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-- Craig E. Engler, Editor
Gattaca is bad SF
am disappointed by your positive review of Gattaca. It is quite possibly the most wretched SF flick of the year, even in a year that saw the release of Event Horizon. Gattaca is bad, bad SF. (Reviewers claiming that it transcends "sci-fi" reveal their ignorance of the genre.)
The movie's primary sin is its dullness. If the monotony of the film is supposed to be mimetic of that particular future, then the director has succeeded all too well. If the film had been exciting--as many bad SF films are--I might have enjoyed it. But the lack of action gave me ample time to contemplate and count the multitude of errors: scientific; science-fictional; logical.
Why on Earth would a space program take a candidate whose heart could not withstand liftoff? What nation (okay, maybe nations don't exist) could afford to launch a dozen rockets per day, 4,000 launches every year? (I guess if all those launches contained astronauts they might be running short of qualified candidates.) And where the hell are all these rockets going? I'm too lazy to do the math, but doesn't one year sound a bit short for a jaunt to Titan and back?
Logical lapses abound as well; I'm sure I missed dozens. As I figured it (much less math), the film occurs circa 2025. How was Gore Vidal's character a genetically engineered birth? Or were there secret valids produced in the 1970s that we dont know about? (Vincent's parent's generation was not engineered....) The medical science of the future also seems to contain discrepancies. Why couldn't the doctors repair Vincent's heart? It's not like artificial hearts and transplants don't exist today. Or why couldn't the doctors repair Jerome's spine? (And why were we treated to Tony Shaloub performing dentistry, only to look at Hawke's crooked teeth--don't his co-workers see the teeth and get suspicious?--for the rest of the movie?) And why was there only one eyelash of foreign material inside the office? Didn't Borgnine and co. walk through the place every day? Have air currents been eliminated in the future?
(I am not sure if it was tongue-in-cheek, or merely a terrible mishap, but
the electric cars sounded like the Jetsons.)
The film also flops as social criticism. Unlike other famous dystopian rebels (Winston Smith, that clerk in Brazil), Vincent/Jerome is rebelling in order to conform. Hawke's character is utterly selfish: He does nothing to help others break the barriers he has proven are a sham. Vincent completely abandons the poor people that he escapes. The movie, too, leaves the world of the poor behind. The underclass extras serve only as a momentary springboard for Vincent/Jerome's career; the only other time they are seen (briefly), they are being shaken down by the police. The film's relentless theme--Vincent's natural body besting his engineered (socially or genetically) betters--is undermined by the lack of concern with all the other inferiors.
I suspect the director read Brave New World and thought, hey, I could make an updated nineties version with all those contemporary genetic doohickeys and whatnot. Had he bothered either to read much SF or science nonfiction, he might have made something better. He might have made something of the social upheaval caused by the rise of new, scientifically produced elite. (Did the director catch any of the editorials following the sheep clone?) Or he could have explored the horrible tragedies of the early years of genetic engineering. But alas, he did not. So we got a re-warmed future setting: that familiar sterile and semi-fascist bureaucracy.
May Alien Resurrection or Starship Troopers save us.
Seulky Shin
shin0075@tc.umn.edu
Looking forward to Forever Peace
e: Forever Peace. I've heard Haldeman read selections from this work in progress and found it riveting and horrifying in places. The glimpses into the fanatic mind were disturbingly convincing and the idea of being able to share minds and actually see the other viewpoint was almost as disturbing. The soldierboys are an entirely logical projection of the smart bombs used in the Gulf War. Can we adjust to high-tech and still stay human without killing ourselves off? I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing at last.
Steve Hooley,
hooleyss@gsaix2.cc.gasou.edu
Give Earth a chance
arth: Final Conflict is not so bad, it just needs a little tinkering, but the great man is no longer with us to do the tinkering. Just give the show some time, it could get better. Just look at Deep Space Nine. Gene must have helped somehow.
Laura Hirst
redneck-central@juno.com
