Synchronicity: Primer meets Predestination

There's something about the end of the year that gets me especially in the mood for time travel.  Fortunately Netflix came along to feed that urge.

I'd say Synchronicity, on iTunes since January 2016 and then Netflix - i.e., for almost two years, so how did I miss it? maybe I was in a parallel universe? - has elements of two classic time travel movies, Primer and Predestination (well, I'm not sure Predestination is yet a classic, but it's based on a stone classic of a science fiction story, Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies," which makes it based on his earlier "By His Bootstraps," too).  Synchronicity starts out and for a bit and here and there captures that college-kids-build-a-time-machine ambience of Primer, but goes on to pretty decently and with sufficient tension and intellectual complexity get that time-traveler-chasing-his-own-tail story of Predestination.   And just for good measure, there's also something of the time-traveler-chasing-his-own-tale, too.  Really.  (I also have to mention that there's a little tale called Synchronicity which I know well because I wrote it - Buzzymag published in 2014 - but it has nothing to do with time travel.)

Now one of the things about chasing your own tail/tale through time - even just accidentally running into yourself - is you have to be careful when telling the story (making the movie) to sooner or later account for everything the time-traveler encounters in the early and middle parts of the story.  Jacob Gentry (who directed, and also co-wrote this with Alex Orr) did an excellent job of this.  There's a good romantic element, and a bad guy played by Michael Ironside, whom you can't go wrong with in these kinds of stories.

One thing I wasn't wild about was the meme that meeting yourself in the past or the future is bad for your health and even worse.  Obviously, that could and should cause what could be severe psychological trauma, as new memories suddenly start pouring into your later version's head.  But the idea that such meetings are physically destructive is a trope that the 12 Monkeys TV series as well as Synchronicity the movie use as a given, without much real explanation.

All in all, though, I enjoyed Synchronicity, and give it credit for presenting time travel seriously and entertainingly.  Give it a shot if you're a time traveler in fiction like me.

 

It started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...



 

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The Man in the High Castle on Amazon: Outstanding

Note: This review is just of the pilot (first episode); for a review of the complete 10-part series, see here; for further analysis, with spoilers, see here.

2015 is quickly shaping as a year of superb science fiction on screen - Predestination (the movie of "All You Zombies"), 12 Monkeys the TV series on the SyFy Channel, and now The Man in High Castle TV series - from the Philip K. Dick alternate history masterpiece - on Amazon.   I just saw the first episode and it is outstanding.

The story is that the US lost the Second World War to Nazi Germany and Japan, who split the US down the middle, with a small neutral zone between them.   The year is 1962, and the man in the high castle is part of the resistance, distributing movies on reels which show the United States and its allies not Germany and Japan winning World War II.  Whether these films are just propaganda, or reflections of the truer reality (in fact, our reality) that this man in the high castle has access to, remains to be seen - and is a great example of the flickering nature of reality that Dick is so well known for.

The fine touches and subtleties in the pilot are excellent - swastikas and Japanese suns popping on all kinds of public places including Times Square and the Golden Gate Bridge.   The tension between the Japanese and the Nazis is also well taken and well played.   The Nazis always considered the Japanese inferior, and its alliance with Japan was one of convenience.   On the Japanese side, although they're far from angels, their reign is not quite as brutal as the Nazis in the US East.   We see African Americans and all kinds of people in the West that the Nazis would find unacceptable.    In contrast, we get a grizzly scene in which the Nazis are incinerating "cripples".

Hitler is old and likely to soon die.  The Japanese correctly fear that his successor - Himmler or Goebbels or Goering - will drop nuclear bombs on the Japanese in San Francisco.  (In this alternate reality, Germany was most responsible for winning the Second World War because it beat the US in getting the atom bomb, and used it on America.)  This is the backdrop against which the American resistance, whatever it exactly is, most contend.

There's a kick-in-the-gut twist at the end of the pilot episode, which I won't tell you about, in case you don't know the story.  What I will say is that in pacing, storyline, and carefully constructed 1962 alternate history environment, The Man in the High Castle on television looks set to do Dick's novel some memorable justice.  I was quoted earlier this year about 2015 being the year in which streaming moved into really high gear and even dominance as the mode of television presentation.  The Man in the High Castle on Amazon certainly is a strong piece of evidence in favor of that prediction, and that's no alternate history.

Note added February 20, 2015: Delighted with the news that Amazon will be putting up at least one season - The Man in the High Castle could do for alternate history on television what Star Trek did for science fiction on TV in the past century.




What if the Soviet Union had survived into the 21st century
and Eddie and Cruisers were a real band?





more time travel and alternate history



podcast review of Man in the High Castle

12 Monkeys series on SyFy: Paradox Prominent and Excellent

The 12 Monkeys series which just debuted on the SyFy Channel had a lot to live up to, at least in my book.  I've long considered the 1995 movie the best time travel movie ever made, because it respected the paradoxes of time travel so well, which is to say, wove them into an at once thrilling but plausible - by the logic of time travel - story.  Indeed, the only competition to the 12 Monkeys movie arrived just recently - last week, in my viewing - in the form of the movie Predestination, of Heinlein's "All You Zombies," which I reviewed here, saying it, too may be the best time travel movie ever made.  So now I have two favorites - two very different movies and two stories - both brilliant.

A television series is a very different thing from a movie - much longer, obviously, which means much more time to roll out a story, which gives the television series more opportunities but also more potential pitfalls.   So how did the 12 Monkeys series fare, based on the first episode?   Quite well - in fact, I would say it was excellent.

I'm not going to dwell on or even mention the differences between the movie and the series so far, because that's boring.  For example, I'll mention this - the Brad Pitt character in the movie is a woman in the television series.   See, what does that really matter, that Jeffrey Goines has become Jennifer Goines? Of much greater interest to me is how the TV 12 Monkeys tells the story of the attempt to stop a plague by going back in time, to pretty much our present, to stop the plague from ever happening.

The first episode seems well informed of the paradoxes and satisfyingly almost but not completely hobbled by them, which is just the right mix.   Cole the time traveler speaks constantly of avoiding them, because "nature doesn't like its furniture rearranged," and especially abhors the same entity from two different times - whether people or objects - finding itself right next to itself, because of something done by the time traveler. This includes especially the time traveler, which is why Cole can't travel into the past or the future in short jumps, lest he run into himself, and set off who knows what destructive consequences for all concerned.

The fact that no paradox in triggered by Cole's killing of the senior Goines also works well.  In a high dramatic moment, Cole kills Goines, engendering who knows what kind of results, but all worth it if the plague is stopped.   And when nothing happens, this tells Cole and us that Goines wasn't the source of the plague.

So 12 Monkeys the television series is off to a fine start.  The action is fast, the crucial chemistry between Cole and Railly strong, and the twisted, fascinating, dizzying paradoxes of time travel embraced and acted upon.  Unless someone from the future comes back to stop me,  I'll be watching and reviewing every episode.

See also 12 Monkeys 1.2 Your Future, His Past ... 1.3: Paradoxes, Lies, and Near Intersections ... 1.4: "Uneasy Math" ... 12 Monkeys 1.5: The Heart of the Matter ... 12 Monkeys 1.6: Can I Get a Witness? ... 12 Monkeys 1.7: Snowden, the Virus, and the Irresistible ... 12 Monkeys 1.8: Intelligent Vaccine vs. Time Travel



podcast review of Predestination and 12 Monkeys


 three time travel novels: the Sierra Waters trilogy


three time travel stories (with more to come)


The Chronology Protection Case movie 

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Predestination: Treat for the Intellect and the Senses

Just saw Predestination on Google Play.  The movie is based on Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies," in some to many ways the best time travel story ever written. Accordingly, a movie in most to all ways faithful to the original story should be in many ways the best time travel movie ever made.  Predestination was and is.  I enjoyed it just immensely.

Of course, I saw it having already read the story - how else would I be able to say it's in many ways the best time travel story ever written.  I therefore can't quite fathom what it would be like to see the movie without having read the story first - which, to spell it out, means you know the secret that ingeniously weaves its way throughout the entire story.   The last thing I'll say here without getting into that secret - which is to say, the last thing in this review which will be spoiler free - is that possibly the best way to see the movie if you haven't read the story is on Google Play, or some other suitable site that allows you to stop, ponder, and re-wind if necessary.   That, combined with the fact that the movie is largely narrative, with no big action scenes involving armies or mountains, may mean that the best way to see this movie if you haven't read the story is not in the theater.

And that secret, so brilliantly executed in the story as well as the movie, is that all the major characters except one - Mr. Robertson - are the same person.  That includes people who look not at all alike, male and female, baby, child, teenager, and old man.   And the story that ties them together - literally - is not only plotted perfectly, but given to us in just the right details.

My favorite touches in time travel stories are those that are almost casually dropped, having no seeming earthshaking significance at the time, but turn out to be major pointers to what is really going on in retrospect.   Shortly after we meet the character played by Ethan Hawke, whose face is badly burned, we come to see that he looks like Ethan Hawke because of the plastic surgery to repair his face. Not long after the hermaphroditic character played first by Sarah Snook claims her->his manhood, he gets the good news that he's no longer "shooting banks".   This sets up the biggest payoff in the story, in which he (still played by Snook) sleeps with her (younger) self, she gets pregnant with a baby that is her (yes, both her and hers, and, for that matter, also his, making the baby a kind of clone), and eventually she turns out to be the he who becomes Ethan Hawke.   If all of this sounds a little awkward and a lot complicated, it is, but the magic of both the story and the movie makes it mostly mind bogglingly wondrous.

Indeed, the story is so seamless, and seamlessly portrayed, that even Mr. Robertson (a Mr. Smith ala The Matrix kind of character, not in Heinlein's original 1959 story) looks a little to a lot like Ethan Hawke, which only increases our growing awareness that almost everyone is everyone in this time looped masterpiece.   The environments are filled with nice touches, as in the bar scene with the lady's and gent's rooms right next to each other in the background, subtly symbolizing that the lead character - who in the bar is literally talking to himself  (Snook, now a man, with Hawke) - is both a man and a woman at one time or another.    And the scene between Snook the man and slightly younger Snook the woman is also perfectly played:  he falls for her because he's in love with him/herself, the supreme narcissist, and she falls for him because he knows her so well, something everyone wants from someone they've just met.

I have no idea what you'll think of all this if you don't have a taste for time travel.  But as a connoisseur and practitioner of the genre - I wish I could say of the actual activity - I can tell you that if you are similarly inclined, you'll find Predestination a preternatural treat and feast for the intellect and the senses.  

podcast review of Predestination and 12 Monkeys


 three time travel novels: the Sierra Waters trilogy


two time travel stories (with more to come)


The Chronology Protection Case movie

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