King Kong vs. Godzilla

Of all the early Godzilla films (those before such 1970s flops as Godzilla vs. Megalon and Godzilla vs. Gigan), none is put down as often as King Kong vs. Godzilla. Yet for many years, this was the top grossing Godzilla film in Japan. To look at what causes this mismatch between what English-language film goers think of this film vs. how it is viewed in Japan, you have to look at the original Japanese film, which is unfortunately not available in the United States and doesn’t seem to be part of the big release of dual-film (Japanese original with English subtitles and American dubbed versions) that Sony is doing of many of the other early Godzilla films. One has to thus go to other sources to find it. (If anyone reading this wants to complain about piracy, my response is that, when Sony releases an official version, I’ll buy to replace my unofficial copy, the same way I did when the released the original Godzilla a few months back.)

The original, while not a great film by any means, is enjoyable and certainly a better film than the English-language version. It’s longer, spending much more time on the setup and a lot more on the parody of commercialism/advertising, which only partially comes through in the English version. More importantly, the original contains a marvelous Akira Ifukube soundtrack, which is mostly replaced in the English version (other than a few segments of the natives’ song) by the soundtrack from the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

For those note familiar with Ifukube, he is the Japanese Bernard Hermann or John Williams – the creator of big, memorable symphonic scores. For Ifukube, like Hermann or Williams, the soundtrack of a film is much like the score of an opera – something integral to the film, something memorable in itself, not just something almost unnoticed in the background used to set the mood. Among other things, Ifukube wrote all of the best Godzilla scores, from that of the original film to the score of the last film of the second series, Godzilla vs. Destroyah. In fact, I’d argue that there are no really good Godzilla films that don’t have Ifukube scores (though the reverse is not true, since he also scored several bad Godzilla films).

The movie itself is made up of two story lines that converge as the film goes on. The longer of the two involves a pharmaceutical company that is looking for a marketing ploy. They find it when a scientist not only brings back samples of new berry (source for a possible sleep-aid drug) from an island in the Solomons, but also word that the natives there worship some sort of monstrous god. This gives the firm’s marketing exec and idea: go to the island, film or capture the monster, and make that the center of his advertising campaign. Of course the god is the giant ape King Kong, who they bring back to Japan with no thought of the damage he’ll cause.

Meanwhile, Godzilla, who had been buried in the ice at the end of the second Godzilla film (Godzilla’s Counterattack, aka Gigantis the Fire Monster) emerges from an iceberg, heads for Japan, and immediately begins tearing up the countryside. The military, as usual, is unable to stop him, and Kong’s first encounter with him is a rousing defeat for Kong (who can’t stand up to Godzilla’s radioactive breath). But the authorities (and the pharmaceutical firm employees) decide that Kong may be their only hope against Godzilla, that as bad as Kong is, Godzilla is worse. They knock out Kong using the sleep-drug they brought back from the island, airlift him with balloons, and drop him on Godzilla. They fight, Kong wins, and swims back toward home. (The persistent story that Godzilla wins in the Japanese version is wrong.)

As I said, the movie is entertaining. The subplot is often amusing, and some of the action scenes are good. Several of the solo Godzilla sequences are quite good (the Godzilla suit used in this one is one of the better ones). And Ifukube’s score is one of his very best and most innovative (including even some jazzy sections that weren’t typical for him).

On the downside, the King Kong suite just looks wrong. I think this is one of the things that makes this movie the but of jokes. Had this suit been a bit better, the movie would have been better. Moreover, while some of the fight sequences are good, a few look too much like sumo wrestling (deliberate, I believe, to help entertain the kids they expected to attend this one).

One final note: this movie does have some nostalgic appeal for me. It’s the first movie I ever went to with my family. We all went to the drive-in to see it when it was released. (The next film in the series, the far better Mothra vs. Godzilla (aka Godzilla vs. the Thing) also has nostalgic appeal as it was the first film I ever attended on my own at a theatre, as well as the first film that I saw print ads for and thus was anticipating when it came out.)

Blindsight by Peter Watts

As you can probably gather from a number of my SF reviews, I’m quite fond of the new space opera, ranging from that Vernor Vinge to the more edgy and extreme writers like Alistair Reynolds and Neil Asher (and many others in between). Peter Watts’s Blindsight sits on the spectrum near the later writers, it’s edgy (and often unlikable) characters and bizarre, sometimes nasty situations, at times reminiscent of parts of Reynolds or Asher, but with plenty of Strossian post-singularity perspective included, all combined in a way that seems fresh.

Several hundred years in the future, thousands of aliens objects gather around the earth, then burn in the atmosphere as they fall to earth. They seem to have been sent to survey the Earth, though it’s not clear by whom or for what. An old space probe, though, manages to pick up traces of a signal well beyond Pluto’s orbit. The spaceship Theseus is sent to investigate.

The ship is populated by a very strange cast of characters. The narrator, Siri, had half his brain removed as a child; he now is incapable of empathy, but can observe actions and understand motivations as well as predict what might happen next. The ship’s captain is a vampire, an offshoot of the human species that had been extinct since prehistoric times, but which has been revived. Vampire’s are more intelligent than humans, and have more acute mental perceptive abilities. The crew also includes a linguist who has had her brain surgically divided into separate “cores,” on which distinct individuals run, a biologist who has so many machine modifications that he’s more machine than human, and a professional soldier who is also a pacifist of sorts.

They find themselves in one of the most intriguing first contact situations ever. Far outside of the solar system, they are contacted by an alien vessel calling itself the Rorschach. It’s not clear though if the ship (which seems to be growing) is inhabited or whether the message they received was from an AI. And even as they try to investigate – under grueling radiation and intense magnetic fields, which interfere not only with perception but with cognition – but what they find doesn’t as much answer even their simplest questions but raise new ones.

The novel is an examination of the consciousness and intellect (and whether something can be “intelligent” but not self aware). It uses the modifications of the characters, the situations they are under, and the aliens they find to look at the various aspects of perception, cognition, and awareness. It doesn’t come to any easy answers – and some answers that it points toward are rather disquieting – but it raises a host of interesting questions. This is a very ambitious novel, one that really does try (and often succeeds) to break new ground.

Perhaps the weakest part of the novel is its characters. They are fascinating, but mostly interesting as examinations of extreme psychological states or glimpses at how the mind works. The only character who we see in much real depth is Siri, and even with him we felt hat we’re at a distance. We don’t really care much what happens to him or to any of the characters in the novel, even if we find what they are going through interesting in its own right. But perhaps there is no way around that in a novel of this sort.

Blindsight is on the Hugo ballot this year, and it is indeed a worthy book. Though in a year that featured three superb novels on the ballot – Eifelheim, Glasshouse, and Rainbows End (as well as the very entertaining His Majesty’s Dragon) — I don’t think it has much chance of winning (it will probably be fourth on my ballot). It was good enough though that I’m certainly going to look for more by Watts.

One minor quibble: the book includes an appendix that includes references to explain some of the science in the book. However, this appendix mixes sections on fictional science (the history/biology of Watts’s vampires) with sections of fact (many of the medical/psychological conditions explored in the book). The problem with doing this is that it causes the reader to question whether any of this is real. I don’t have much in-depth knowledge of psychology, and the only way I knew that the latter sections of the appendix were at least in part true is that I recognized a couple of the items he references in footnotes. But even so, I’m not sure if I should accept all that is listed in those sections of the appendix as true.

Escape from New York

Many movies have nonsense plots. You know the type: the whole setup really doesn’t make much sense when you look closely at it. Silly things happen along the way. Characters do dumb things. But every now and then, a movie surpasses its own silly underpinnings. A combination of creativity, style, and just plain fun turn it from plain old nonsense to what I like to think of as inspired nonsense. And when I think of one movie that exemplifies what I mean by this, I think of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York.

It’s 1998. Manhattan Island has been turned into a maximum security prison, where prisoners are dropped off and never allowed to leave, but instead form their own bizarre societies on the island. Air Force one, with the president aboard, crashes on the island. Worse, he is carrying a cassette tape with the information that will mean mankind’s salvation on it: the secret of controlled fusion. This all is nonsense on so many levels. The most valuable property on earth turned into a prison? One copy of the secret of fusion? (What? Did the president shoot the scientists and burn their notes?) Everything stored on a cassette tape of someone explaining the theory?

Yet, around this silliness, Carpenter has crafted an entertaining adventure film Kurt Russell stars as Snake Plissken, ex commando turned criminal, whose sentence will be commuted if he can rescue the president within 24 hours. (The secret of controlled fusion is only important if the president can present it while a major world summit is underway.) Plissken seems to be mythic character and in some reminded me of someone out of a Roger Zelazny novel. Everyone he runs into has hear of him and most recognize him (and usually say “I thought you were dead”). He is sent to Manhattan to find the president, and there encounters a host of strange characters and weird mini-societies, all living amidst the eerie stylistic landscape of a mostly abandoned and much damaged New York.

The president is being held captive by the Duke of New York (Isaac Hayes), the chief criminal on the island who drives around in a big Cadillac with chandeliers on its hood. The great character actor Harry Dean Stanton plays “Brain,” a criminal scientist who not only knows how to manufacture gasoline (which he seems to do in the remains of the New York Public Library), but also has mapped the mines on the 69^th Street Bridge. The Duke plans to lead the exiles off of the island using the president (played in marvelously whiney fashion by Donald Pleasance) following Brain’s map. Ernest Borgnine plays Cabbie, a cab driver who befriends Plissken and who always seems to be in the right place at the right time.

I usually don’t like movies where, when you actually think about what’s going on, don’t make sense. But this is one of the exceptions. I don’t know what it is – the semi-mythic character of Plissken, the strangeness and creativity of the situations and societies he finds on the island, the interesting cast of characters (the Duke, Cabbie, Brain, and many others), the wonderful sets and cinematography, Carpenter’s simplistic but hypnotic score – but somehow this movie works. It’s probably all of these things, combining to form the inspired nonsense that I find to be so much fun. It’s rather like a comic book brought to life – bigger than life characters, straightforward, simplistic plot, emotions cranked way up, colorful things going on. In the end, what makes it work is that it’s fun.

The movie was made in 1981. Many years later, Carpenter made a sequel (Escape from LA) which really didn’t work the way the original did, perhaps because this time it wasn’t fresh. A remake is planned, and as much as I like the original, I have to ask why? The fact that this movie worked, when, if you just describe what it’s about, it clearly shouldn’t, seems to me like something that can’t be repeated and will probably be done badly (and worse, heavy handedly). I could be wrong (after all, I was convinced that nothing good could come of remaking a poor TV series like the original Battlestar Galactica). But the odds of the remake of Escape from New York being better than the original (or even worth watching) are low.

The Battle of Salamis by Barry Strauss

The recent controversy over the movie 300 has inspired recent interest in the battle of Thermopylae, which some call the battle that saved Greece from the Persians. Thermopylae was certainly an important battle, both in the way it delayed Xerxes’s advancing army and in the way it inspired those who came after, but Greece – and with it, perhaps, Western Civilization – was saved by two important sea battles. The Greeks first held their own against the much larger Persian fleet at Artemisium (which occurred while the Spartans were facing the Persians at Thermopylae), then routed the Persian fleet, beating back the invasion, at Salamis.

Salamis is a small island, just off the coast from Athens, noted prior to the battle as the home of the great hero of the Trojan War, Ajax. The Athenians evacuated their people there as Xerxes marched down the Attic peninsula to sack Athens. They also gathered their fleet there, in the tight bays of the island. This was actually important strategically. The Greek triremes were heaver than those used by the Phoenicians and others in Xerxes’s navy, and thus were at an advantage where brute strength – specifically, ramming power – was more important than maneuverability. And it was in this area around Salamis, with a fleet that was still considerably outnumbered their adversaries, that the Greek’s won a navy battle as decisive as such later historical battles as Trafalgar.

Xerxes had entered Greece with much pomp – intending what today would probably be called shock and awe. His engineered created a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont, and he marched his massive army across. At the same time, his fleet – consisting of Phoenicians, Egyptians, and others under Persian rule – was made up of over 1000 triremes. His army, while delayed by the Spartan-led forces at Thermopylae, broke threw and marched into Attica, intent on destroying Athens (Athens “disloyalty” was the pretext for the war). His fleet, while much reduced by the battle of Artemisium, was still larger than the Greek fleet. His troops reached Athens, then burned it, while the Athenians watched from across the harbor at Salamis. Meanwhile, the Persian fleet gathered in Phaleron Bay, outside of Athens.

On Salamis, the Greek’s debated what to do. Many of the Greeks wanted to give up Athens as lost and move the fleet to the Corinthian isthmus and the army to the Peloponnesian peninsula. Though the Athenians had by far the largest contingent in the Greek fleet (about 180 of the 300 or so ships), the admiral of the fleet was Spartan, since the Athenians had agreed, as part of the political settlement that put together the alliance, to let the Spartans rule in war. Yet the real brains of the fleet was the Athenian Themistocles, who urged a naval battle at Salamis.

He lost the argument the day before the battle, and the Greeks were going to pull out. But Themistocles secretly sent his chief slave to the Persian camp, to report that the Greeks were going to flee under cover of darkness and thus escape the Persians. This caused the Persians to blockade Salamis, precipitating the battle.

The battle itself was chaotic – as perhaps all battles are – but the Greeks prevailed for a variety of reasons. One I mentioned earlier: their heavier ships were better in the confined spaces and wind conditions in the area of Salamis. But there were also several other factors – force multipliers, to use a term of military analysis that Strauss also uses. They were fighting for their homes and for freedom (freedom in this case meaning freedom of the Greek city states to decide their own destinies, not individual freedom, though the latter did factor in for the Athenians), while the Persians were fighting under orders from the Great King. This resulted in a mixture of fear (Xerxes could execute those who displeased him) combined with jockeying to impress the king. Moreover, in the Persian fleet, initiative was discouraged; amongst many of the Greeks, it was prized. Again, under the chaotic conditions of the battle, the Greeks combination of discipline, motive, and initiative saw them through.

One of the more interesting characters of the conflict was Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, a Greek city that was under the rule of Persia. (More Greeks may have fought on the Persian side during the war than the nominal Greek (Athenian/Spartan) side.) She was the only woman in the battle, at a time when woman were very much looked down upon. Yet she was also trusted by Xerxes and gave him sound advice (which was ignored) before the battle. During the battle, her ship came close to being rammed, but she turned and rammed one of her own allies – thus tricking the advancing Greek ship into believing that she must be on the Greek side. She survived, and the trick even fooled Xerxes, who thought she must have attacked a Greek ship and honored her as one of the few successful captains on the Persian side of the battle.

The Persians were so dismayed by the result of the battle that they essentially stopped using their navy. Fighting went on for a year, but the remaining Persian fleet huddled near the Anatolian coast. They were apparently convinced that the Greek’s – who did not pursue them immediately after Salamis – would not cross the Aegean to attack. They were wrong: the Greeks did cross in 479 BC, and the Persians beached their ships to fight on land – a fight they also then lost. The Greeks burned the beached ships.

Strauss sums up the Persians huge mistake – both before and after Salamis:

On top of everything else, Xerxes underestimated democracy. He understood neither its ferocity nor its ability to learn from its mistakes. The day after Salamis, Xerxes’ nightmare was pursuit to the Hellespont by a Greek fleet. A year later, he no longer considered that likely. Surely, he reasoned, if the Athenians had not sailed to Anatolia in their moment of triumph after Salamis, they would not do so in 479 BC, after proving unable to defend Attica from a second invasion. The autocrat had no conception of the power of a people in arms who had been provoked.

Strauss does a very good job of describing the lead-up to the battle, the battle itself, and its aftermath. He gives enough background for someone who only knows a bit of Greek history, but enough detail to make the story real and compelling. It’s a difficult balancing act, but he pulls it off. He deftly balances expert historical knowledge, attention to detail, and understanding of what the audience of a good popular history – one that’s intelligent but not made up of scholars in the area in question – need to know. This is a very good history, and highly recommended.