a big fan however and is also very interested in the history of the royal family. She often teaches me a lot about Henry VIII and other past monarchs and the things they did such as beheading everyone around them. So she talked me into giving this show a try and I’m glad she did as I have now got into learning more about the history of our monarchy too.

Before I talk about the content of the show itself, I want to mention a few things about the production quality. This is one of the most expensive shows ever made as it has been estimated at around £4 million per episode, and this is definitely evident. The sets, the outfits, the old vehicles and everything else that needs to look period accurate is very well done. The music is great too, with a recurring theme by Hans Zimmer that sounds suspiciously exactly like the theme to the movie Inception. The acting is great too, my favourite coming from John Lithgow (3^rd Rock from the Sun) as Winston Churchill.

We just finished watching the last of the ten episode first season (I have read that there will definitely be one more season and potentially two more after that) and I have been enjoying each episode more than the last. I tend to sometimes forget that they are real people after all and it is intriguing to see the discussions that the key characters may or may not have had behind closed doors. I have been learning about the events that took place for Elizabeth to end up as Queen, which is more interesting than I expected. However, it is actually the side-plots involving the other people around at the time which have made me want to continue watching.

I have to admit that I did not pay enough attention in history at school, and even if I had, I doubt I would have been taught as much as I am now learning (and admittedly could have learned off my own back) about Winston Churchill. What I find fascinating is that he was considered a hero and brilliant man for his actions in the Second World War and for his masterful speeches generally, but then it seems everyone wanted him out of office after the war once he got a little older. I didn’t know people ever felt this way about him so that’s been an eye-opener.

It has been good to learn a bit more about Edward VIII abdicating so that he could marry the woman he loved and all of the controversy that surrounded that, but the story of Princess Margaret wanting to marry a divorcee has been compelling too. We’ve been watching the tense back-and-forth between Elizabeth and Margaret where the Queen says “Yeah sure you can marry him” then “Ah actually maybe that’s not a good idea” to “Oh go on then you are my sister” to finally “Na actually turns out it’s a bit frowned upon and the church don’t want you to do it so I’m gonna say noooooo”. I really had no clue that these events even happened and that it created a seemingly big rift between the sisters at the time.

I’ve always thought of Prince Philip as a bit of a bumbling fool who potters around blurting out racial slurs. Well he may actually be all those things but I now have a lot more sympathy for his position. The show covers his frustration and emasculation with Elizabeth becoming queen and all the things it meant he would lose as a result. Some quick examples of these are: the end of his military career; Elizabeth not taking his last name; no choice on where they both live; no career or direction generally in life. The program shows him going out and getting drunk quite frequently with his mate Mike instead of being by her side and this creates a lot of problems between the royal couple.

I don’t intend to go through all of the stories of the show as I want to encourage others to watch it themselves instead. Perhaps in my lifetime, or your lifetime if you are a lot younger than me, we will no longer have a royal family so it is good to learn a bit more about this one whilst we still have it in my opinion. Frequently, after an episode finishes, we are both on Google reading a little more about the events we have just seen, whilst being careful not to spoil too much of what we have not yet seen. So yeah check it out if you have Netflix and let me know what you think.

Written by: Adrian

The Butterfly Effect

So this is a continuation of the theme of re-watching movies that you haven’t seen in a long time and seeing them in a new light, like I recently did with the older Spider-Man movies. I always liked The Butterfly Effect but didn’t really appreciate it to the extent that I did watching it again over the past weekend. I guess the feel of the film is a little dated but the idea of the story I think is a real thinker, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. I’m not really going to write about the film too much here though in favour of touching on some of the interesting thoughts it evoked.

Kathryn and I had a lengthy discussion after the movie ended about the concept of going back in time and trying to fix things and then maybe causing more trouble than it’s worth. For example, could you go back and stop Hitler from becoming who he was and starting the war? Maybe, but what if that causes some other unpredictable turn of events that is just as bad? Or at least still unfavourable to most? Based on this, we agreed that a better ending to the plot would have been that Ashton Kutcher stops ‘punking’ people and turns everything back to the way it was at the beginning of the movie as he comes to the realisation that he keeps making things worse and there always has to be some bad in the world.

There’s an episode of Family Guy called ‘Back to the Pilot’ where Brian stops the September 11^th attacks in the style of a 90s action hero – along with pre-prepared catch-phrases – and this winds up causing a second civil war in America which doesn’t really go down very well. That is of course a very controversial topic and I am not going to really weigh into that but just pointing out that these kind of dramatic repercussions are common place in sci-fi fantasy. The episode is actually very funny though and rife with time-travel based humour (if there is such a thing).

The butterfly effect theory itself suggests that even small changes could have a dramatic impact so maybe you couldn’t even go back and modify minor things. This means I wouldn’t be able to go back and dispense all of the witty retorts to my adversaries that I couldn’t think of in the moment but came up with after the fact as this might cause everyone to have transformed into humanoid flies in the present when I return. In year 7 of school (11 years old), a young man with the initials KP was trying to choke me outside our form room and I chose a non-violent approach by giving him a ‘peanut’ (tightening the knot on his tie beyond repair) . If I could go back to that interaction now, I would punch him in his stupid face!

OK now that is behind all of us… on to travelling back in time.

Stephen Hawking has stated it is not possible to travel back in time and that it is only theoretically possible to travel forward in time. You can do this by using gravity, much like they do in the movie Interstellar where the team go down to the surface of a planet for what seems like half an hour and many years have passed for their ageing team member back on the ship in orbit. Mr Hawking held a party for all time travellers to come and visit and ensured that the invite would last for many years to provide sufficient opportunity for would-be time travellers to come back for tea and cake. Obviously no one came to his party but this was really a stunt performed to make a point.

There is a counter-point to this as part of Einstein’s theories on wormholes: that you can only theoretically go back in time as far back as when the first time machine was invented. This is because the machine itself cannot travel back with you and you need a conduit on the other side of your journey. So if it were possible, we will only start seeing visitors from the future when we invent the very first time machine. I have decided that this is all pretty unlikely though, despite it being interesting.

So what is my point? Do I have one? If I do, am I going to make it? I guess what I am saying is that it is an interesting mental exercise, at least for Kathryn and I, to ponder over the things you could go back and change and then in turn guess what the unintended outcomes might be, even if it can’t be done. Ultimately, if you are in a good place right now and happy with your life, I think it’s better to just enjoy where you are now and put any negative experiences down as necessary evil’s that contributed towards your journey.

Written by: Adrian

References:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289879/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Pilot

http://www.news.com.au/technology/time-travel-possible-but-only-moving-forwards-says-stephen-hawking/story-e6frfro0-1225861418565

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole

Friendly Neighbourhood Blogger-Man

Kathryn and I recently started re-watching the original Spider-Man movies starring Toby Maguire. We had talked a few times about how we both liked the movies but had never watched them together nor had we seen them in a long time, so decided to watch them over the course of a week or two. I think they are great films but maybe not as good as I remembered. They are also full of convenient occurrences that push the story forward, which we would not stand for in superhero movies nowadays. Bad guys aren’t really three dimensional and just want to be evil for the sake of it. In modern movies, the bad guy thinks that he is doing what is right and that it will benefit himself and others somehow, usually through some sort of delusion.

Spider-Man

This film is way more over-acted and comic-booky than I had remembered, so many of the lines are delivered in an enthusiastic, animated way and I couldn’t remember any of this from my earlier viewings. I think perhaps watching more realistic incarnations of superheroes such as the Dark Knight Trilogy has skewed my perception of what older movies of that type were like. We laughed a lot at a number of one liners in the movie, and not necessarily the lines that the creators intended as stand-out moments. The most insane part of the script in my opinion is when Aunt May has been injured by Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin and Peter and Mary-Jane are discussing Spider-Man in the hospital room:

Mary Jane: Has he mentioned me?
Peter Parker: Yeah.
Mary Jane: What’d he say?
Peter Parker: Uh… I said… he asked me what I thought about you.
Mary Jane: And what did you say?
Peter Parker: I said… uh… Spider-Man, I said uh… The great thing about MJ is… when you look in her eyes and she’s looking back in yours… everything… feels… not quite normal. Because you feel stronger and weaker at the same time. You feel excited and at the same time, terrified. The truth is… you don’t know what you feel except you know what kind of man you want to be. It’s as if you’ve reached the unreachable and you weren’t ready for it.”
Mary Jane: You said that?
Peter Parker: Well, something like that.
Peter Parker: [Harry walks in wearing a polo neck and sees them holding hands] Hi…

This is obviously totally ridiculous! He is spouting pseudo-romantic gibberish that no one would actually say in real life. If someone were to say those things to a supposed long-time friend in a hospital room I expect the girl would respond with one of the following:

1. “Where did you get that from? Is it from a cheesy movie? Did you read it in a book or something?”
2. “Wait, that is way too over-the-top considering we are just friends. It sounds like you are trying too hard to be romantic with me whilst obviously faking a conversation with Spider-Man.”
3. “Hold it! Are you completely insane? What is wrong with you? Who do you think you are spouting off this total rubbish and offending the ears of those around you with this soppy nonsense? I’m trying to tell you I fancy Spider-Man and you come out with all of that!? Now!? Whilst your elderly aunt lies there in bed possibly dying, you are hitting on me with whatever on-the-spot ‘you make me want to be a better man’ rubbish you can come up with!? I bet you don’t even know Spider-Man. Get stuffed nerd!”

In terms of convenient plot points, I suppose the film wouldn’t really work without the heartache that Peter experiences for not stopping the robber who shoots Uncle Ben. I guess I can accept this one as a key part of the origin story, but the other movies do have more coincidences that I remember thinking were a bit of a stretch.

Spider-Man 2

The shame about the Spider-Man trilogy is that they degrade in quality as you move through the movies. Partly because of story-line issues i.e. wanting to get straight to the action, perhaps as an overreaction to the build-up that is the origin story of the first movie. There are also some serious issues with acting though, mainly from Alfred Molina who plays Dr Octopus. His line delivery is totally unconvincing and he seems to be unable to maintain his attempt at a New York accent through a single sentence and continuously slips back into his native English tongue.

The basic theme of the second movie is that it’s tough to maintain a work-life balance. Peter is trying to be Spidey and keep up his normal life (such as studying) at the same time and is constantly faced with choices about which road to go down as one part of his life inevitably suffers. Great idea for a theme as this is one of the most prevalent challenges for any superhero. Totally relatable too! I definitely have to make an effort to do well at my job but ensure I am making my own personal time to go on adventures with Kathryn, such as Venice, Paris, Bali, the arcade and the pub.

There’s a lot more coincidences in this film: dangerous events take place just as Peter is making an effort to get the attention of Mary-Jane (who is engaged to some astronaut dude) or do well at college and he is then faced with the difficult choice to save people and sacrifice other activities in his personal life. Some noteworthy others are:

• Dr Octavius inexplicably needs huge mechanical arms to control his fusion reaction experiments
• The inhibitor chip that stops the AI in the mechanical arms is hidden behind a thin piece of glass on the back of the doctors’ neck
• Dr Octavius just so happens to rob the bank that Peter and Aunt May are in and then he abducts her
• Harry hears is fathers’ voice in his head like Norman heard his own voice. But Norman was only crazy because of the serum he took

…and those are but a few of the convenient plot points that push the story forward to the climax the writers intended.

Spider-Man 3

Undoubtedly the worst of the Toby Maguire Spider-Man movies. The main issue is that they created too many enemies in one film and not enough light and shade throughout the story. There needs to be more calmer sections so that the action really stands out, but Spider-Man is constantly fighting either ‘crazy’ Harry, The Sandman or Venom.

So I think this film was mainly a story about vanity. Peter gets way too carried away with saving the day and being a hero to the people to pay attention to MJ’s issues. He is trying to convince Harry to understand why he had to kill his father (because he turned into Willem Dafoe) and stop The Sandman from robbing armoured trucks all over the city. He is also dealing with an alien ooze which has turned into a black Spider-Man outfit which makes him more powerful and ruthless. He gets more crazy and becomes addicted to it. After an emo haircut and few hilarious dancing scenes, Peter finds a way to get rid of the alien only to have it attach itself to Eddie Brock instead, who becomes Venom.

The dancing scenes in the film when he is the black Spider-Man are really stupid but completely hilarious at the same time. The first is almost a recreation of Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta, Peter is strutting down the street, dancing and clicking his fingers and pointing at random women (all with an emo haircut). Some of the women seem to like him but most just think he is a lunatic. This scene also breaks the fourth wall more than a little because he is dancing to the music playing in the soundtrack and not to any music he can hear in real life.

The second dancing scene is also ridiculous. He takes Gwen Stacy on a date to the bar that MJ works at as a singing waitress just to rub it in her face and maybe attempt to make her jealous. Whilst MJ is just about to start her song, he starts playing jazz piano (since when can Peter play piano? And am I supposed to believe that the alien ooze has given him this ability?… Do aliens like jazz?) jumps up onto and slides down the bar and performs some really ridiculous hip-related dance moves.

Quite a silly movie then with actually too much action I think, despite my fondness for action. The end fight scene between Spider-Man, The Sandman, Harry and Venom seems more messy than it needs to be because there are too many people involved. You can have loads of intensity when it’s just one-on-one, just take a look at the fight between Batman and Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

OK so on to more plot coincidences:

• Peter and MJ happen to be in the park where the alien ooze falls and kiss at the very moment it falls from the sky
• The Sandman character is conveniently tied into the story of Uncle Ben’s death and turns out to be his killer
• The man who becomes The Sandman is on the run from the police and happens to stumble into a scientific experiment that changes his DNA somehow
• Gwen Stacy is in the building that is getting destroyed by the out-of-control crane
• Eddie Brock is the one in the church who gets attacked by the black alien ooze and has also been Peter’s enemy the whole time
• Gwen shows up at the same restaurant that Peter brings MJ to in order to propose to her (how many restaurants are there in New York?)

So overall, we did really enjoy re-watching the Spider-Man movies, despite there being a number of issues with them. Now I am convincing Kathryn to watch The Amazing Spider-Man to see how that differs from the original Toby Maguire films.

Written by: Adrian