I don’t think knowing about science had much to do with the success of Star Trek. You’re probably right about the professional science fiction writers, though. Did they stop using professional sf writers for the third season?
In general, does having professional science fiction writers reliably contribute to the success of movies?
A data point which may not point in any particular direction: I was delighted by Gattaca and The Truman Show—even if I had specific nitpicks with them [1] because they seemed like Golden Age [2] science fiction. When composing this reply, I found that they were both written by Andrew Niccol, and I don’t think a professional science fiction writer could have done better. Gattaca did badly (though it got critical acclaim), The Truman Show did well.
[1] It was actually at least as irresponsible as it was heroic for the main character in Gattaca to sneak into a space project he was medically unfit for.
I don’t think Truman’s fans would have dropped him so easily. And I would rather have seen a movie with Truman’s story compressed into the first 15 minutes, and the main part of the movie being about his learning to live in the larger world.
[2] I think the specific Golden Age quality I was seeing was using stories to explore single clear ideas.
And I would rather have seen a movie with Truman’s story compressed into the first 15 minutes, and the main part of the movie being about his learning to live in the larger world.
I disagree. As I see it, The Truman Show is, at its core, a Gnostic parable similar to The Matrix, but better executed. It follows the protagonist’s journey of discovery, as he begins to get hints about the true nature of reality; namely, that the world he thought of as “real” is, in fact, a prison of illusion. In the end, he is able to break through the illusion, confront its creator, and reject his offer of a comfortable life inside the illusory world, in favor of the much less comfortable yet fully real world outside.
In this parable, the Truman Show dome stands for our current world (which, according to Gnostics, is a corrupt illusion); Christoff stands for the Demiurge; and the real world outside stands for the true world of perfect forms / pure Gnosis / whatever which can only be reached by attaining enlightenment (for lack of a better term). Thus, it makes perfect sense that we don’t get to see Truman’s adventures in the real world—they remain hidden from the viewer, just as the true Gnostic world is hidden from us. In order to overcome the illusion, Truman must led go of some of his most cherished beliefs, and with them discard his limitations.
IMO, the interesting thing about The Truman Show is not Truman’s adventures, but his journey of discovery and self-discovery. Sure, we know that his world is a TV set, but he doesn’t (at first, that is). I think the movie does a very good job of presenting the intellectual and emotional challenges involved in that kind of discovery. Truman isn’t some sort of a cliched uber-hero like Neo; instead, he’s just an ordinary guy. Letting go of his biases, and his attachments to people who were close to him (or so he thought) involves a great personal cost for Truman—which, surprisingly, Jim Carrey is actually able to portray quite well.
Sure, it might be fun to watch Truman run around in the real world, blundering into things and having adventures, but IMO it wouldn’t be as interesting or thought-provoking—even accounting for the fact that Gnosticism is, in fact, not very likely to be true.
As I see it, The Truman Show is, at its core, a Gnostic parable similar to The Matrix, but better executed.
Your essay fails to account for the deep philosophical metaphors of guns, leather, gratuitous exaggerated action and nerds doing kung fu because of their non-comformist magic.
Your essay fails to account for the deep philosophical metaphors of guns, leather, gratuitous exaggerated action and nerds doing kung fu because of their non-comformist magic.
With apologies to Freud, sometimes a leather-clad femme fatale doing kung fu is just a leather-clad femme fatale doing kung fu :-)
With apologies to Freud, sometimes a leather-clad femme fatale doing kung fu is just a leather-clad femme fatale doing kung fu :-)
That’s kind of the point. A leather-clad femme fatale doing kung fu probably isn’t a costar in an ‘inferior execution of a Gnostic parable’. She’s probably a costar in a entertaining nerd targeted action flick.
In general it is a mistake to ascribe motives or purpose (Gnostic parable) to something and judge it according to how well it achieves that purpose (inferior execution) when it could be considered more successful by other plausible purposes.
Another thing the Matrix wouldn’t be a good execution of, if that is what it were, is a vaguely internally coherent counterfactual reality even at the scene level. FFS Trinity, if you pointed a gun at my head and said ‘Dodge This!’ then I’d be able to dodge it without any Agent powers. Yes, this paragraph is a rather loosely related tangent but damn. The ‘batteries’ thing gets a bad rap but I can suspend my disbelief on that if I try. Two second head start on your ‘surprise attack’ to people who can already dodge bullets is inexcusable.
In general it is a mistake to ascribed motives or purpose (Gnostic parable) to something and judge it according to how well it achieves that purpose (inferior execution) when it could be considered more successful by other plausible purposes.
I did not mean to give the impression that I judged The Truman Show or The Matrix solely based on how well they managed to convey the key principles of Gnosticism. I don’t even know if their respective creators intended to convey anything about Gnosticism at all (not that it matters, really).
Still, Gnostic themes (as well Christian ones, obviously) do feature strongly in these movies; more so in The Truman Show than The Matrix. What I find interesting about The Truman Show is not merely the fact that it has some religious theme or other, but the fact that it portrays a person’s intellectual and emotional journey of discovery and self-discovery, and does so (IMO) well. Sure, you could achieve this using some other setting, but the whole Gnostic set up works well because it maximizes Truman’s cognitive dissonance. There’s almost nothing that he can rely on—not his senses, not his friends, and not even his own mind in some cases—and he doesn’t even have any convenient superpowers to fall back on. He isn’t some Chosen One foretold in prophecy, he’s just an ordinary guy. This creates a very real struggle which The Matrix lacks, especially toward the end.
The ‘batteries’ thing gets a bad rap but I can suspend my disbelief on that if I try.
AFAIK, in the original script the AIs were exploiting humans not for energy, but for the computing capacity in their brains. This was changed by the producers because viewers are morons .
This creates a very real struggle which The Matrix lacks, especially toward the end.
This is why I’m so glad the creators realized they had pushed their premise as far as they were capable and quit while they were ahead, never making a sequel.
I don’t even know if their respective creators intended to convey anything about Gnosticism at all (not that it matters, really).
I’m pretty sure that one of the Wachowski brothers talked about the deliberate Gnostic themes of The Matrix in an interview, but as for The Truman Show I have no idea.
The only evidence I have is that it’s so obviously the way the story should be. That’s good enough for me. It does not matter precisely what fallen demiurge corrupted the parable away from its original perfection.
ETA: Just to clarify, I mean that as far as I’m concerned, brains used as computing substrate is the real story, even if it never crossed the Wachowskis’ minds. Just like some people say there was never a sequel (although personally I didn’t have a problem with it).
Is not the alternative plot as faulted as the original plot, insofar as if the brainy computing substrate is used for something other than to run the originial software (humans) there is are no need to actually simulate a matrix?
Not only that, but I’m pretty sure building an interface that’d let you run arbitrary software on a human brain would be at least as hard and resource-intensive as building an artificial brain. We reach the useful limits of this kind of speculation pretty quickly, though; the films aren’t supposed to be hard sci-fi.
An alternative is provided in the novelization and the spin-off short story “Goliath”: the machines use human brains as computer components, to run “sentient programs” (the Agents and various characters in the sequels) and to solve scientific problems. Fans continue to debate the discrepancy, but there is no official explanation.
Two second head start on your ‘surprise attack’ to people who can already dodge bullets is inexcusable.
Inexcusable? :cracks knuckles:
Try to see it from the perspective of the agent. With how close that gun was to his head, and assuming that Trinity was not in fact completely stupid and had the training and hacker-enhanced reflexes to fire as soon as she saw the merest twitch of movement, there was really no realistic scenario where that agent could survive. A human might try to dodge anyway, and die, but for an agent, two seconds spent taunting him was two seconds delay. A miniscule difference in outcome, but still—U(let trinity taunt) > U(try to dodge and die immediately).
Yes, where the meaning of ‘inexcusable’ is not ‘someone can say words attempting to get out of it’ but instead ‘no excuse can be presented that the speaker or, by insinuation, any informed and reasonable person would accept’.
With how close that gun was to his head, and assuming that Trinity was not in fact completely stupid and had the training and hacker-enhanced reflexes to fire as soon as she saw the merest twitch of movement, there was really no realistic scenario where that agent could survive.
No, no realistic scenario. But in the scenario that assumes the particular science fiction question premises that define ‘agent’ in this context all reasonable scenarios result in trinity dead if she attempts that showmanship. The speed and reaction time demonstrated by the agents is such that they dodge, easily. Trinity still operates on human hardware.
I don’t think knowing about science had much to do with the success of Star Trek. You’re probably right about the professional science fiction writers, though. Did they stop using professional sf writers for the third season?
In general, does having professional science fiction writers reliably contribute to the success of movies?
A data point which may not point in any particular direction: I was delighted by Gattaca and The Truman Show—even if I had specific nitpicks with them [1] because they seemed like Golden Age [2] science fiction. When composing this reply, I found that they were both written by Andrew Niccol, and I don’t think a professional science fiction writer could have done better. Gattaca did badly (though it got critical acclaim), The Truman Show did well.
[1] It was actually at least as irresponsible as it was heroic for the main character in Gattaca to sneak into a space project he was medically unfit for.
I don’t think Truman’s fans would have dropped him so easily. And I would rather have seen a movie with Truman’s story compressed into the first 15 minutes, and the main part of the movie being about his learning to live in the larger world.
[2] I think the specific Golden Age quality I was seeing was using stories to explore single clear ideas.
I disagree. As I see it, The Truman Show is, at its core, a Gnostic parable similar to The Matrix, but better executed. It follows the protagonist’s journey of discovery, as he begins to get hints about the true nature of reality; namely, that the world he thought of as “real” is, in fact, a prison of illusion. In the end, he is able to break through the illusion, confront its creator, and reject his offer of a comfortable life inside the illusory world, in favor of the much less comfortable yet fully real world outside.
In this parable, the Truman Show dome stands for our current world (which, according to Gnostics, is a corrupt illusion); Christoff stands for the Demiurge; and the real world outside stands for the true world of perfect forms / pure Gnosis / whatever which can only be reached by attaining enlightenment (for lack of a better term). Thus, it makes perfect sense that we don’t get to see Truman’s adventures in the real world—they remain hidden from the viewer, just as the true Gnostic world is hidden from us. In order to overcome the illusion, Truman must led go of some of his most cherished beliefs, and with them discard his limitations.
IMO, the interesting thing about The Truman Show is not Truman’s adventures, but his journey of discovery and self-discovery. Sure, we know that his world is a TV set, but he doesn’t (at first, that is). I think the movie does a very good job of presenting the intellectual and emotional challenges involved in that kind of discovery. Truman isn’t some sort of a cliched uber-hero like Neo; instead, he’s just an ordinary guy. Letting go of his biases, and his attachments to people who were close to him (or so he thought) involves a great personal cost for Truman—which, surprisingly, Jim Carrey is actually able to portray quite well.
Sure, it might be fun to watch Truman run around in the real world, blundering into things and having adventures, but IMO it wouldn’t be as interesting or thought-provoking—even accounting for the fact that Gnosticism is, in fact, not very likely to be true.
Your essay fails to account for the deep philosophical metaphors of guns, leather, gratuitous exaggerated action and nerds doing kung fu because of their non-comformist magic.
With apologies to Freud, sometimes a leather-clad femme fatale doing kung fu is just a leather-clad femme fatale doing kung fu :-)
That’s kind of the point. A leather-clad femme fatale doing kung fu probably isn’t a costar in an ‘inferior execution of a Gnostic parable’. She’s probably a costar in a entertaining nerd targeted action flick.
In general it is a mistake to ascribe motives or purpose (Gnostic parable) to something and judge it according to how well it achieves that purpose (inferior execution) when it could be considered more successful by other plausible purposes.
Another thing the Matrix wouldn’t be a good execution of, if that is what it were, is a vaguely internally coherent counterfactual reality even at the scene level. FFS Trinity, if you pointed a gun at my head and said ‘Dodge This!’ then I’d be able to dodge it without any Agent powers. Yes, this paragraph is a rather loosely related tangent but damn. The ‘batteries’ thing gets a bad rap but I can suspend my disbelief on that if I try. Two second head start on your ‘surprise attack’ to people who can already dodge bullets is inexcusable.
I did not mean to give the impression that I judged The Truman Show or The Matrix solely based on how well they managed to convey the key principles of Gnosticism. I don’t even know if their respective creators intended to convey anything about Gnosticism at all (not that it matters, really).
Still, Gnostic themes (as well Christian ones, obviously) do feature strongly in these movies; more so in The Truman Show than The Matrix. What I find interesting about The Truman Show is not merely the fact that it has some religious theme or other, but the fact that it portrays a person’s intellectual and emotional journey of discovery and self-discovery, and does so (IMO) well. Sure, you could achieve this using some other setting, but the whole Gnostic set up works well because it maximizes Truman’s cognitive dissonance. There’s almost nothing that he can rely on—not his senses, not his friends, and not even his own mind in some cases—and he doesn’t even have any convenient superpowers to fall back on. He isn’t some Chosen One foretold in prophecy, he’s just an ordinary guy. This creates a very real struggle which The Matrix lacks, especially toward the end.
AFAIK, in the original script the AIs were exploiting humans not for energy, but for the computing capacity in their brains. This was changed by the producers because viewers are morons .
This is why I’m so glad the creators realized they had pushed their premise as far as they were capable and quit while they were ahead, never making a sequel.
I’m pretty sure that one of the Wachowski brothers talked about the deliberate Gnostic themes of The Matrix in an interview, but as for The Truman Show I have no idea.
I have many times heard fans say this. Not once have any produced any evidence. Can you do so?
The only evidence I have is that it’s so obviously the way the story should be. That’s good enough for me. It does not matter precisely what fallen demiurge corrupted the parable away from its original perfection.
ETA: Just to clarify, I mean that as far as I’m concerned, brains used as computing substrate is the real story, even if it never crossed the Wachowskis’ minds. Just like some people say there was never a sequel (although personally I didn’t have a problem with it).
And like any urban legend, that is why this explanation spreads so easily.
Is not the alternative plot as faulted as the original plot, insofar as if the brainy computing substrate is used for something other than to run the originial software (humans) there is are no need to actually simulate a matrix?
Not only that, but I’m pretty sure building an interface that’d let you run arbitrary software on a human brain would be at least as hard and resource-intensive as building an artificial brain. We reach the useful limits of this kind of speculation pretty quickly, though; the films aren’t supposed to be hard sci-fi.
You just need to stipulate that the brain can’t stay healthy enough to do that without running a person.
But I’m not much interested in retconning a parable into hard science.
According to IMDB,
So, I guess the answer is “probably not”. Sorry.
But… but… TVTropes says it!
Damnit, I’ve been saying that too, and now I realize I’m not sure why I believe it. Ah well, updating is good.
Inexcusable? :cracks knuckles:
Try to see it from the perspective of the agent. With how close that gun was to his head, and assuming that Trinity was not in fact completely stupid and had the training and hacker-enhanced reflexes to fire as soon as she saw the merest twitch of movement, there was really no realistic scenario where that agent could survive. A human might try to dodge anyway, and die, but for an agent, two seconds spent taunting him was two seconds delay. A miniscule difference in outcome, but still—U(let trinity taunt) > U(try to dodge and die immediately).
Yes, where the meaning of ‘inexcusable’ is not ‘someone can say words attempting to get out of it’ but instead ‘no excuse can be presented that the speaker or, by insinuation, any informed and reasonable person would accept’.
No, no realistic scenario. But in the scenario that assumes the particular science fiction question premises that define ‘agent’ in this context all reasonable scenarios result in trinity dead if she attempts that showmanship. The speed and reaction time demonstrated by the agents is such that they dodge, easily. Trinity still operates on human hardware.
I remind you that these agents were designed to let the One win, else they should have gone gnome-with-a-wand-of-death on all these people.