Mladen and Del review ‘Kill Command’

Image courtesy of Vertigo Films.

“Kill Command” Starring Vanessa Kirby as singularity Mills, Thure Lindhart as somewhat unlikeable Bukes, David Ajala as whoa-I-didn’t-expect-him-to-die-so-early Drifter, Mike Noble as hick Goodwin, Bentley Kalu as man-I-wish-I-had-those-biceps Robinson, and others. Directed by Steven Gomez. 1 hour, 39 minutes. Not Rated. Prime.

Plot summary: A squad of marines and a civilian are ordered to take part in a training exercise on a remote island. The purpose of the mission is unclear until the squad realizes they’re on the island to train a platoon of droids to fight like humans. The trouble? It’s a live fire exercise and the droids are OK with taking lives. Very human, indeed.

Spoilers: Everywhere, including the basic facts write-up and plot summary above

Mladen’s take

Unbelievable and, probably unintentional. Del, made me happy by suggesting we review “Kill Command.” He could’ve asked that we tackle “50 Shades of Gray.” Or, “Eat Pray Love.” Or, “Melanoma.” Excuse me, “Melania.” Instead, he chose this nifty 2016 movie that anticipated the soldier training equivalent of what we now know as Large Language Models.

Like LLMs steal, plagiarize, and unethically re-configure creations produced by talented humans, the quadrupedal droids in “Kill Command” Study Analyze Reprogram – SAR – the combat tactics of the marines.

Embedded with the marines is a human, Mills, who has been chipped. She is laptop, router, and Bluetooth in the organic body – a nice one at that – of a high‑level female scientist who developed the bloodthirsty droids for a robotics company.

So, we have set the scene for the mostly predictable tension between Mills and the marines. Can they trust her to help them? Must she be protected though it risks the lives of the squad? Is singularity Mills able to control the droids, to stop them from whacking the marines one at a time, but declines to take that step because she wants to witness how her AI‑driven metal warriors learn? All fair questions that get duly answered as “Kill Command” scoots along at a nice pace with a little bit of suspense here and there.

The beauty of “Kill Command,” however, is not the way the humans adapt to the menace of the gun-toting droids and their multi-blue-eyes leader. The film’s merit is the way the droids are presented, though I’m not sure that was consciously the director’s goal. The droids observe the marines continuously. They mimic the combat tactics of the marines. But, they never demonstrate humanity. Old Blue Eyes shows no loyalty to his underlings. There’s no hesitation to send them forward to get knocked off by a sniper round, or get claymore‑ed. The grunt droids show no hesitation to run into the line of fire or an open space while engaged. They never seek cover. And, there’s no apparent thoughts of mortality among the droids or their leader. The droids remain machines no matter how well their AIs SAR away.

“Kill Command” has weaknesses.

I’m still trying to figure out how Old Blue Eyes sweats, if that’s what a scene shows. There’s also a brief sequence where the leader droid seems to bleed from the seams of the clear shield covering its “face.” Or, maybe, I ain’t recalling that accurately.

A couple of the marines aren’t all that likeable. The couple who get droid-ed fairly early in the movie are.

And, there’s the ending. Two marines survive. Mills is alive but unconscious or, more accurately, off-switched because she got EMP-ed and, possibly, hacked by Old Blue Eyes before it expired from a big-caliber bullet to the face. What do the marines do? Board an unmanned flying droid transport to get off the island. Really? Most of your squad was offed by semi-thinking, no‑feeling robots but you willingly embark a pilotless aircraft that, for all you know, was built by the same company that developed and fielded Old Blue Eyes. Come on, considering the squad’s merciless encounter with AI, wouldn’t avoiding drones of any sort be wise while you think about what to do next?

This cool little movie is an A‑double‑minus. I can’t bear to give it a B+ because, despite its flaws, it works as commentary about the path mankind is trudging as AI takes control of the choices we make and the lives we lead.  

Del’s take

“Old Blue Eyes,” Mladen? I guess that beats “Old Yellow Teeth.”

It’s purely coincidental I chose a shitty knock-off of “Aliens” and “Robocop” that pleased you, Mladen. I would never, EVER consciously do such a thing. You’d be as insufferable as the people I see online who really do believe Donald J. Trump is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. I wonder … if Jesus suddenly appeared at the White House, would Trump hand him over to ICE?

That’s my token political slap to the back of the head. Now, on to something really stupid, “Kill Command.” It’s not that stupid but throughout I kept asking myself, “How would James Cameron have handled this?” The answer was never way the Steven Gomez handled it.

I will agree with you, Mladen, on one point: The movie’s overriding theme, that AI will be the death of us all, is spot-on, maybe not the way “Kill Command” imagines it but spot-on just the same. In “Kill Command” the AIs are armed robots who want to destroy human beings … not a great way to start the day but yes, at least that’s a fairly straight up, in-your-face mode of conflict. The real AI killers are the ones we can’t see – the ones who lurk in the shadows, who twist and distort the truth just enough to make it seem real and plausible and easy to digest, so before you know it you’re believing the Earth really is flat, the moon landings were faked and climate change is a hoax. Those little bastards are the ones you gotta watch out for.

“Kill Command” reminded very, VERY much of “Aliens.” It’s the exact same set-up: A heroic female civilian enters a hazardous environment with a platoon of Marines. Things quickly go off the rails and team members die, one by one. Even the large robot, “Old Blue Eyes,” bears an uncanny resemblance to the giant, egg-laying queen in “Aliens.” We lack only a cute little girl by the name of “Newt.” (Which I never figured out. Who the hell would name their kid “Newt”? Then I learned “Newt” was a nickname. Ah, well, what can I say? My nickname in high school was “Chi-Com.” It’s a long story.)

But in other ways it reminded me of “Robocop” – the integration of man and machine in the form of Mills, the “super tech” who goes with the Marines on the island training exercise. She’s no Alex Murphy and at times must make some very human choices, but there’s enough of the machine in her to make me wonder where her allegiances lie.  I’m not saying “Kill Command” is derivative of “Aliens” and “Robocop,” but I don’t think inspired by would be wholly inappropriate.

I have a few quibbles. The Marines have guns that never run out of ammo. Sometimes the robots are great shots; other times they couldn’t hit the broad side of my oversized ass, which makes them horrible shots. And why do the Marines tolerate the presence of those intrusive flying robot surveillance drones? In this movie you can’t take a piss without a giant hovering eye suddenly showing up to watch your every dribble. And they’re so quiet! Have you ever heard a drone in real life? It sounds like a flying weed whacker.

My big gripe is that everything in “Kill Command” seems so rushed. In “Aliens” Cameron gave us a back story and let us get to know the characters as individuals. In “Kill Command” we get a perfunctory introduction to the protagonist and spear carriers, and then it’s off to the bloodletting. The action is fast-paced and there’s a lot of it, but do I care? Not really. I don’t know these folks – at least not like I know Hudson, Hicks, Bishop, Vasquez and Spunkmeyer.

I dunno, Mladen. Your standards are depressingly lower than mine. You gave “Kill Command” a weird, not-quite-A-, not-exactly-B+. I’m giving it a very clear and confident B-. It was an OK movie for sitting on my ass at the house and not paying anything extra, but overall it was “Aliens”-lite, and the ending, which I have not mentioned until just now, was just plain corny.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

Machinery gear close up image, public domain CC0 photo. More: View public domain image source here

INTRODUCTION

As I was writing “I Feed the Machine” I did not envision a future America where political criminals and religious fundamentalists might rule the land.

Yet here we are, in the summer of 2024. The corrupt Supreme Court has just ruled that presidents, in their capacity as commander in chief, are not subject to the rule of law, invalidating 248 years of American jurisprudence. Republicans are busy rewriting voting districts so that only they can be elected, and the GOP is silencing the ability of the loyal opposition to make its voice heard.

Simultaneously, religious fundamentalists are attacking the institutions that have made America such a wonderful experiment in democracy and egality. They would have us think and behave in their own drab perception of what is right and wrong, or good and bad.

And corporate entities are solidifying their hold over both the architecture of our leadership and the reins of our economy, ensuring that we remain indefinitely within their thrall.

Powerful forces are arrayed against us, forces that do not care about you or me, forces that have only their preservation and enrichment in mind.

I’m reminded of the following quote, taken from astronomer Carl Sagan in his book “The Demon-Haunted World”:

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time –  when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. …”

“I Feed the Machine” is a fictional rendering of that quote. It is what happens when good people stop thinking and leave the solutions to others, or as the Rev. Charles Frederic Aked (not Edmund Burke) wrote, “It has been said that for evil men to accomplish their purpose it is only necessary that good men should do nothing.”

I contemplated the 2024 Fourth of July with no small degree of despair. It may well have been our last as a free people. A great evil has clouded the minds of otherwise decent and hardworking Americans, one that would have them support a felon and sex offender for the highest office in the land. And his odious Project 2025 is nothing less than a blueprint for 21st century fascism.

That is not what America is about, yet many people eagerly anticipate the calamity, as if it would solve their problems. It won’t.

Everything hangs in the outcome of the presidential election in 2024. Will America continue to be America, or will it become a Christo-fascist state with strutting, smirking potentates folding their arms, jutting their jaws and nodding at the adoring masses, abetted by evil religionists and fawning corporate parasites?

The choice, as I see it, is simple:

A vote for democracy.

Or a vote for “I Feed the Machine.”

We shall see. …

Del Stone Jr., July 5, 2024

I FEED THE MACHINE

            I feed the machine.

            I bring his breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

            I have always done this. I always will.

            The machine is a man. He is called a Tabulator. He performs calculations, and he is the company’s most valuable asset.

            We live in the Redoubt, where the machine is served by me and others. Doctors. Teachers. Groomsmen. His breeding pool.

We have always lived here. We always will.

—

Sometimes the machine favors me with talk.

“Have you never traveled beyond these walls?” he asks. He knows I have not, but still he asks. “Have you never seen the mountains that conceal our fortress? Have you never seen the ocean, or the sky?”

Sometimes the machine speaks in these questions that are not really questions. He knows I was born here just as he, the fifth of his line. He knows we all were born here under the watchful eye of the company. Otherwise we might be set upon by martyrs from other companies who covet his calculations.

Or the infidels.

Mostly it is at dinner that the machine favors talk. I tell him my supervisor will punish me if I do not return at once, but the machine scoffs. “I have made it clear to the company that if I wish my servers to linger they will not be punished,” And when he finishes saying that he winks at me. It is flattering that a man of such value would favor my company, but my supervisor will be unhappy.

Still, I linger. I enjoy the machine’s questions.

—

What is a mountain? What is an ocean, or a sky?

I have heard of these things. A mountain is a mass of rock which protects us from martyrs and the infidels. An ocean is a great body of water. It separates us from the infidels, who live on the other side of the world. The sky is a great open thing from which the infidels might descend to destroy us all.

But I have never seen a mountain, an ocean, or a sky.

—

“Have you never loved?” the machine asks. His eyes are alive and glittering, and through them I see a sliver of the vast world his thoughts occupy. I tell him I have a great love of the company, and of The Rapture, our leaders of the government. He waves a hand to dismiss this answer. “We all love those things of course. I am speaking of the love of another person.”

The machine has always treated me with respect and affection. I tell him I love him.

He smiles warmly and says, “As I love you. But I am speaking of an even greater love, the love that exists between a man and a woman, or a man and a man as the case may be.”

I am horrified by his words. The love between a man and a man would be smitten by The Rapture as an abomination. And here at the Redoubt the love between a man and a woman is forbidden. It interferes with important work. We servers are given monthly inoculations to prevent it. I gaze about the dining room and my expression seems to convey more than my simple answer of no.

“It doesn’t matter if they are listening,” he says. “I am the company’s most valuable asset.” He is silent a moment. I gather his food, which he has barely touched, and as I leave he reveals to me, “I am in love.”

I cannot fathom such a thing. It is as mountain, ocean, and sky.

—

I live in a 500-square-foot room. I take my meals in a cafeteria. I have access to a gymnasium, a swimming pool, and a fitness room. For entertainment I look at approved books, compete in sporting events, or browse the aisles of the company store. I receive weekly sunlamp treatments and blood tests. I pray three times a shift at organized services. Once a month I receive a castration inoculation. I am allowed access to certain parts of the Redoubt and my whereabouts are reported by transponder. If I deviate from approved areas an explosive device with a blast radius of two centimeters will detonate inside my brain.

I have a busy and rewarding life. I have no room for love.

—

“I am in love with the Checker,” the machine whispers surreptitiously. I don’t understand.

A Checker is a person who checks a Tabulator’s work. He constructs proofs to validate or invalidate the Tabulator’s calculations. The proofs are then returned to the Tabulator, who either certifies or revises them. Once the calculations and proofs are certified by both Tabulator and Checker they are sold to the contractee, another company or The Rapture itself.

The Checker and the Tabulator are never allowed to meet. To do so might corrupt their work. They are kept away from one another and it is this I do not understand. How could the machine love a person he has never met?

“The Checker is a woman,” the machine says with a smile. “Her proofs are constructed with an intricacy that only a woman might understand and a man admire.”

The machine has been distressed. I wonder if these thoughts grow from that discontent. He is currently performing a set of calculations for The Rapture, the most important calculations any Tabulator has attempted to produce. If he is successful the menace of the infidel will be ended.

“I hide messages in my calculations,” the machine whispers to me, glancing suspiciously at the walls, “and she responds to them in her proofs.” The glitter in his eyes has been replaced with a desperate sheen.

“She validates my love, and I validate hers.”

I do not understand.

—

The infidels live on the other side of the world. They are a lost people who exist in moral squalor. They celebrate primitive animal desires: lust, greed, pleasure. They use devices wantonly and most abominable are the thinking devices, the ones that perform their calculations. They use these devices to support and export their evil culture. For their efforts they will suffer eternity in the Lake of Fire.

The Rapture wisely outlawed such devices and we are protected from the moral squalor they induce. Now only simple devices are allowed, such as the device inside my brain. The infidels would decry such a device as an invasion of personal freedom, but human beings are born with only one choice – the choice to accept or reject the Savior. I made my choice a long time ago. I am free.

—

“I have asked the company to let me see her,” the machine murmurs. “They will refuse and I will be forced to act.” The room has become cluttered with papers filled with inscrutable markings. Pages are attached to the walls and bear the frantic formulae of a genius who cannot write as quickly as he can calculate. I understand none of it, which is why I am allowed to see it.

“I am approaching a critical juncture in my calculations,” he says. He looks weary and perplexed. Perhaps he has encountered a problem he cannot solve. “If they do not allow me to see her I will be unable to complete their calculations.”

Had another person spoken these words he would have been smitten as a heretic. To threaten the company and The Rapture is unthinkable. But the machine is a genius and from him they seem words of uncanny insight, though I cringe to hear them. He says the very things we are told not to think.

“Let us hope they have the good sense not to retire us,” he says but I am not afraid. We will all be retired one shift and in some fashion. Should the machine fall from grace we servers will be retired with the push of a button, the devices in our brains detonating simultaneously. Should I slip poison into the machine’s afternoon tea I alone will be retired – not before I have been compelled to reveal the source of my corruption. Retirement is a fact of life.

But the machine seems to value something more than his life.

—

I bring the machine his breakfast. He is leaning back in a chair with his feet propped on the table. His smile is fat with glee.

“It has begun,” he gloats. “I have asked the company to let me see the Checker. They have refused. So I have told them I cannot complete the orbital calculations for The Rapture.”

I do not know what “orbital calculations” are, but I am familiar with the term “blackmail,” having been intensively studied in the dark arts of manipulation used by the infidels. I fear for the machine’s soul.

“The company will distribute my work among other Tabulators and they will fail. The company will then be required to grant my request. I expect this will take a week. Meanwhile, let’s eat!” he proclaims, rubbing his hands together. “Self-determination can give a man an appetite.”

He winks.

—

My supervisor tells me I will not feed the machine this shift.

Am I being retired?

No. It is a company intercession. The machine is not to be fed until further notice.

—

After seven shifts I am allowed to feed the machine.

He does not look healthy. His skin is sallow and hangs from his cheeks and elbows. His hair is coarse and gray. He has the sunken posture of an elderly man.

But his eyes are alive.

“The company has tried to starve me into submission,” he says, eating only a little of this and that as if his stomach were no longer capable of accepting food. “But I will not submit. I am a middle-aged man and soon a thing like romance will be lost upon me. I am determined to solve this problem.”

If he were to receive castration inoculations like the rest of us he would not be grappling with these feelings. But the chemicals might dull his ability to calculate, so the company refrains from giving them to him.

“They have promised to reconsider my request if I provide them with the first dimension of my calculations. I have agreed to do that. I will not, however, provide them with enough information to enable a second Tabulator to complete the calculations. Not until I have met with my sweet Checker.”

I do not understand why this liaison is so important but I relegate it to the body of arcane notions the machine sometimes shares with me. Perhaps I will understand it after I have seen a mountain, an ocean or a sky.

—

The machine is sobbing.

The sound is terrible. I have heard it only once in my life, during a sporting event when a fellow server was injured and suffered great pain. The machine must be suffering great pain. I cannot place his oatmeal on the table because he is resting his head there.

“The company has said it will not consider my request to meet the Checker until I’ve provided them with the second and third dimensions of my calculations.”

I don’t understand. The company said it would consider his request after he provided them with the first.

“They lied,” he says bitterly.

For a moment my thoughts go blank. The company cannot lie; lying is an abomination that would bring harsh sanctions from The Rapture.

“They said they were ‘revising’ the conditions of our agreement because of unforeseen circumstances. I asked them what those circumstances were and they said The Rapture was anxious to acquire my calculations and had advanced their deadline. They said the risk of having the results tainted by my meeting the Checker were too great, and that afterwards such a meeting might be arranged. But I know they are lying.”

This is the most vexing of all the new ideas the machine has shared with me and I truly fear for his soul. The company cannot lie. Truth is the foundation of our life here at the Redoubt.

“I will not submit,” the machine says in an unsteady voice.

Has he begun to fail?

—

At my nightly prayer ritual I ask that the Savior provide clarity of thought and moral guidance to the machine. My prayers are approved by the minister who presides over the service. He is a company man. He tells me the Savior will look kindly upon my request because the machine is providing an invaluable service for all who believe in The Rapture.

Later, in my room, I wonder: Should I have asked for my own clarity of thought?

—

“Did you need further proof the company lies?” the machine snarls as I bring him his dinner. “Look at this.”

He is shaking a piece of paper.

“They told me it was a message from the Checker! Bah!”

He does not offer me the piece of paper, which is just as well. I would not know what to make of anything written there.

“It has none of her personality or her insights. In every way it says nothing. An imposter wrote this!”

I struggle for a response. I suggest the Checker may not be able to express her thoughts outside of mathematics.

“It is signed by a man,” the machine mutters grimly. “They don’t know that I know.”

I do not want to say what occurs to me: that the machine has made an error, that the Checker in fact is a man and the messages hidden in the calculations are nothing more than coincidence.

“I performed the second dimension of calculations. I asked the Checker if she had written such a message. She vigorously denied doing so.”

For the first time in my life I am sick with uncertainty. The two pillars of my belief are at war with one another and I feel I am being asked to choose.

“They will never receive the completed calculations.”

I don’t know what to say.

—

My supervisor takes me aside. I am led to a room. I am introduced to a Disciple of The Rapture.

I fall to my knees.

He motions that I rise. I am humbled by his presence. He is one of only 12 and is second only to the Foremost who is the titular head of The Rapture. Apart from encounters with the machine I have never bowed in the presence of such wisdom and insight.

He asks me questions about the machine. What does he eat? When does he sleep. What are his interests? I answer each question truthfully. Then he asks if I know what the machine hopes to accomplish by meeting the Checker. In fact I do not, as the concept of love is as unknown to me as a mountain, ocean, or sky.

The Disciple ponders this a moment and then delivers a homily in which he confirms what I already know, that the machine is performing a set of calculations that will bring the menace of the infidels to an end and I should help him to finish his work by performing my server duties to the best possible extent.

I vow to do that (without pointing out that I have always done that) and I am dismissed. Outside the room others who serve the machine are called to question.

At the end of my shift I attend my nightly prayer ritual and I pray more fervently than ever for guidance. I could have told the Disciple about the machine’s communication with the Checker through their calculations but I did not. Was that a lie? And why was I protecting the machine?

—

The machine is ecstatic. I place his breakfast before him and he shovels great dripping spoons of oatmeal into his mouth. He is hardly able to speak between his appetite and his joy.

“I met with the Disciple and he has agreed to my request!” he blurts. I can barely understand him.

But I feel two things – an overwhelming happiness for the machine and an unspeakable sense of relief for myself. The conflict is resolved. Better, my faith in the forces around me has been restored. The company is good. The Rapture is wise. And the machine is as smart and virtuous as I have always believed. It is by my relief that I measure the depth of my uncertainty, which I suppose demonstrates that what The Rapture teaches us is true: Human beings are fallible creatures who must always reaffirm their faith in order to earn a seat at the Savior’s table in the Great Hereafter.

“I must hurry to prepare,” the machine whispers as he lifts the bowl to his lips and literally sucks down the remainder of the oatmeal. It is hot and burns his throat but he swallows anyway, grimacing with pain. The sight of the company’s greatest asset attacking his breakfast with the gusto of a 10-year-old is too comical for me to restrain a chuckle, and the machine sees this and winks at me.

“Always remember: The Savior did not place us on this earth to work and pray and never celebrate the marvel of life. Even the infidels, damned as they are, know this.”

I will not let his casual heresies spoil my good mood. I collect his plates and he lunges from the table to put away papers and restore order to his living area. I leave with a smile.

I am happy for him. I am happy for myself. I am happy for all of us.

—

At my midshift prayer ritual I am removed from the sanctuary and escorted to my room by company officiates. Each officiate is armed with an omnus, a wand-like device that can disable a person with a touch. Along the way, I see other servers being similarly escorted. I have never seen such a display of military authority and it frightens me. Are we under attack? Have the infidels invaded?

As I lie on my bed awaiting instructions my thoughts take a dour turn. Might this have something to do with the machine’s liaison with the Checker? Has calamity struck? Has their relationship been tainted?

Are we all to be retired?

I stay in my room for an entire service cycle. Then I am instructed to feed the machine.

—

A company officiate stops me as I prepare to enter the machine’s quarters. “You will not speak to him,” he says. “You will leave his food and collect the dishes from the previous meal. Any deviation from these instructions will result in immediate retirement. Do you understand?”

A chill passes through me and I feel my eyes growing wide. I can only nod. The officiate conducts me through the door.

Another officiate is standing in the corner of the room. He is holding an omnus which crackles ominously with electrical charge. He watches me the way I think a predator must study its prey.

The machine is hunched over his table. He looks worse than after his starvation and my heart aches for him. An oozing weal crosses his cheek and it is clearly the stinging mark of an omnus lash. That the company would treat their greatest asset with such harsh disregard troubles me more than any heresy the machine has spoken in my presence.

“How can I work with that infernal noise,” the machine mutters as I place his meal before him.

“Do not speak,” the officiate orders.

The machine looks up at me and his eyes are wild with rage. “The meeting was a fraud! They lied!”

The officiate snarls, “Do not speak, Tabulator!” but the machine shouts, “The woman was no Checker! She came from the breeding stock of some other Tabulator! She knew nothing of mathematics!”

The officiate advances. Evil purple feelers of electricity crawl menacingly across its tip. I step back and the machine hunches down over his sheets of calculations. But the rage still smolders in his glare.

“Leave,” the officiate tells me. I collect dishes and leave.

I ask to be excused from my midshift prayer ritual. I feel an emptiness inside.

—

I feed the machine.

He has not eaten the breakfast I brought him.

Slowly I place his lunch before him and as I collect the bowl of oatmeal he looks at me with a quiet desperation and whispers, “They say I have been corrupted by the infidels!”

The officiate strides across the room and lashes out with the omnus. The machine screams and arches his back. His face is pinched into an expression of agony so complete that for a long moment he does not breath. Then he collapses to the table and the air gushes out of his lungs in a pitiful moan.

I cannot stand the sight of it. Without being told I grab the dishes and hurry for the door.

—

I lie in my room. I think about things. What is a mountain, or an ocean, or sky? What is truth anymore?

I know the machine has not been corrupted by the infidels. Such a thing is not possible. We were all born here – the machine, the Checker, and all the servers who make his life possible. We have never left the Redoubt and nobody has ever entered. The company made it that way to protect us from corruption and retirement.

Each of us has faithfully executed his duties.

Something is happening to me that I don’t understand.

A slow transformation of belief.

What is this love the machine would give his life for?

I begin to cry.

—

I feed the machine.

The room is draped in shadow with only a small lamp in the center of the table providing illumination. The officiate is a dark shape in the corner and the flickering of his omnus somehow fails to reveal any further detail, as though light itself would shun his presence. The machine stares blankly at an empty sheet of paper.

He has not eaten his lunch and I expect he will have nothing to do with the dinner I have brought him. He seems reduced, as if pain were sucking the bone from his body. I wish he would eat but I know I cannot make him. I don’t expect I’ll be feeding him much longer.

As I have always done, I carefully place the bowls and plates on the table, avoiding the precious sheets of mathematics. I remove the bowls and plates I brought earlier. I prepare to leave. As I do so, the machine slowly looks up at me. He says, “I want you to know something.”

The officiate comes striding across the room.

The machine says, “I think you already know what I was going to say.”

The officiate raises the omnus to strike and I react without thinking.

I grab his arm.

He is strong, far stronger than I, having been bred for the purpose of striking people. But perhaps he hesitates because it is unthinkable that a food server who has been conditioned from birth to obey would defy that conditioning. Whatever the reason, I snatch the omnus from his grip and ram it into his chest and it discharges with a strangely satisfying explosion of sparks. The officiate’s muscles spasm and he grabs the shaft of the omnus and receives a second jolt that knocks him across the room, where he collapses and lies still.

The machine gazes up at me with wonder. He says, “God help us but thank you!” and leaps from his seat. I am stunned by what I have done and as the machine scuttles into the shadows to check on the officiate and then returns to our island of light I begin to sense the enormity of my actions. I try to sit down. The machine helps me.

I am an abomination, I whisper.

The machine shakes his head vigorously. When I don’t respond he takes my face into his hands. It is the first time he has ever touched me. His skin is rough, the fingers callused from all the years of scribbling and erasing and scratching out. He looks into my eyes and I see his vast intelligence, unfettered now by hierarchy or ritual, and it transcends everything I have been taught.

He says, “You are a human being, and I thank you.”

He lets go. He darts back across the room and returns with the omnus. He hefts it with his right hand and collects the basket of dishes with the other. He says, “May I borrow your frock? Perhaps they’ll think it is you.”

I ask him what he is doing.

“I mean to find her,” he answers.

But that’s impossible. He doesn’t know where she is.

“If I must search every room of the Redoubt, I will find her,” he says.

But he cannot do that. The device in his brain. If he goes beyond the areas that have been approved the device will. …

“Yes, I know.”

No, I blurt. I am lost in every way now. He sets the dishes down and crouches at my feet and takes my hand into his. “You must listen to me,” he says, “and you must listen carefully because this may be the last chance you and I have to speak and I have something very important to tell you.”

I nod without understanding.

“I will not finish my calculations for The Rapture.”

I stare at him without comprehension.

“I have a very good reason. Circling far above our world is a series of hateful devices placed there by the governments that preceded The Rapture,” he says. “These devices are similar to the ones inside our brains, but they are much larger, capable of retiring whole cities in a pulse of light that would destroy many millions of people and spread poison across the face of the world.”

I cannot conceive of such a thing.

“The Rapture intends to use these devices to destroy the infidels,” he says angrily, taking his eyes from me to swear softly, “and that is what I have been doing. Performing the calculations that will tell the devices where to fall. The calculations must be executed in three dimensions, and I am the only Tabulator capable of  keeping all the variables in order.”

My thoughts are a storm of turmoil.

He hangs his head in silence a moment, but when he speaks his voice is firm.

“I know nothing of these infidels. Perhaps they deserve such a fate. But I do know if the infidels are corrupt they will answer to the Savior, not The Rapture. And that is what our leaders really want – a world rendered in their image, where love is imprisoned, watched over by guards and struck down when it defies them. That is not what the Savior intended when he placed us here. He expected us to celebrate life.

“He expected us to love.”

Enough. I cannot take it all in – devices and cities and love. It is too much and I feel my world falling away from me. I do not know whom to ask for guidance.

The machine stands and smiles down at me.

“This moment has brought me more joy than any other in my life,” he says, “and I thank you for it.”

I give him my frock. I don’t know what else to do.

He steals to the door. He opens it and lashes out with the omnus. The officiate tumbles to the floor.

The machine glances back at me. He winks. And then he is gone.

I sit in the chair.

Moments later, I hear the sharp crack of a detonation, and when I peer into the hallway the machine is lying on the floor, a fine mist of blood coating the opposite wall.

—

I am confined to my room for a period of seven shifts. I wait to be given absolution. I wait for the device inside my brain to detonate. I wonder if it will hurt. But it doesn’t happen. I am brought to face an inquiry. Officiates from the company and a Disciple are there. The officiate I attacked has not regained consciousness. No mention is made of the machine. They ask me what happened and I tell them the officiate attempted to strike the machine and I intervened. They seem almost amused. They tell me my loyalty to the machine is commendable but a greater loyalty to the company and The Rapture must be observed. I insist I am telling them the truth. They tell me I am lying. They tell me I have been corrupted by the infidels. None of these things are true and I become angry. They send me back to my room to await the Hereafter.

On the seventh shift my supervisor tells me to feed the machine.

—

He is lying in his bed. His head has been shaved, and a bandage covers the right hemisphere of his skull. A wheeled table that extends over his chest is covered in papers.

Calculations.

His eyes finally find mine. They are filled with defeat.

“It seems I have been outwitted,” he says, and his voice possesses none of the vigor I had always known. He throws a weak sigh and his gaze wanders to the ceiling. “The device inside my brain … it was implanted in such a way as to disable, not kill. I am paralyzed from the waist down.” A disappointed frown momentarily clouds his expression. “How was I to know?”

I tell him I am glad to see him. He shakes his head.

“I am happy they chose not to retire you. I told them I attacked the officiate. It seemed to fit their mode of thinking.”

I am overcome by equal parts sadness and gratitude. He lied – blatantly lied. But he did so on my behalf. That a man of his importance would sacrifice himself for a server – the idea fills me with a peculiar devotion that has nothing to do with anything I have learned in my life.

“And now I have finished their infernal calculations.”

I say nothing.

“I had no choice,” he explains, his voice heavy with misery. “They threatened to retire the Checker! They threatened to retire all of you! I could not allow it. What is life in a world without love?”

He sighs again. “So I will exchange the lives of millions of people for the love of a single woman. It is I,” he says gravely, “who is the abomination.”

I tell him he is not though I cannot say why. He dismisses my objection with a flick of a finger and draws me close so I may hear without being overhead. “The courier will be here soon to carry my work to the Checker. In it I have delivered a final message. I have explained everything to her. She will know what to do.” I don’t understand, but much of what the machine tells me I don’t understand.

“And then,” he continues wearily, “I will likely be retired. But I am hopeful they will honor their agreement and not retire the Checker, or any of you.”

He clears a space on the table for the food I have brought him but I don’t want to set it down. I want to linger and draw out my time with him, but he beckons me to get on with things.

I look back at him from the door. The enclosing fog of sadness clears a moment, and he does a curious thing.

He winks.

—

I try to picture it in my mind’s eye: a vast prominence of stone rising farther than the eye can see into a limitless void. A body of water unthinkably larger than the biggest swimming pool splashing against the foundation of that prominence. Millions upon millions of people occupying those reaches, coming and going as they choose without regard for approval.

I cannot get my brain around any of it. So I remember that moment when I grabbed the officiate’s arm and wrestled the omnus from his grasp and drove it into his body. I remember a shock of some unnamable emotion, compelled by a deeper feeling of … affection? As I sort through my memory I slowly realize that whatever the feeling was, it had been there a very long time, longer than I had realized.

Was it love?

—

“The Checker has approved my final calculations,” the machine tells me. His face is radiant. “She found no errors.”

—

We are summoned to a conclave. Everybody who lives at the Redoubt attends. Even the machine.

It is unprecedented.

A Disciple of The Rapture, the same Disciple as before, stands before us. He tells us in a righteous voice the menace of the infidel will be put to rest this very evening. He thanks us on behalf of The Rapture for our work.

As we leave, those of us who serve the machine are taken aside. We are led to the sanctuary where we are given absolution.

It can only mean one thing.

—

For the last time, I feed the machine.

—

 “What do you think retirement will be like?” he asks.

I no longer care very much one way or the other. Retirement is a small issue now that life itself is false.

But I tell him retirement is a slow warmth that steals over the soul followed by an awakening in the Hereafter where all questions are answered. I have been taught to say that but I no longer believe it. Soon we will all know the truth.

“I disagree,” the machine chuckles around a crust of bread. “Retirement is not a transmigration of the soul. It is merely the physical collapse of the body. The brain’s electrical signals become randomized then cease altogether. Afterwards,” he pauses to swallow, “there is nothing.”

His table is set. I begin collecting dishes from the previous meal.

“Do you think the citizens of our land could live with such a thing?” he asks. I tell him no. It defies what they have been taught.

“Yes,” he nods. “It is a principle by which the infidels live. But what if it were true?”

I finish collecting the dishes. They must be arranged in the basket in a particular way and I kneel at his bedside and set about doing that. As I work, I tell him that if there were no Hereafter then this life would become much more important.

“Yes,” he agrees mischievously.” We would celebrate life, would we not?”

I look up at him. He beams down at me.

“I knew they would not honor their agreement,” he whispers. “I knew they would retire us all after they got what they wanted – the destruction of the infidels, and a world rendered in their grim likeness. I could not allow that either.”

His expression softens.

“For all your life you believed somebody would push a button and the device in your brain would detonate and you would float away to your cozy Hereafter. But might there be a different way?” He raises himself on an elbow. I wait for him to speak.

“Suppose I were to say you would be retired in a pulse of sanctifying white light that would carry your body out of this mountain and scatter it across the ocean and sky? Suppose parts of your body would be converted to energy itself and flung on an endless voyage across the universe. Suppose we would be together – you, me, the Checker, all of us at the Redoubt – rising into the sky and falling across the world and flying into the Savior’s realm forever.

“If I told you that do you think we could share one moment of peace before it happens?”

He looks into me and I see the vast world his thoughts occupy. And then God help me I see the answer – I see it, circling far overhead and falling toward me on the gravity of the machine’s supreme calculations and as it draws closer I see it with a clarity I have struggled to achieve for my entire life and I am struck speechless with wonder.

The machine lies back into the pillow. “She accepted my calculations,” he says, his face relaxing into a contented smile. “That is my celebration of life.”

I forget to breathe as I see myself in a wave of light that spreads across a world I have never seen, and belief pours into me and fills the empty places with a warmth I have been told comes only with the Hereafter.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. It is more than my heart can bear.

I take the machine’s hand and press it against my cheek. Flesh against flesh teaches me more than a life of instruction.

And a miraculous thing happens.

The hand is withdrawn. A crust of bread appears.

And the machine feeds me.

About the author:

Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone’s stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra’s Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone’s comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled “December” for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman’s Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone’s novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild’s award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”

Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida’s best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.

As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn’t look a day over 94.

Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .

Image courtesy of Amazon-MGM.

“Project Hail Mary” Starring Ryan Gosling as an insufficiently curious xenobiologist Ryland Grace; James Oritz as (eventually) the voice of Rocky the alien; Sandra Huller as the stone‑cold yet bewilderingly attractive Project Hail Mary program manager Eva Stratt; and others. Directed by the duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Runtime a too-long 2 hours, 36 minutes. Rated PG-13. Theatrical release.

Plot summary: The Sun is threatened by a species of microorganism (Grace calls them “astrophages”) that consumes stars, which puts Earth in danger. If the sun dims too much, photosynthesis will decline and everything, including civilization, will go the way of democracy. The planet’s governments come together (yeah, right) to send an expedition to a star light years away that has somehow beaten back the astrophages eating everything else in our neck of the galactic woods using fusion to produce light and heat. Things go wrong. Our hero encounters an alien – his/hers/their planet is in trouble, too, because their sun is on the menu – and the two of them cooperate to find a way to defeat the star eaters.

Spoilers: Not if you read the book.

Mladen’s take

I can think of a couple of very good movies featuring humans and space aliens becoming buddies, “Enemy Mine” (1985) and “Alien Nation” (1988). The Star Treks and Kirk and Spock. More recently, there’s “Predator: Badlands.” Yes, yes, there are technically no humans in Badlands but synthetics Thia and Tessa are close enough.

In that regard, “Project Hail Mary” misses the mark. It isn’t Gosling’s fault as Grace or Oritz’s depiction of Rocky that made their friendship in the movie seem, ah, inert. The trouble is seeing Rocky for what the alien is, rock‑like. I’m used to placing rocks in my aquarium without worrying that I’m drowning a living being. Also, to me, anyway, rocks are repositories of past life – fossils – rather than sentient, self-aware creatures alive today who multiply by what, sexual sedimentation or crack fissuring.

The problem with “Project Hail Mary” is that it came in book form first and I read the book. Though I can’t recall the details in the book, I can recall that my imagination allowed me to interpret Rocky as some sort of fauna rock, an animal that was also vegetable and mineral. No such luck in the film. The Eridian – that’s the name of Rocky’s species – was there for me to “see” with my eyes.

Rocky is constructed of short columns of jointed hard material that made fingers and limbs, which articulated, and a thorax holding it all together. What held him together, allowed him to move? A pliant crystalline matrix like fiber-optic cabling? Ammonia‑soluble tendons that deformed whenever Rocky’s iron ore other‑than‑nervous system rusted on command? How the hell could the Eridian chitter like an insect? Golly, and this is terrible, I had the urge to vivisect Rocky to see what made him tick.

B+ “Project Hail Mary” is worth the time to see in a movie theater. There is enough action, even if that action is, in part, dependent on an implausibly maneuverable space ship, to justify dropping extra change for a Dolby theater seat. The scene where Grace and Rocky trawl the upper atmosphere of a planet to collect astrophages and something else is darned good.

I looked forward to scenes with Huller as Stratt. It was the precision of her diction when speaking English. It was her unapologetic focus on saving humanity, though it required sacrificing individuals who belong to that humanity. It was her humorous severeness and knack for taking a line of reasoning or an excuse to avoid doing this or that to the end of the line. Something like, “Grace, you say you want to stay on Earth to teach children. Well, if you stay, there will be no children to teach.” What a guilt trip. And, I must say, I loved Grace for ignoring it.

Del’s take

Mladen is too generous with his review of “Project Hail Mary.” I didn’t fall asleep once during the movie, but not because it was exciting. The theater was freezing and I’d left my hoodie in the car. I thought “Hail Mary” was boring – B-O-R-I-N-G. And it was stupid – this, from a guy who not only grew up reading science fiction but wrote a few SF stories of his own.

I wish Amazon had taken some of the $$$ it spent on “Melania” and used it to make “Hail Mary” better, maybe a little more scientifically plausible, maybe a little less slapsticky. As it stands, the movie is structurally too complicated, is inconsistent in tone, is way too long, and it failed to convince me to suspend my disbelief.

According to Mladen, “Hail Mary” is 2 hours and 36 minutes. It felt like 2 days and 36 hours. It was a two-bathroom-visits movie for me. To paraphrase a British critic who reviewed one of my books, it could have benefitted from a savage pruning of excess beats. As Mladen pointed out, the movie was not about teaching English to an alien; it was about figuring out how to kill the little bastards eating our sun, so the whole teaching-the-alien bit could have been left on the cutting room floor. And other parts should have qualified for a savage pruning. I’ll get to those in a minute.

Is “Hail Mary” a comedy? At times I thought it was. There were moments of physical comedy – actual slapstick – and the script was mostly a series of jokes and verbal pratfalls that at first were cute but soon became irritating and distracting. It was impossible to take anything I was seeing on the screen very seriously because the movie did not take itself very seriously. That may sound like a good thing but trust me, a movie about the end of the world should not be funny. Satirical? Maybe. “Don’t Look Up” and “Doctor Strangelove” come to mind. But comedic? Hardly.

The story is told through a series of flashbacks woven through a current-time narrative, and that proved to be difficult to follow, especially at the beginning when Grace awakens aboard the spacecraft with no memory of how he got there. Again, I would ask: Is that what this movie is about? No? Then why waste the audience’s time telling them things that have no bearing on the outcome of the story?

In films from the Star Trek and Star Wars universes I can accept scientific implausibilities – hyperlight, the Force, teleportation. Those movies are more fantasy than science fiction. But in a movie like “Hail Mary,” which grounds itself in science, the implausibilities become much more glaring and harder to forgive. Gosling’s character awakens after four years of zero-G induced coma. His bones should have looked like a plastic McDonald’s straw. Yet he’s able to bound around and grab hurtling spaceship parts as if he were Thor. No effing way is that gonna happen. And again, as Mladen pointed out, the spaceship maneuvering was just impossible – comedically impossible. And there were others – Rocky’s seemingly endless supply of food and air, and Grace’s endless supply of crap that would never be allowed on a starship having to contend with mass constraints. Deus ex machine was Grace’s co-pilot.

A plus was Gosling’s performance, which I thought was superb. And Mladen was right about Huller. She was spectacular. In fact, of all the characters in “Hail Mary” she was the only one I could relate to in any human sense.

“Hail Mary” is cleaning up at the box office and moviegoers are giving it Rotten Tomato scores in the 90s. Amazon needs the movie to pull in around $400 million to break even, and that will probably happen. All said, that makes me look like a cranky, impossible-to-please old fart. Maybe so. But judging by all the movies I’ve given A scores to over the years, I’d say that’s not true. I just want my movies to be really, really good, and for all the reasons I’ve listed here, I don’t think “Project Hail Mary” meets that description. Feel free to go see it and judge for yourself.

I’m giving it a score of a B-, and I think that’s generous. Maybe a C+.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

All images courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” Starring Sam Worthington as Jake, Zoe Saldaña as Neytiri, Sigourney Weaver as Kiri, Stephen Lang as Quaritch, Oona Chaplain as Varang and others. Directed by James Cameron. Rated PG-13. 3 hours, 17 minutes. Theatrical release.

Plot summary: Jake, Neytiri and the kids – Tuktirey, Lo’ak, Kiri, and Spider – depart the Metkayina clan to return Spider to humanity, as he cannot breathe Pandoran air. Along the way they are ambushed by the Mangkwan clan, who eventually throw in with the RDA to slaughter the whale-like Tulkuns and claim dominion over the moon and its resources. Jake and the allied clans must rally to defeat the Mangkwans and humans, or Pandora will be plundered and looted for its riches.

Spoilers: Yes.

Del’s take

Dear James Cameron,

It’s beautiful but … enough.

Nobody denies your spectacular vision, the unparalleled special effects and stunning complexity of the world you’ve created in Pandora, but …

Enough.

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” is an excellent movie … but. …

I’m tired.

This is the third time you’ve told this story: Noble savages frolic amid the idyll. Evil outsiders invade. Noble savages and outsiders skirmish. Then, in a final showdown, noble savages and outsiders wage all-out war. Somehow, noble savages prevail. Idyll restored. Frolicking resumes.

“Avatar,” “Avatar: The Way of Water” and now “Avatar: Fire and Ash” are essentially pastoral myths, which extol the purity and virtue of a life allied with nature, devoid of the corrupting influences of urbanization, pollution, and the refined moral essence of mankind, which is something selfish and destructive. And for the most part I agree with those tenets – until I need a dentist or want my garbage picked up. Then I’m full Team Civilization.

I want to repeat what I said earlier: “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is an excellent movie. People should see it in a theater, preferably one equipped with an IMAX screen and Dolby Atmos, not their (likely) crappy home monitor (unless you’re my friends Jim and Karen, who have a 98-inch OLED TV that looks more like a picture window than a monitor … that thing blows me away). The special effects are groundbreaking and the world-building is the most intricate I’ve seen in a film, EVER, and that includes “Dune” and “Blade Runner.”

But please – and I say this not as a person who could do what you’ve done, but as a member of your audience, just some schmoe from the panhandle of Florida – now that you’ve conquered those other aspects of moviemaking, concentrate on improving your stories, because they’re all the same. “Fire and Ash” is essentially “The Way of Water,” which was a retelling of “Avatar.” We get it. Natives = good. Humans = bad. There’s got to be a new wrinkle to this epic, one that’s worth all the visual firepower you bring to the table.

And please, work on the dialogue. Apart from Stephen Lang’s Quaritch, who gets the best lines of the movie, your characters speak dialogue so cringeworthy it makes the fillings in my teeth ache. It comes across like middle-school moralizing. That scene with Jake and Spider, which by the way was the most emotionally fraught of the entire film, was nearly ruined by Spider’s corny acceptance-of-his-fate speech. Thank God it lasted only a few seconds.

I’m dismayed to hear this is not the end of “Avatar,” that there’s a fourth installment in the works for 2029, and a fifth for sometime in the 2030s. In fact, it’s distinctly possible this could become a continuing series of film and streaming series. IF that’s the case, then you’ve got to bring more to these films than just clashes between city people and country folks, because that conflict is getting old.

I’m giving your film an A-. Its technical achievements and the sweeping vision of the story are undeniable. But the quality of the plot doesn’t match the epic sweep of the storytelling. In that regard you could take pointers from the extended versions of Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is an excellent movie, yes. But I guess what I’m trying to say is: You can do better.

That’s it. I’m done. I hope you’re not mad at me.

Please tell Sigourney hi for me. I’ve always been a fan.

Del

Mladen’s take

I learned a couple of, ah, truths, about myself watching “Avatar: Fire and Ash.”

The first realization? I’d have no trouble sharing a bed with an alien if the entity is as soulless, ambitious, take-no-prisoners, and sultry as Varang. She is the evil asshole boss of a clan of very human Pandora natives portrayed in the recently released Avatar III.

Second, I’m unable to cope anymore with stories that extend the myth of other‑than‑earthly hopefulness conveyed in earlier sci-fi movies such as “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “2010: The Year We Make Contact,” or any such movie that argues there’s a heaven waiting for us when we die. There’s no supernatural something that’ll save us mortals from mortality. Yours truly agrees completely and without a shred of doubt with Bob Marley and The Wailers – “If you know what life is worth, you would look for yours on earth.” Or Pandora. God almighty, wait until you see how Pandora’s planet god Eywa manifests as a physical being. My head almost exploded it was so derivative and blatantly Space Odyssey.

Yes, the good Na’vi fight the bad Na’vi and the human colonialists still digging for Unobtainium and killing Pandora’s whale equivalents for the secret sauce contained in their bodies. But, that’s insufficient because the good Na’vi almost get their butts kicked and sustain terrible loss of life across species in the process. I offer this. Had the good Na’vi assumed that Eywa was, at least, indifferent to their lives, they would have fought harder earlier, kicking the crap out of the bad Na’vi and squalid humans while sustaining fewer fatalities by going on the offensive. Rely on a god, and all gods are unreliable, and it might be too late to save your only life when the shit hits the fan.

Third, what do you do when the bad guys are more charismatic than the good guys in a movie? I ask this because, more and more these days, people apply the fiction of moviemaking to their beliefs in actual life. Beautiful feline Varang and steadfast Quaritch, both very bad folk, are more entertaining than Jake and Neytiri, who are unentertaining and conscientious good folk. Entertainment is what ordinary Americans, and the rest of the peasants on this planet, want. What’s the result? A deranged orange blob at the head of the U.S. Senate‑sanctioned and Supreme Court­­‑unleashed Executive branch. Fascists running Argentina, El Salvador, Hungary, Israel, and Russia, to name just a few countries.

Fourth, I was forewarned. After we saw “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” Del said that he’d write a thoughtful and fair review. He did, unfortunately. I’m unable to disagree with what he put to e‑paper. Expect the movie’s grade. The third Avatar is way too first and second Avatar. It’s as bad as “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which mimics its excellent and ancient predecessor “Star Wars” or, as it later came to be known, “Episode IV – A New Hope.” I hope there’s no Avatar IV but there will be. Varang and Quaritch, thankfully, survive in Avatar III. They’re the couple who is most likely to make the next Avatar slightly better than unpalatable.

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” gets a B-, eh, a C+ from me and that’s generous. The movie delivers fabulous sight and sound. Del and I should’ve seen it in a Dolby theater because that might have distracted me from noticing the film’s irredeemable wankiness.  

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

Image courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

“Predator: Badlands” Starring Elle Fanning as Thia/Thessa, Dimitrius Schuster-Kolomatangi as Dek (the Predator), Rohinal Nayaran as Bud, and others. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg. 1 hour 47 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Plot summary: Dek, the runt from a litter of Yautja, must prove he’s a good Predator by executing an impossible hunt to earn his “cloak” and the respect of his Father’s clan.

Spoilers: Undoubtedly

Mladen’s take

You won’t believe what you’re about to read because it ain’t the general notion of what a Predator universe film is supposed to be. “Predator: Badlands” is – are you ready – a very good character‑driven buddy movie that’s also laden with creature roars, chitters, and screeches, lots of explosions, plenty of adventure, and doses of humor in all the right places at the right time.

Oh, the movie is about friendship and belonging and family and loyalty, too. Not the Trump administration type of loyalty where fealty is practiced by assholes to appease higher-up assholes, but loyalty to good people who are willing to stake their lives to protect you.

My God, I sound like Del. No?

You should also know that Badlands has an “Alien” and “Aliens” vibe. The bad guys work for the Weyland‑Yutani Corporation. The corporation is still in the business of harvesting, growing, breeding, etc., bioweapons as it does in the Alien movie franchise. In Badlands, it’s after the Kalisk, which is what our hero, Dek the Predator, also wants but for a different reason. Huh, wonder why Director Dan Trachtenberg inserted the evil company in the Badlands flick, which, yup, sets up a sequel.

There is nothing novel about the Badlands story‑telling foundation but the story‑telling is done beautifully.

Dek, the runt from a litter of Yautja, must prove he’s a good Predator by executing an impossible hunt to earn his “cloak” and the respect of his Father’s clan. Schuster-Kolomatangi does a good job conveying CGI Dek’s frustrations and foibles. He also does a good job speaking Yautja‑ese, which demands the throaty clicks that are used in some African languages. More important, Schuster‑Kolomatangi evolves Dek from a one‑dimensional honor‑seeking Predator to a Yautja who learns that belonging is more than trying to fulfill an imposed birthright. The family he helps build during his adventures and misadventures on planet Genna is far more important than the clan he was born to.

But, Elle Fanning as good “synth” Thia and obedient synth Thessia, is the spark that carries the film. My goodness, and this is tough to admit, Fanning is as smart, charming, and pretty as Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who stars in top‑notch movies such as “10 Cloverfield Lane.” I now adore two actresses for the same reasons. I suspect they’d be as cool and intelligent face‑to‑face as the characters they play in films.

Fanning’s Thia wanted more from life than to serve Weyland-Yutani and its AI comptroller, Mother. She saw Genna and its flora and fauna as magnificent beings in their own right better suited for study and understanding than exploitation for profit without mercy. She protected Dek even when he refused to admit he needed protection. And, she accepted Bud from the get-go, patiently but inexorably showing Dek Bud’s value as a member of their newly established clan. And that was before they realized what Bud is.

As Thessia, Fanning acted the opposite of her Thia character. Thessia was all pragmatism and programming as Weyland‑Yutani wanted. She was intimidated when she spoke to Mother (the MU/TH/UR 6000 computer system). She had no concern about deactivating and stowing her fellow synth Thia because Thia showed a tendency to think and act to the detriment of executing corporate missions.

I’ll avoid going into detail about the Badlands cinematography and sound. I’ll say this, though: Both are superb. A Dolby theater is the be‑all for action thriller sci‑fi movie watching. Man, the film looks and sounds like you’re on Genna trying to dodge plants that behave like octopus tentacles or are sharp enough to flense you. The Kalisk can re‑integrate its head with its body even after the head is severed and goes tumbling meters away.

“Predator: Badlands” is the first completely enjoyable sci-fi film I’ve seen in a long time. What was the one before that? “Shin Godzilla” from 2016. No question. Badlands is an A. How do you know I know? Because I don’t even care that Badlands is rated PG-13. And, as with “Shin Godzilla,” I’m counting the days to its release on 4K disc.

Del’s take     

I’ve never understood the logic of the Predator universe.

You’ve got these aggressive sociopathic hunters who prize violence above all else, yet they possess high technology, suggestive of a more cooperative civilization. After all, it takes a village to create a shoulder-mounted blaster with triple-laser sighting, right?

If future movies elaborate on the Predator culture they should suggest the Predators we see are a caste of violent monsters separate from their more civilized brethren, like MAGA, except the Predators actually walk the talk. The MAGAts are definitely keyboard warriors and Meal Team 6.

Overall I think the Predator movies have held up well as a franchise. Others, including the endless Alien, Terminator and Die Hard movies, devolve into absurdity over time, but the Predators just keep soldiering on, even the Alien vs. Predator movies, which I thought were pretty good. The only Predator movie I can remember actively disliking was “Predators” with Adrien Brody, which struck me as a pointless bloodbath.

Every new movie seems to advance the evolution of the Predator species and “Badlands” does that to a greater extent than its predecessors. Where the creatures were solitary hunters in the past, Dek has a name and a need for companionship, though he rationalizes that need as a use of “tools.” Only later does he tacitly accept that his new “tools” have become members of his “clan.” That would be a clan of choice, a concept not lost on members of the LGBTQ community. Maybe Dek is gay! Maybe his nickname is Bubba.

It pains me to do this but I’m going to give Mladen credit for (a) accurately and effectively summarizing the movie and characterizing its content. There’s not much for me to add except, “What he said.” I didn’t see “Badlands” at a Dolby Orgasmitron thingamajiggie-equipped theater so I can’t speak to the splendid audio effects, but they sounded pretty good at my low-rent showing. And I too was impressed with the acting – I remember Elle Fanning as the insufferable pain-in-the-ass brat from “War of the Worlds” so it was nice to see her portraying a character I could get behind. I did think the pet Bud was contrived and kind of silly – that is until I found out what it really was.

Also, I was impressed by the way the writers further wove together the Alien and Predator universes. I now have a mental association between the fictional Weyland-Yutani company and Peter Thiel’s all-too-real (unfortunately) Palantir. Weyland-Yutani might have a tad more soul.

I’ll keep this short: “Predator: Badlands” is a good movie. Don’t waste it on streaming. You need to see it before it rolls out of town, even at a theater equipped with one of Mladen’s Dolby Orgasmitron thingamajiggies.

I’m giving it an A.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

Image courtesy of Disney Studios.

“Tron: Ares” Starring Jared Leto as Ares, Greta Lee as Eve Kim, Jodie Turner-Smith as Athena, Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger and others. Directed by Joachim Rǿnning. 1 hour 59 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Spoilers: Sure.

Mladen’s take

Don’t listen to the other critics talking crap about “Tron: Ares.”  It’s a good movie with a touch of heart despite the sometimes too loud Goth industrial electropunk score and its very, very vivid color palette.

I saw the film (twice) in 3D, once in IMAX and the last time in a plain ole theater. Wholly guacamole did the reds of the filmography and the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack dig deep into my brain’s sensory lobes. After, oh, 45 minutes of exposure to the pulsating everything on the screen and the raucous thumping of lows and highs coming from the speakers I got tired, if not frustrated, by the frenetic aural and visual activity. But, like the trooper I am, I persevered to see the guts of computers anthropomorphized into human forms reflecting the good and bad of our species, as well as humans being human.

Jared Leto does a good job as Ares, a program that evolves from a data‑spouting automaton following directives without question at the beginning of the film to a human-like being trying to understand the difference between right and wrong while chasing the “Permanence Code.” Jodie Turner‑Smith as Athena was a confident, menacing foil to Ares’ introspective side. She kicked ass and came back for more again and again. No “Impediment” was going to stop her from completing her mission.

Ares’ wish to “live” made it/him sympathetic. Who among us doesn’t want to stop taking orders from The Man to chase our dreams? Obedient Athena – obedient to the “user” who runs her “Grid” – is determined to fulfill her directive – find human Kim, teleport her to the Grid by deconstructing her, reconstruct her as a digital copy, and extract the Permanence Code from Kim though it will kill her. Athena’s single mindedness, if it could be described that way, is chilling. 

The Ares and Athena antagonism unfolds amid a feud between corporate titan and good gal Kim, charmingly played by Lee, and corporate titan and bad guy Dillinger, effectively played by Peters, as they pursue the Permanence Code for the artificial creations their hyper‑fast, algorithm‑driven, and laser‑spewing machines produce. Permanence means that programs like Ares and Athena manifesting in the Real would survive longer than 29 minutes, the confounding limit of their life spans outside their home world. Of course, Kim wants to use permanence to feed humanity, provide health care, and develop alternative fuels. Yeah, Dillinger wants to sell permanence weapons to the military.

“Tron: Ares” is a B+. There’s no need to see it in 3D, which costs more. It just worked out that way for me. I suspect the film’s loudness and vividness was amplified by the 3D, bringing the film close to sensory overload.

Del’s take

I barely remember the 1982 “Tron” (I think I watched it drunk) and “Tron: Legacy” exists in my memory as a single image of Jeff Bridges standing atop some towering digital artifact. In truth the premise of these movies – that flesh-and-blood human beings can be digitized and loaded into a computer, then reconstituted thanks to the miracle of laser 3-D printers – is so freaking stupid I’m not willing to suspend my disbelief.

That’s weird because many of the movies I love – “The Matrix,” “Cloverfield,” “Star Wars: A New Hope” (the best “Star Wars” movie EVER and I don’t care what Mladen says) – are based on stupid premises yet I love them just the same. If I were having this conversation with a therapist he or she would want me to drill down to the real reason I don’t like them.

I think it’s because the plots are so very very standard-issue, unimaginative good-guy-vs.-bad-guy pablum we’ve seen a bazillion times in the past: Loser squares off against powerful dude – the love of a good woman is at stake – and somehow, despite EVERYTHING, the loser succeeds and becomes a not-loser, which I guess we call a winner.

That’s “Tron: Ares,” only this time the loser is a digital proprietary program that malfunctions … and develops a soul. I’m not sure how you 3-D map a soul but that doesn’t stop “Tron: Ares” and let’s just say he follows the trajectory of all these superhero and quasi-superhero movies to their inevitable conclusion. At least the Marvel movies have the decency to throw in some self-deprecating humor. None of that here.

The movie is gorgeous to look at although the digital domain, with its dominant red and black color palette, reminded me of Hell. The special effects were what you might expect from a movie who’s sole artistic virtue is special effects.

Jared Leto was wooden as Ares but then you can’t blame him – he was playing the part he was given. Really, everybody here did an adequate job of filling their roles, although Gillian Anderson and Evan Peters are always better in anything they do.

My understanding is that one of the major draws was the Nine Inch Nails soundtrack. I was expecting something on the order of Vangelis’ score for “Blade Runner,” but no, that would not be an apt comparison. Trent Reznor went all Teutonic Goth and produced a hammering, thunderous score that relentlessly beats you into a bloody, cowering pulp hiding behind your seat on the sticky floor. It’s way too much. I came out of the theater feeling like I’d gone 10 rounds with Oleksandr Usyk.

The other night I cleansed my palate with one of the greatest science fiction-horror movies of the ’60s ever made, the vastly underrated “Quatermass and the Pit.” My God, what a movie! It reminded me that good films that tell original stories really do exist in more than just concept. I hope one day to see another movie that inspires that kind of enthusiasm from me. In 2025 it seems Hollywood is more focused on churning out “content” and making as much money as possible. Art is no longer part of the equation. How sad.

Mladen was too generous in his rating of “Tron: Ares.” It’s really worth only a C+. Even the original arcade game it’s based on was better, though good luck finding a functional machine today.

By all means, see “Tron: Ares” in a theater. But bring your headphones to filter out some of the thunder.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

Image by Warner Bros.

“Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson as Mickey “Mickey 17” Barnes, Naomi “Gonna Kick Your Ass” Ackie as Nasha, Mark Ruffalo as Kenneth “Trump Christian” Marshall, Toni “Moms for Liberty Prototype” Collette, and others. (Names in parentheses, barring Pattinson’s, ascribed by reviewer Mladen Rudman). Directed by Bong Joon Ho. 2 hours, 17 minutes. Rated R. In theaters.

Plot summary: A slave finds freedom. A love story. An allegory for the way aliens are treated by the White Man. Religion is idolatry because it’s always channeled by a pontificator who places himself above God or whatever deity a mass of people worship. Take your pick. Basically, it’s about a small-time con artist who signs up to be an “expendable,” somebody who can be cloned through 3-D printing, aboard a ship headed to the planet Niflheim. Through his deaths and rebirths he grows into something more than an expendable, as do some of the people around him.

Mladen’s take

“Mickey 17” should’ve been titled “Mickey Mouse 17,” as in something seriously malfunctioned during the planning or production of this film. I say that with a broken heart and a mound of disappointment because I adore all the other works of cinema directed by Bong Joon Ho. “The Host (2006),” my first dose of Bong, is masterful sci-fi horror tinged with political satire. “Snowpiercer (2013)” is a joyously brutal, no-holds-barred interpretation of social class warfare. “Okja (2017)” is a whimsical and realistic take on mankind’s manipulation of nature and treatment of livestock. And, yes, “Parasite (2019),” which earned the Oscar for Best Motion Picture of Year.

“Mickey 17” is a good film but, I suspect, to most people it won’t seem to be. Keep in mind that I liked the film because I have a very low bar for what qualifies as good.  “Mickey 17” provoked thought and my thought was, “Why didn’t I like this film when I should have?”

The movie has all the features that I want from worthwhile cinema: Commentary on the human condition, including how easy it is for us to disregard suffering. It shows the gullibility of the masses to superstitions such as God and eternal salvation that are fired by hatred for those who are unlike us and, in this case, that includes a smart and kind alien species resembling roly-polies. The film is rife with examples of what happens when a charismatic’s horrifying decisions and actions go unchecked. Still, overall, the movie stank.

I offer this advice for watching “Mickey 17.” Make no effort to look for a master plot that links the film’s many subplots. But, if you must have coherence, think of the movie as a redemption arc for Mickey. He goes from voluntarily serving as a throwaway, literally, human being to a person whose life matters. Pay attention to the all-to-brief discussion toward the middle of the movie about “multiples.” There are other neat components in the film exploring phenomena such as 3D printing, the variability of personality even if the person is other than naturally produced, and what makes a tasty sauce for your steak. Also, Pattinson is effective portraying Mickey as Forest Gump-like and John Wick-y-ish. Ackie is very good as Mickey’s protector and a smart, big-hearted cop who cares deeply for good people be they humans or pillbug aliens. Ruffalo is good as a prosperity church preacher and Collette as the brains behind the Niflheim colonization.

For some reason, the studio, producers, or other reviewers of “Mickey 17” have labeled the film sci-fi comedy. It’s not. Yes, there are some funny parts in the movie but its murky thrust is deadly serious. The problems we now face in this age of internet squalor and mass media propaganda, mind-boggling disparities between the wealthy and middle class and poor, soulless leadership, a gullible citizenry, and willingness to drop bombs is, more or less, factored in “Mickey 17.” So is the solution. Loyalty to each other is important but that loyalty must be smart, sincere, and reversible in case what you’re loyal to ends up the source of widespread misery, if not genocide.

Huh, looks like critiquing “Mickey 17” has helped me make better sense of the movie. I urge caution, anyway. If you see “Mickey 17,” you’ll take away this or that lesson. But, to me anyway, this is a film that requires more than one viewing to comprehend its intention and sweep. “Mickey 17” treats several interesting ideas like they are drive-by-shootings, deeds that had to be done without the risk of getting caught by staying in one place too long.

“Mickey 17” has very good sound effects – plenty of explosions and an alien language that covers the spectrum from shrill howling to nearly infrasound thrumming. Visual effects are good, too. I didn’t pay much attention to the score, maybe because a lot of that attention was applied toward understanding the movie.

“Mickey 17” is either an A or an F. Can’t decide. So, for the sake of Movie Face-Off consistency and to flank Del’s punctilious need for order, I’ll split the difference to give the film a B-/C+.

Let us know what you think.

Del’s take

“Punctilious need for order”? Grrrrrrr.

YOU, sir, are the product of a “punctilious need for order,” from the protons, neutrons and electrons of your physical self to the axons and dendrites of your brain – few they may be – and the glottals and dipthongs of your often incoherent speech. Were it not for a “punctilious need for order” you would be nothing more than an amorphous blob of undifferentiated protoplasm.

In other words, Donald Trump.

But I digress. The subject here is “Mickey 17.” What I hear you trying to say is what I’ve been thinking the past day and a half: I wanted to like “Mickey 17,” I wanted to feel as passionately supportive of “Mickey 17” as I did “Parasite.” I recognize the genius of Bong Joon Ho and “Mickey 17” is a solid piece of moviemaking. But I just didn’t get into it and I’m not sure why.

I didn’t feel a visceral connection with this film. I want to say it’s lacking the manic, absurdist energy of “Parasite,” or that perhaps Bong is trying to do too much with the film, diluting its vision. Maybe I’m overthinking the whole thing.

You said the movie wasn’t funny – it tried to be funny but somehow kept missing the mark. The humor was off by about a single octave and I struggled to laugh at scenes that were obviously intended to be laughed at. You said the movie was commentary about the human condition and it was most definitely that, though not quite so on-the-nose as “Snowpiercer” or “Parasite.” Let’s talk about that for a moment.

The movie is yet another Bong denunciation of class stratifications with the 3-D printed Mickey serving as a metaphor for throwaway people. Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette, who play Kenneth and Ylfa Marshall, leaders of the expedition to the planet Niflheim  (Get it? Marshall, i.e., the law-bringer and enforcer … oh, and Niflheim is the hell of Norse mythology), represent the highest caste, followed by a pantheon of lesser gods. Mladen’s roly-poly aliens are presented as the “other,” or in Republicanspeak, undocumented aliens.

But I think “Mickey 17” is about more than just class warfare. To my age-besotted brain, it’s a carefully calibrated observation about the corruptibility of man.

Mickey Barnes agrees to serve as an “expendable” aboard a spaceship traveling to the planet Niflheim. An expendable is somebody whose body and mind are mapped and kept on file. Should they die, a new version is printed and voila, dead guy is reborn. Crewmembers eagerly assign all the dangerous jobs to Mickey because they know he can always be reprinted. He’s like a cheap TV from a big box store – if it breaks, so what? Throw it away and buy a new one.

Mickey, in effect, becomes a commodity. There’s lots of talk in the movie about commodities and the value of things, from Mickey himself to Ylfa Marshall’s weird obsession with sauces. It seems everything in life has been commoditized, which is odd when you consider the exact same conversation is taking place in America right now, from our strange obsession with the price of eggs to strip-mining our national parks and invading Greenland. If empathy is removed from the life equation, all you’re left with are cold numbers. Life becomes purely transactional. Mickey’s disposability has indeed transformed him into something like a cheap TV.

But something happened during Mickey’s reprinting. Somebody tripped over a cable and Mickey was momentarily deprived of his “ink” supply. The Mickey that emerged was not the Mickey who was originally mapped but a newer, more innocent, almost child-like Mickey who becomes an easy mark for the people around him. As Mickey “dies” and is reborn through his 17 iterations he slowly accumulates experience until, on his 18^th printing (the age that people are considered grown up), Mickey is bestowed with the cynicism and corruption that characterizes the rest of us. Luckily, Mickey 17 is still around to preserve what’s good about mankind.

Or maybe that interpretation is horseshit. I don’t know. If it isn’t, I don’t think Bong anticipated life would imitate art so soon.

Robert Pattinson is a good actor who does a solid job representing Mickey in his various iterations. Steven Yeun of “The Walking Dead” fame is also effective as Mickey’s careless and uncaring business partner and “friend,” Timo. The actor who stole the show for me was Mark Ruffalo’s Kenneth Marshall, a half-baked con artist falling somewhere between Trump and Jim Bakker of PTL Club infamy. He was wonderfully bumbling.

Overall I’d say “Mickey17” isn’t as thematically coherent as his previous efforts, or if it is, it’s a lot more subtle. Bottom line? I couldn’t develop an emotional bond with the film. It’s a good movie, well worth a trip to the theater, but if you’re expecting the intensity of “Snowpiercer” and the quiet yet biting drama of “Parasite,” you may be disappointed.

People keep asking Mickey what it feels like to die. How can he answer, when he hasn’t really lived?

I’m giving “Mickey 17” a grade of B. And that’s my punctilious need for a closer.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

Image by Netflix

“Squid Game” Season 2. Starring Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun, Lee Byung-hun as Hwayng In-ho, Park Gyu-young as Kang No-eul, and others. Directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk. Seven episodes, 33-76 minutes long per episode. Rated TV-MA. Streaming on Netflix.

Del’s take

Dystopian and violent, “Squid Game 2” can be seen as an intense metaphor for the rigged democracy and corrupted capitalism running amok in America today.

The original “Squid Game” Netflix series burst upon the scene in September 2021 and became an instant sensation with its dark theme of oppressed people battling each other and a faceless authority in contests where the odds were stacked against them.

In “Squid Game” deadbeats, drug addicts and gamblers whose luck has run out compete for a $31 million cash prize. What they don’t know going in is that the losers die and have their organs harvested. It’s like “The Running Man” without a quippy Richard Dawson to keep things moving along.

Lee Jung-jae reprises his role as the soulful Seong Gi-hun, who in Season 1 needed money to pay off his gambling debts and finance his mother’s medical treatments. He re-enters the game in Season 2 to bring down the organizers from within and expose the lethal abuse of contestants.

As in Season 1 the games are diabolically cruel, and it is here where “Squid Game,” as a vehicle for social commentary, takes on its shine. Games are packaged in the shiny colors and simple language of a children’s game, but nothing about “Red Light. Green Light” and “Tug-of-War” is child-like. If you don’t stop when the giant robot girl turns and opens its eyes, you die.

Meanwhile, contestants feud among themselves, trying to decide if they should continue the games or escape with their lives. That’s where Season 2 departs from the first season formula – participants vote after each game to play or go – as a group. In this outing one faction wants to continue playing, even if it costs them their lives, for the chance of winning a larger sum of money. The other wants to cut their losses and leave Squid Game island. It’s hard to ignore the parallels between that and the MAGA vs. Sane People rancor permeating American politics right now.

This season’s cast of characters includes a mother who joined to pay off her son’s gambling debts, a rapper who lost his fortune in cryptocurrency and a trans woman who needs the cash to complete her transition. Each has a story to tell and to be honest, they sound pityingly similar to the people being harmed by the current administration’s rampage through federal government services.

 “Squid Game” is a dark and furious condemnation of authority and oppression, with notes of human greed and towering hubris thrown into the mix. But Season 2 departs from the script of the first season by offering a moment of hope. What will Season 3 bring? We’ll find out later this year.

Season 2 of “Squid Game” rates a grade of A.

Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

“Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver” Starring Sofia Boutella as flabbergasting Kora; Djimon Hounsou as uninspiring Titus; Bae Doona as almost likeable Nemesis; Michiel Huisman as meek Gunnar; Staz Nair as the soppy prince Tarak, Ed Skrein as the only-good-enough-character-in-the-film Atticus Noble; and others. Directed by Zack Snyder. Two hours, 2 minutes. Rated PG-13. Streaming on Netflix.

Plot summary: More of mediocre and trope-filled “Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire” but 17 minutes longer. Rednecks fight an evil empire that can’t feed the soldiers it sallies to subdue rednecks.  

Mladen’s grade: C+

Dels grade: D

Mladen’s take

This is an unauthorized review. That means it wasn’t approved by Del. He wanted me to review (and, someday, I will) a movie titled “This Is Not a Test.” Sheesh, Del, are you still afflicted by your memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Is that why I’m supposed the review “This Is Not a Test?” Because it’s a nuclear warhead Armageddon film and you’re worried that the Small Man in Moscow will trigger World War III via Ukraine that plunges all of us into Hobbes’s state of nature.

Anyway, let’s talk “Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver” recently launched on Netflix. Two is no better than One, which is to say all the principal characters, barring one, are bland at best and unlikeable at worst. Don’t care about Kora’s faux internal conflict. Don’t care about Titus’s guilt. Don’t care that Tarak is a nepo baby trying to redeem himself. Just. Don’t. Care. That’s a problem because Rebel Moon offers nothing by way of an original story or grand ideas.

Ready for some alien invasion action? Check out Mladen’s and Del’s review of “The Tomorrow War.”

 If there’s nothing pathbreaking in a film, the only factor that can save it is a good script. Neither Rebel Moons have good scripts. Two is packed with the banal such as near-immortality to keep the bad guy going, i.e., resurrecting someone from the half-cell that was saved after they’ve been incinerated, blasted apart, depressurized, I don’t know, take your pick of demises. Other banalities abound, too. Stuff like peasants fighting to keep their simple lives, peasants organizing an effective armed resistance against the system’s behemoth power, Motherworld, with two days of combat training, and peasants harvesting a massive wheat fields in three days using scythes so that they have two days to get military training before the Man arrives with a dreadnought the size of a city and thousands of troops. And, how the hell is the Rebel Moon able to produce an atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere that sustains carbon-based life when, on the horizon, is a gas giant that should be either emitting extreme magnetic radiation from its core that sterilizes everything on the moon, or locks the moon tidally so that all you get is extreme heat without darkness on one half and extreme cold without light on the other.

The secret to enjoying Two for what it is, a second-rate “Star Wars” or “Starship Troopers,” is to pay attention to the film’s few merits.

There’s the sublime evilness of Atticus Noble, the soulless admiral in charge of the Motherland force trying to sack Rebel Moon and capture Kora, who has an alias that, when revealed, surprises or shocks no one in the village. Noble is fit. Noble has a good vocabulary. Noble, who is the opposite of the meaning of his surname, keeps his uniform tidy and his composure intact as he whacks peasants and beats the crap out of Kora. Hated to see him die.

Also noteworthy is the film’s score. The music is particularly effective during Two’s last 50 minutes. In fact, just skip to the last 50 minutes of the film to immerse yourself in the spectacular visual effects. The battle scenes are terrific. Watching automatic plasma fire in slow motion fracturing and melting structures again and again never became boring. The sound is top tier, too. Everything from the zip-bang of rifles to the blast of the big gun on the dreadnought enhanced the VFX.

If you watched One, you may as well watch Two. And, yes, prepare yourself to watch Three, which is on the way. Three promises to be the all-or-nothing showdown between the Dark Side of the For … ah, between the Saviors of the Peasants and the top Motherworld Bad Guy, whose name sounds like it was ripped off from the name of a genus of dinosaur.

Del’s take

After watching “Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver,” I’d like to ask, who’s the more scarred – the movie’s viewpoint character or ME, after Mladen dragged my sorry ass back into that steaming pile of wookie poop. I’ll say this about Part Two – it earned an even lower score than Part One’s dreadful Rotten Tomatoes rating of 23, clocking in at a mere 15 percent. That’s almost as shitty as Truth Social’s stock price.

Check out Del’s review of “Avatar: The Way of the Water.”

Mladen and I reviewed Part One last December and what can I say? Part Two is just as awful. OK, let me back up. It’s maybe a smidge less awful because the audience isn’t forced to suffer through the painful backstory infodump that took place in Part One. See? There is a God.

Here’s what I wrote in my review of Part One. These observations remain painfully true of Part Two:

“Rebel Moon” is Star Wars Lite, if such a thing is possible. When I saw director Snyder’s remake of “Dawn of the Dead” I told myself, “Now here’s a guy who knows how to make a movie.” Unfortunately, Snyder is a guy who knows how to make one movie. “Rebel Moon” looks just like “Sucker Punch,” “300” and “Watchmen,” and despite the lofty ambitions, it’s surprisingly bereft of depth.

Let’s not even talk about things like tropes or archetypes – “Rebel Moon” is a bad copy of a bad copy, like that photocopy of the mysterious night shift worker’s ass that turned up on the Xerox machine one morning and now everybody’s passing it around the office.

Dialogue is, well, corny. And not just corny corny, but fanboy at the science fiction convention Dungeons & Dragons icebreaker corny. Characterization is practically non-existent – you’ve seen these people in dozens of movies over the years, starting with Akira Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai,” the same place Snyder got the plot. It would have been hilarious if he’d ripped off J.J. Abrams. Alas, the universe doesn’t have that ironic a sense of humor. FX are not great, either. I should think $166 million would buy you a more realistic-looking spaceship or future city.

It’s all a gussied-up, overhyped pile of same-old, same-old, and I’ll be honest – it actually offends me. The science fiction genre – at least the printed-on-paper part of the genre – has thousands of really terrific stories waiting to be told. Why waste $166 million on this retread?

Are you getting the idea I really hated this movie?

I did embrace one aspect of the Rebel Moon universe – I bought two bags of Rebel Moon popcorn, but only because Walmart had them marked down to $2 apiece. And let me say, even the popcorn was crappy – chewy and stale, with lots of tooth-breaking unpopped kernels. If you want a really good bag of movie-style popcorn I recommend the AMC brand. It’s awesome. Just be sure to heat it up in the microwave for 30 seconds.

As Mladen, in a rare moment of cognitive awareness, pointed out, there actually may be a Rebel Moon Part 3. I’m telling you right now if he tries to make me watch that crap I’ll retaliate with lots of gay romance movies and a doc about the continuing evolution of the band Duran Duran. By the way, did you know they got that name from an old Jane Fonda movie, “Barbarella”? Yeah. I saw “Barbarella” at a drive-in in the early ’70s. Drunk, of course, because that’s the only way you can sit through a showing of “Barbarella.”

I give Part Two a D. It’s a goulash of clichés and horrible dialogue, and I’m angry Hollywood thinks I’m stupid enough to want that.

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Starring Sofia Boutella as Kora, Michiel Huisman as Gunnar, Bae Doona as Nemesis, Charlie Hunnam as Kai, Ed Skrein as Atticus Noble and others. Directed by Zack Snyder. Two hours, 13 minutes. Rated PG-13. Streaming on Netflix.

Plot summary: A quiet agrarian village on a fertile moon in a galaxy far, far away is forced to provide a Motherworld dreadnaught grain that it can’t spare. One of the villagers, the first to recognize the threat and the only one with balls though a female, scours the system for a motley crew of warriors who’ll fight the dreadnaught and its vicious commander to protect the hamlet. Part One collects the heroes who’ll resist the evil admiral and his tyrant boss.

Are there spoilers in this review: Not really.

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Mladen’s take

What can I say about “Rebel Moon” other than it’s an OK film. I didn’t even bother watching it using my home theater.

I thought “Rebel Moon” was rated R. It wasn’t, so the violence is tame, albeit flashy, and there’s almost no cussing. No nudity, either. Shit, the film lacks grit.

The characters aren’t all that charismatic, either. Our heroine is anguished because of who she was and what she did way back when. Her train of misfits are characters we’ve all seen in the past, including the prototypical Asian as ninja.

In short, “Rebel Moon” speeds through character development so that all we’re left with are outlines of personas. There’s the displaced prince, a spiritually wounded mother, a drunken former general, and an insurrectionist who had gone soft returning to the fight against un‑motherly Motherworld.

I’m also tired of hearing the same old voices as droids. In this case, it’s Anthony Hopkins as the latent military bot J-whatever. I listen to the bot talk and all I’m thinking is that’s the king of Asgard.

Because Del is an every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining kinda guy, I’ll honor his frail tendency to try to balance good and bad by noting a couple of the film’s bright spots.

“Rebel Moon” production value is top notch. The film offers very good world building. The CGI is clean, as clean as the meld of real and fake in last year’s “The Creator.” The real people in the movie look like they are a part of the planet, moon, spaceship, city, or field they find themselves in. The creatures depicted in the movie are stylish and one smacks of Greek mythology. The other prominent critter is, oh, “Lord of the Rings-y” and good enough.

I concede that there was a scene or two that absorbed me. I was eager to see how they’d end. Unfortunately, the movie would then return to its mostly uninteresting plot. Dang, sorry about that Del. I inserted a bit of negativity into my silver lining section.

“Rebel Moon” just isn’t that good. And, it just isn’t that bad.

You want to see a very good space opera? Give Star Wars “Rogue One” a spin. Clearly, it was the inspiration, if not outright template, for “Rebel Moon.” Also better alternatives to “Rebel Moon” are “Serenity,” the 2009 “Star Trek” movie, and the new “Dune.”  

Will I see “Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver?” Sure. Do I care that I must wait until the movie’s April 2024 release? Not one bit. That fact, all by itself, demonstrates my enthusiasm for the “Rebel Moon” storyline.    

Del’s take

Mladen, there’s no need to be positive on my behalf. “Rebel Moon” was awful. And to think: They spent $166 million making that crap? One hundred and sixty-six million would just about cover my homeowner’s insurance and property taxes here in the “free state of Florida.”

Give me a break.

“Rebel Moon” is Star Wars Lite, if such a thing is possible. When I saw director Snyder’s remake of “Dawn of the Dead” I told myself, “Now here’s a guy who knows how to make a movie.” Unfortunately, Snyder is a guy who knows how to make one movie. “Rebel Moon” looks just like “Sucker Punch,” “300” and “Watchmen,” and despite the lofty ambitions, it’s surprisingly bereft of depth.

Let’s not even talk about things like tropes or archetypes – “Rebel Moon” is a bad copy of a bad copy, like that photocopy of the mysterious night shift worker’s ass that turned up on the Xerox machine one morning and now everybody’s passing it around the office.

Dialogue is, well, corny. And not just corny corny, but fanboy at the science fiction convention Dungeons & Dragons icebreaker corny. Characterization is practically non-existent – you’ve seen these people in dozens of movies over the years, starting with Akira Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai,” the same place Snyder got the plot. It would have been hilarious if he’d ripped off J.J. Abrams. Alas, the universe doesn’t have that ironic a sense of humor. FX are not great, either. I should think $166 million would buy you a more realistic-looking spaceship or future city.

It’s all a gussied-up, overhyped pile of same-old, same-old, and I’ll be honest – it actually offends me. The science fiction genre – at least the printed-on-paper part of the genre – has thousands of really terrific stories waiting to be told. Why waste $166 million on this retread?

Part 2 is coming and I could care less. I know how it’s going to end. I’ve already seen it. I don’t need to waste my time watching part 2 of a movie that scored 23 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Mladen’s grade: C (C- if, for a moment, the sci-fi tropes irritate me)

Del’s grade: D

Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.