This post is going to have mild spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story so proceed with that in mind.

The most recent Star Wars film is set within the fictional continuity just before the events of the original Star Wars which was released into the wild in 1977. As there are characters that appear in the original and in the most recent production that raised issues of how to deal with the fact that 40 years separated principal photography on the two projects. Actors who were still with us at the time of production have naturally aged beyond the look of the original characters and Peter Cushing who played Grand Moff Tarkin as not been with us in the veil of tears for decades.

Recasting a part is a Hollywood tradition, most notably with the very successful Bond and Doctor Who Franchises. (14 actors have played the Doctor and 7 have played Bond (not counting the comedic Casino Royale where everyone played Bond.) Recasting turned out to be only part of the solution used by the producers of Rogue One.

For the newest film Guy Henry, best known to genre fans as a minister of Magic in the last two Harry Potter movies, was cast to play Tarkin. Henry has similar bone and body structure to the late Cushing and even performs an admirable vocal impersonation. Completing the digital doppelganger CGI was used to created Tarkin’s image over Henry’s facial performance. In essence a CGI mask of Peter Cushing was slipped over Guy Henry’s face. For some people this effect looked convincing but for other, including me, the effect suffered from the ‘uncanny valley’ and while it looked good it never looked quite like a real person.

To me the technical issues are secondary, they processes will improve and even in other movies have looked quite good, to wit the de-aged Robert Downey Jr in Captain America: Civil War. The real problem is passing Henry off as Cushing.

To my eye Henry’s performance didn’t feel like an authentic Cushing performance. Cushing was an understated actor, doing more with less and Henry, while not eating the scenery, gave a more extravagant interpretation of Tarkin.

As a performance this is neither good nor bad. Acting is more than hitting your marks and saying the words, acting is choices and different actors make different choices. Had they simply applied make-up to make Henry look more like Tarkin, but not doubling Cushing, it be easier to judge Henry’s performance as just that, Guy Henry’s Tarkin.

This is the essential problem with trying to use digital arts to bring back dead actors; you can’t. At best you get an impressive impersonation, but you can never know what choices that actor would have made, who elements that they would have heightened and played down to create their performance. There was only one Peter Cushing an we have his film performances to enjoy, it is time to pass the baton to other equally capable but new performers.

photo credit: 20th Century Fox

Hypothesis A: In the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Chirrut and Baze are a long-term sexually pair-bonded couple.

The events observed in the film are consistent with this hypothesis.

No events in the film falsify this hypothesis.

This hypothesis is valid.

Hypothesis B: In the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Chirrut and Baze are a pair of bonded brothers in spirit without a sexual union.

The events observed in the film are consistent with this hypothesis.

No events in the film falsify this hypothesis.

This hypothesis is valid.

A person can hold either hypothesis A or B as both are valid and barring falsifying observations neither can be held as superior to the other. So if you watched the movie and thought of the two men as brothers in arms forged by adversity and experience into a tight bond, you are not wrong. Conversely, if you watched the movie and perceived the two men as sexually pair-bonded with a love that surpassed life itself you are also not wrong. Personally I am not bound to either concept and am perfectly willing to accept face value and wait for other evidence to deepen my understanding and their backstory.

I do want to bring one aspect to this fannish debate. Because you hold one view in no ways delegitimizes someone holding the contrary position. You are not wrong to hold your interpretation but you are wrong if you insist that others are in error for their contrary views. I would urge you to respect others because representation matters.

For those in the audience who are of non-mainstream sexualities and orientations the ability to see positive role models in mass media can be a life affirming message that empowers people to live fully realized lives.

For boys and men, particularly in America where phrasing such as ‘man up’ or ‘cowboy up’ are used as batons battering down male expressions of emotion, seeing such powerful friendship and tight relationships outside of a sexual union is a powerfully positive message opening up the possibility of more healthy emotional lives.

Representation for both groups matter and it certainly is not my place or privilege to deny it to anyone.

So my series of themed reviews, with the theme never explicitly stated, is coming to an end with 1951’s When Worlds Collide.

George Pal got a serious taste for SF filmmaking when he teamed up with author Robert A. Heinlein to produce the movie Destination Moon. Science-Fiction was to remain a favorite genre of Pal’s for decades after this partnership and his very next film was When Worlds Collide.

Based on a novel by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie, the movie is about the end of the world and a desperate attempt to save a fragment of humanity from that destruction.

While for the most part the science is horribly wrong this is one of my favorite SF movies. I have waited and waited for a blu-ray release but it appears that none of in the works and I broke down and via iTunes purchased a high-def copy from the cloud.

This film tries to deal seriously with an existential to humanity’s survival and what facing such a threat could mean on both a species and a personal level. This film established, twenty years before the craze hit in the 1970’s, the pattern found in most disaster movies. A threat is identified by a small group , they attempt to warn others, they are not believed, and then the disaster strikes. In the case of When Worlds Collide a rouge planet, Bellus, with an orbiting co-planet, Zyra, is on a collision course for the Earth. Rejected by the government of the Earth as alarmist our heroes find funding for a fleet of rocket-arks from industrialists, principally Sidney Stanton. Stantion is only interested in saving himself and a cynic when it comes to hoe his fellow humans will react when death comes to claim the, He is not entirely wrong. The scientists, led by Dr. Hendron feel that people can be better than that and he is not entirely wrong. The is one of the aspect of the film that endears me to it, that fact that heavies and heroes can both be right and wrong. There is a love story complete with a triangle, and loads of sacrifice en route to the attempt to save mankind.

In some ways this movie can be compared to the recent SF epic Interstellar. Both deal with global dangers threatening humanity with extinction and present salvation as a requiring establishing an off-world colony. Between the two I own When Worlds Collide and not Interstellar. The dark dreary cynicism of Nolan’s calls into question if humanity is worth saving while such things are never hinted at, even with characters like Stanton, in George Pal’s classic film.

As was the case with Flash Gordon, there is more than one film version of the project to consider. It all starts with the 1951 novel by Sf author John Wyndham, who also crafted for us the classic tale The Midwich Cuckoos later made into a fine film title The Village of the Damned.

Triffids was adapted into film three times, in 1962 as a feature film starring Jeannette Scott, in 1981 and 2009 as television limited a series each time. I have seen the feature film and the 1981 productions but I have yet to view the 2009.

The 1962 feature film is the production most people are familiar with. In the film the Earth is treated to a rare comet that produces a dazzling lightshow during the nighttime hours. Nearly everyone on the planet turned out to watch the event. The light show had a disastrous side effect; it renders everyone who directly viewed it blind. Our main character is a sailor being treated for eye injures and as such was spared the nearly universal blindness. In addition to burring out everyone’s optic nerves the comet also brought spores for a new plant species; the Triffids.

Triffids are mobile, carnivorous plants. They move slowly and are able to spit poison. Had the population not been blinded they would have presented a minimal threat, but robbed of sight people become easy pickings for the predators. The film follows a number or survivors as they battle triffids, each other, and their own inner demons.

The 1981 television version was a little closer to the original novel. The planets were primarily the result of genetic engineering, a crop meant to create a new supply of oil and hydrocarbons. I honestly cannot remember what caused the planet-wide blindness in that production. In the novel it was not a comet, but rather a malfunctioning orbiting weapons system that blinded the world.

The Day of the Triffids is worth seeing at least once so you can punch your geek cred card, but the film is too flawed for repeated viewings.

Okay I guess I need to touch on this, but as I wrote an essay about this not too long ago, this particular review will be on the brief side.

Tarantula may be the weakest movie on the themed movie list. While the giant bug movie are a fixture of the 1950s, most them, Tarantula included, are woefully short of anything approaching a decent story. John Agar plays the nominal protagonist of the story, but he is principally a reactionary character, driven by events around him and rarely affecting them. Compared to a tension building in better bug movies such as Them!, Tarantula leaves much to be desired.

Jack Arnold directed a number of monster movies for Universal, including The Creature from the Black Lagoon. When given a good script and decent support Arnold turned our film that withstand the test of time. When he had a decent script but limited support he still managed to produce film that were different and interesting such as the little know The Monolith Monsters, but Tarantula has neither of these advantages and lumbers from one lack luster scene into the next. The whole reason for a giant bug movie, the spectacle of an insect of unusual size rampaging the countryside is restricted to the film’s final act and mainly consists of a normal sized spider super-imposed on a background plate of a desert landscape.

I do own a copy, because when I wanted to see it the movie was not available on any streaming service, nor was the DVD available for rent. It was printed on demand on a simple DVD without bonus features. le sigh

There’s no getting around it, for all the dated dialog and social mores, for all the bits lifted from The Tempest, MGM’s grand and glitzy film Forbidden Planet is one of the most influential science-fiction movies ever produced.

Released in 1956, right in the middle of SF Films’ golden age, Forbidden Planet is both a dazzling journey, a paean to exploration and a warning, a call to be heedful of the consequences of your actions and your technology. It is the rare science-fiction story that can so strongly and so competently strike both thematic cords.

(I am willing to entertain the notion that we are currently experiencing a second golden age of SF movies, but that would be a very recent age. While I love Star Wars I do blame it for diverting SF films into pure escapism for several decades. With the exception of just a few notable movies after Star Wars SF is always presented as adventures that generally lack in thematic punch.)

Forbidden Planet is the story of the United Planet Cruiser C-57D mission to the main sequence star Altair, investigating the fate of an earlier expedition. Ignoring warnings against landing the cruiser grounds and discovers the expedition has died leaving a sole survivor and his daughter –born on the planet and therefore technically not a survivor of the expedition. A mysterious force, the same that killed the previous expedition, reawakens after 20 years and the crew is faced with a deadly implacable force.

The production design of the film directly inspired the feel of Star Trek when it aired ten years later. While Universal was know for its monsters and Warner Brothers were known for their gritty street-level realism, MGM was a studio known for massive productions of spectacle and flare, Forbidden Planet lives up the that MGM tradition. It looks and sounds great pus it boasts a stellar cast. (Yes, all puns are intended.)

Leslie Nielsen found a second career after Airplane! taking advantage of his tremendous comic chops, but before that he was a romantic leading man and that’s the role he fills here; the daring, handsome, and inventive commander of the C-57D. Anne Francis plays his love interest, thought she is not credible as a 19 year old girl she still brings charm and delightful mixture of smarts and naiveté to the role.

Walter Pidgeon plays Dr Morbius the mysterious survivor with a dark and deadly secret.

The cast filled out by wonderful and recognizable character actors who often had careers that spanned decades after this particular film.

Forbidden Planet is a treat and if you have not seen it, this is a must view for any serious fan of the genre.