Wednesday, March 20, 2013

#Continuum issues and Time -the sequel




Once Alec and Kiera learn to trust each other, and Alec tells her to stop talking to the air and pretend to use her phone when they communicate with each other when around other people, she just grabs her phone, yet it never rings. But when she does use it as a proper phone, it rings. Why Carlos or no one else realizes this is beyond me. A good investigator would notice this.

I’m confident that logically, Kiera and none of the others can ever return to 2077. To do so would create a paradox. This Kiera will never know if she changed her personal timeline and will need to trust the future version of herself (which based on actress Rachel Nichols real-life age during production in 2012, Kiera will be born in 2045) that everything will unwind as it should –again, basing it on a Causality loop and the many-worlds theory, she will be live in an alternate 2077. Some events will happen, but they will unwind differently –she could still be a Protector, but not married. Or she could be married and still have her son (or not).  But to allow her to return to 2077 is, beyond being a paradox, a cheat from the creators who want a happy ending. It may disappoint the audience, but it makes logical sense (as logical as it can be when dealing with the magic that is time travel). 

The episode “The Politics of Time” was, perhaps, the weakest episode of the ten; a complete misfire dealing with Carlos being accused of murder. This is where I feel the show depends too much on the old Coincidence and Convenience factor, which interferes with the arc. As matter of fact, the Liber8 arc gets shelved (until the ending) as the episode is a pure procedural whodunit that makes it obvious who the killer in nearly from the start. The problem is it makes little sense. Carlos lies to Kiera and his boss, along with other colleagues. Yet by the end, all is forgiven; no mention of a suspension (which should have happened), no word about a warning in his permanent personal file. Just reinforces the notion that cops are above the law.

I’m still confused on the purpose of Matthew Kellog. His story arc, while somewhat clear, adds nothing to the main arc and at times proved confusing. Yes, he serves a purpose for Kiera, but that’s more of the Coincidence and Convenience I keep harping on about. 

I’m curious if originally the character of Betty Robertson –played by Jennifer Spence- was to be antagonistic to Kiera because Carlos trusts her too quickly, making Betty the old cliché that she loves Carlos, who only sees her as a co-worker. In early episodes, Betty seemed very leery of Kiera, but as the season progressed, it seemed to have been dropped.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Time travel and 'Continuum'




For a series that uses time travel as part of its premise, Canadian import Continuum (which wrapped its first season on the infantile “SyFy” Channel) seems to shy away from explaining how time travel works. 

Continuum opens in 2077. It is a dystopian one in which constitutional-democracy and other world governments have collapsed. A new system of corporatocracy and corporate republics now dominate the planet, instituting a high-surveillance, technically advanced police state and removing certain social freedoms, specifically criticism against the "Corporate Congress". The oligarchic society seems relatively free, with a working class that enjoys a high standard of living in contrast with scenes of severe persecution upon a downtrodden people who cannot afford food. 

As typical with this premise, there exist “freedom fighters” who want to bring down the regime. The one interesting aspect of this movement is that they do horrible things in pursuant of their goals –they’ve allowed thousands of people to die to point out the age old axiom that needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Are they terrorist or are they something else?

But some get caught, and one group –called the Liber8- are about to be executed for their crimes when –somehow- they are transported in time, from 2077 to 2012 Vancouver. Caught up in the wave is future cop, called a Protector, Kiera Cameron as well as man named Jason (who we meet in the season finale episode, and says he was in the control room during the time displacement, but ended up in 1992 instead of 2012. Much like what happened to Captain Braxton in the Star Trek: Voyager episode Future's End). 

Now trapped in past, Kiera must try to stop the Liber8 from changing the future. But all is not lost, for she has a guardian angel in the name of a teenager named Alec Sadler. From his family ranch in the wilds of Vancouver, Alec is a young tech genius who has –and more importantly, will- create the technology that everyone uses in 2077. By gaining trust, both set out to stop Liber8. Also, through some quick thinking, Kiera ends up working with the Vancouver police department and gets a partner in the name of Carlos Fonnegra –who has no idea who she really is, but seems unable to question how she gets the information (some made-up government organization known as Section 6) she does. 

I actually like the show, despite the fact that it spends most of the week’s ignoring the implications of time travel (theoretical science has been trying to figure the mechanics of it, despite the fact that Einstein’s classic E=MC² dictates that time travel is not possible).  And in a lot of ways, Continuum is not a science fiction show. I mean, its initial premise is science fiction, but for the ten episodes first season, it sort of shelved that, as it took up the mantle of being a police procedural and, at times, nearly crossed the line into Castle territory. In between the pilot and the season ender we are given the arc of Liber8 movement as they try and “prevent” the movement where Big Corporations are bringing down the world governments. Its ideas are not that farfetched though; witness the whole Occupy movement of 2011. But while the allegory and metaphors work, like many shows the episodes end up living at the corner of Coincidence and Convenience. And there are times that threads are dropped, as you can tell the writers boxed themselves in when they realized those allegory’s were getting a bit complex for a series that is not necessarily designed to engage in deep debates about what makes some a terrorist versus a “freedom fighter.” And on that rare time it was given some voice, they never went far enough. 

But getting back to the whole time travel aspect; for some odd reason, I’m curious about how they approach it.

Alec does discuss the possibility that Kiera, the Liber8 and even himself can be caught in a time loop. But the implications of that is that nothing can change, that Kiera and everyone else that traveled back in time from 2077 were “destined” to come back but never change the outcome that sent them back in the first place. And that they’ll continue to repeat history again and again. But to me, this would be a cheat if the series continues for a while (the series second season debuts in April in Canada, and Syfy has yet to set an official return) so it needs a better time travel theory so the Kiera and the audience can root for her to change her future.

That brings up the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics, which implies there are an infinite number of universes; all the possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual world, so to speak. While many theoretical scientists still believe time is a single unfolding line, the many-worlds formulation dictates that time branches off like a tree limb into an infinite number of alternate or parallel worlds. The one problem with this ideal means that everyone who traveled back from 2077 to 2012 are actually arrived in a parallel universe of 2012 and not the one they remember from the history books in 2077 –because while the same events happen, they unwind differently. So this negates the single unfolding time theory, because if Kiera changes her own future, she would not need to be in 2012 to change her own future. Right? Aslo, the many-worlds theory also creates another problem, which is because 2077 group traveled to an alternate 2012, when (and if) they can return to “their” 2077, how do they figure that out (of course on Star Trek, each universe had a “quantum signature” so they could tell “one” alternate dimension from the next).

So where do we stand? 

I’m guessing that what we have here is a Causality loop of some kind, the time loop’s crazier brother. Causality loop is where events keep repeating themselves over and over again and no one has knowledge of how many times they have repeated the same event or how long they have been stuck in the loop. But it could be possible Kiera and the Liber8 have been doing the same thing again and again. The one variable with in a Causality loop is an outside factor can disrupts the loop. That outside factor could be Alec himself. This current loop Kiera is on could be the first time she encountered Alec, thus creating a different variable –that she could now change her future.

But in the end, if she breaks the Causality time loop does she still change her future? That, my friends, is something she’ll probably never know because she has to stay in this time or she creates a paradox. Which loops us back to the beginning.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Raimi's 'Oz' scores with audience, but reviews proved mixed from critics & viewers




Despite Oz: The Great and Powerful pulling in a record breaking March box office of $80.2 million, the reviews for the prequel to the 1939 classic have been decidedly mixed. The film currently holds 60% favorability on Rotten Tomatoes (though it has an 82% audience rating), making it –perhaps- a worthy see, but that’s only 8% better than Bryan Singer’s Jack the Giant Slayer, which has taken in only $27 million in two-weeks of release based on a $200 million budget. While Oz cost roughly the same (though rumors suggest the film’s budget ballooned to $215 million) its reviews are bound connect with the viewing audience eventually, which should effectively drop the box-office totals next week by at least 60%. It should, though, coast for a win then, as nothing huge is scheduled to open. 

The general consensus was that both James Franco and Mila Kunis were out of their depth for this type of film; both are good actors, but they’re not strong ones. And if you’re making a prequel to a 74 year-old classic, you better have a strong story (which was another complaint about the film) to match the near perfectness of The Wizard of Oz. “Oz the Great and Powerful is entirely serviceable family entertainment. Problem is, serviceable doesn’t quite cut it when you’re talking about the magical land of Oz” said Randy Myers of the San Jose Mercury News. Instead, we’re given a weak story, miscast leads and –as someone else pointed out –Zach Braff of Scrubs channeling Nathan Lane in the worst ways as the voice of Finely.

The other aspect that may have surprised viewers was the fact that the movie can only pay homage to the original film because of Warner Bros holding the rights to all the imagery in the Judy Garland version. And while Disney’s 1985 attempt –Return to Oz- tried to be faithful to the novels and not the film, it withered on the vine by critics and fans who felt it was too dark for children. Canadian film critic Jay Scott felt the protagonists were too creepy for viewers to sympathize with: “Dorothy’s friends are as weird as her enemies, which is faithful to the original Oz books but turns out not to be a virtue on film, where the eerie has a tendency to remain eerie no matter how often we’re told it’s not.”

“It’s bleak, creepy, and occasionally terrifying,” added Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader added. 

So what we get is a visually spectacular film, using all the wizardry created by the VFX artists who spent hundreds of hours toiling over it, but its film that stands thematically and visually apart from The Wizard of Oz. A movie empty of substance, sold to an audience who are easily distracted by colorful computer generated light. And besides, it took 74 years to do this prequel, and I don’t think anyone ever thought –or even cared- in those seven decades it was necessary to find out how Oz ended up with their wizard. 

'Star Wars: The Clone Wars' ends it run




After George Lucas sold his Star Wars universe to Disney, many projects outside the movie franchise were left open-ended, awaiting the fate of the new masters at the House of Mouse. 

One high profile animated series was Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which was produced for The Cartoon Network. The series was in production of its fifth season when the sale went through, and many fans have speculated what would happen to it after it ended its run this March.

Now we’ve got confirmation that the Clone Wars series will not return for a sixth season. Also, another animated series announced before the sale, a comedy created by Robot Chicken actor Seth Green called Star Wars: Detours will never get off the ground.

Despite the end of the always creative Star Wars: Clone Wars series, some story arcs, however, are being developed and will be available elsewhere as bonus material. The official press release is below:
 

    As we enter into an exciting new era focused on the next Star Wars trilogy, Lucasfilm has decided to pursue a new direction in animated programming. We are exploring a whole new Star Wars series set in a time period previously untouched in Star Wars films or television programming. You can expect more details in the months to come.
As part of this shift, we have also made some key decisions affecting Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Detours.
After five highly successful and critically acclaimed seasons of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, we feel the time has come to wind down the series. While the studio is no longer producing new episodes for Cartoon Network, we’re continuing production on new Clone Wars story arcs that promise to be some of the most thrilling adventures ever seen. Stay tuned for more information on where fans can soon find this bonus content. In the video below, Supervising Director Dave Filoni offers a peek of what is to come in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
At Star Wars Celebration VI last year, George Lucas gave fans a glimpse at the animated comedy series Star Wars Detours from Seth Green, Matthew Senreich, and Todd Grimes. Detours was conceived and produced before we decided to move forward with the new Star Wars trilogy, and in the wake of that decision, Lucasfilm has reconsidered whether launching an animated comedy prior to the launch of Episode VII makes sense. As a result, we’ve decided to postpone the release of Detours until a later date.

We are incredibly proud of the teams at Lucasfilm Animation for creating some of the most amazing animation ever produced for TV. Keep checking StarWars.com for new developments on these and future projects.