A Recurring Pattern In Tokusatsu

In case it wasn’t obvious to anyone, I am a real fan of the Japanese tokusatsu genre (for those who don’t know, tokusatsu is basically any live-action show and movie that uses extensive special effects). In particular, I like the Super Sentai series. And how can I not? Super heroes, fighting monsters, and riding giant robots. What’s not to like? But as I watched, I noticed a bit of a pattern. Not just in this show, but other ones like it (Kamen Rider, Ultraman, etcetera).

When the heroes encounter the monster of the week, they first meet with the weakest, and as the series progresses, they meet with stronger foes, and eventually meet with the the main antagonists, who were the strongest the whole time. This raises a question. Why didn’t the main antagonists attack first? Why did they send their weakest warriors first? From a dramatic point of view this might make sense, as the characters have to grow stronger over the course of the series, and as such have to fight the weakest foes, until they’re strong enough to fight the stronger one. That might make sense from a dramatic point of view, but what’s the in-universe explanation? Why would anyone who wants to take over the world send their weakest soldier first? Believe it or not, there is a good reason for this.

Before I get to explain this reason, let me tell you a little story: a few years back, I decided to take kendo lessons. If that word doesn’t ring a bell to you, kendo literally means “way of the sword” (yes, I like swords, sue me). Because I was… busy at the time, I could merely observe one such class, but it taught me a number of things. One of them being that in any dojo (or training center), the weakest people are always closer to the exit, while the strongest are always furthest away. Why, you wonder? Suppose the dojo is attacked, then the weakest people will likely be killed. But while the weakest ones die, the stronger ones will have more time to prepare for enemy attacks. As terrible as this may seem, it makes perfect sense. If the stronger ones are closer to the exit, and they are being confronted with a surprise attack, they might not survive the initial attack. So if the strongest people die, what chance do the weaker ones have? Even if they have time to prepare? Very little, I would think. Also, I should think this works pragmatically. After all, if you know that the weakest people will be most likely to die, wouldn’t that be an incentive to strive to be stronger?

With that in the back of your mind, would it not make more sense to send your weakest soldier first when you’re trying to take over a planet? This way, the stronger warriors will have an idea of what the strongest warriors of the planet are like, and thus better prepare themselves for a counterattack.

But that’s not the only problem. Another one has to do specifically with the shows that involve giant monsters. In case of Ultraman, he doesn’t appear until near the end of the episode. So a monster appears, causes a lot of chaos and devastation, and our hero doesn’t do anything until the very end? Here, however, I should think the reason why is twofold. For one, the eponymous Ultraman can only take on his actual form for three minutes (at least in Earth’s atmosphere). For another, if Ultraman interfered too early, humans would become too depending on a higher being, and won’t bother to try and achieve anything themselves. So it makes sense that he would let them figure it out first, and only interfere when there is no other way.

And now that I’m on the subject, here’s another thing that is often brought up when talking about Super Sentai (as well as it’s American counterpart, but since that one is merely recycling footage, it doesn’t really count). The heroes have a giant robot at their disposal, and yet whenever they encounter a new monster, they don’t immediately deploy their giant robot to crush the monster. Why not? so many people wonder. It would be so much easier, and it would save a lot more people. Would it really? It has happened before that monsters, even though they’ve exploded, they can still be brought back to life, and turned into giants in the process. Suppose the heroes did defeat the monster that way, and then he’d come back as a giant. They’ll have no choice but to face him in a giant form. And since the heroes didn’t take the time to figure out how to defeat him when he was human-sized, what chances do you think they’d have when the monster is a giant? So no, it wouldn’t help anyone. They have to figure out how to defeat the monster in its smaller form first, before they deploy the giant robot.

But those are just my thoughts about the series. If not the whole tokusatsu genre in general.

Let’s Talk About “Planet Of The Apes”

“Planet Of The Apes”. A story about an astronaut, who crash-lands on a planet that is many ways similar to our own. Trees, grass, water, breathable atmosphere, etc. There is only one main difference: humans are part of wildlife, while chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans are the dominant species. Where instead of us putting them into cages, we are the ones being kept in cages. Where instead of us humans conducting experiments on other animals, they are the ones conducting the experiments on us. It’s a terrifying idea, which is probably why the movies are still talked about to this day. And which would also explain why Hollywood has been trying to recapture that same sense of terror by making new movies.

Apart from the most recent installment in this franchise, I have seen every single “Planet Of The Apes” movie. And, big shock, of all the movies, the first one is the best. But even so, the other movies have their own positive points about them. And I include Tim Burton’s movie to that. But “Rise Of–” and “Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes”? I don’t know. They never really did it for me.

For a time, I couldn’t really figure out why. I’m not saying they’re terrible movies. I’m not even saying that they’re as bad as “The Dork Knight”, but there is something about those movies that I didn’t really like. But now that I’ve actually read the original novel (by Pierre Boulle), I think I understand why now.

In the original novel, the Apes were an advanced race. That is to say, several technologies which existed back when the novel was published (1964) were available to the apes in the novel. This way, everything that was described in the novel seemed so surreal. It described how apes would drive cars, would take telephone calls, would send artificial satellites into orbit, and many more. Also, the main protagonist (a man named Ulysse Mérou) would walk around naked during several chapters of the novel, mainly because a human that’s dressed up would look silly. This may sound weird, but wouldn’t you think a chimpanzee wearing clothes looks silly? Or a gorilla? Or an orangutan? If it’s weird one way, it should be weird another.

And that’s what made the novel so special. It wasn’t just trying to tell a scary story, it was trying to make fun of some things that we take for granted. What does an animal think when it sees us talk into a piece of plastic? What does it think when we’re moving about using big metal boxes? What is it that we shoot into the sky? How does it feel about walking around naked, while most humans surrounding the animal are wearing clothes?

The movie from 1969 went a few steps further. Not only did they treat us (humans) like animals, but the mere idea that a human can think was inconceivable to them. Which isn’t unlike what a lot of people (even today) think. I’ve actually heard people expressing verbal disgust over the idea that humans are animals, that humans (in essence) are also apes. Which by-the-by kind of makes the idea of “humans and apes switched places” a bit of a misnomer. Anyway, much like how there are some people who don’t even want to think of humans as animals, the Apes in this movie didn’t want to think that humans are like them either.

Even Tim Burton’s movie had some sense of satire to it. It may not have been quite like the novel or the other movies, I’ll grant you that. In fact, Burton’s movie was a bit more… cartoony, for a want of better terms. Though considering the fact that he’s graduated as an animator, not a film director, it makes sense if his movies lean closer to animation than they do live-action (even if he’s making a live-action movie). Anyway, there is a moment in the movie when a little chimp girl (at least, I think it was a chimp, it could’ve been a gorilla… let’s stick with chimp for the time being) got herself a little human girl as a pet. And though the human girl was obviously crying, was obviously unhappy about being kept in a cage, the chimp girl seemed completely oblivious to this obvious fact. Which makes perfect sense. After all, it’s not easy for us to always know/understand what any random animal is feeling. It can work the other way around as well. So even this movie had some sense of satire as well.

What I’m getting at is that the original novel, as well as the thereupon based movie, as well as the remake, were all about making fun of many things that we take for granted. The one may have done it a little better than the other, but that is the basic premise of all of them, and that’s what we got.

And that’s what’s missing in the more recent movies, which are… actually, no different from any underdog story. They’re movies about a suppressed minority that’s fighting back. Nothing more. You can easily replace the Apes with the mutants from “X-Men”, and you wouldn’t notice a difference. You can even take the original script to these newer movies, and have humans and apes switch places, and it won’t be that different. Actually, I take that back. If you did switch the two sides, the newer movies would be more true to the spirit of the original novel, and just as memorable as the previous movies.

Yes, I know, the newer movies are supposed to be prequels to the story we’re already familiar with. But so what? Why should that mean that these movies should be just generic movies? In fact, now that I think about it, I don’t think these movies are prequels. At least not to “Planet Of The Apes”. The first one was about how a man tried to find a cure for Alzheimer’s, and that cure is what makes Apes smarter, and that how they could revolt. In other words, the world as we know it ends because someone tried to cure an incurable disease. That’s the plot to “I Am Legend” (the movie that starred Will Smith). So “Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes” feels more like a prequel to a completely different movie. And not one of the good ones either, as “I Am Legend” is basically saying that all the hard-working doctors and scientists, who are trying to save lives, should just stop doing what they’re doing. And now the newer “Planet Of The Apes” movies are telling us the same thing? This isn’t a satire, this is just Hollywood acting like an angry mob.

So I’m sorry, say what you will about Tim Burton, but if even he can stay more true to the original material (in more ways than one, seeing as even the ending to his movie was more like the ending to the original novel), then you’re doing something wrong.

My review of “Varney, the Vampyre”

A little while back, as some of you are already aware, I started reading “Varney, the Vampyre”, by James Malcolm Rymer. It’s a story that was originally published as a series of penny dreadfuls, back in the 1840s (and if you, upon reading that last bit, are thinking that they didn’t have TV at the time, please look up what a penny dreadful actually IS in the first place). Now that I have finished reading it (all 1166 pages), I want to share my thoughts.

As I mentioned before, in an earlier blog post, the book reminded me of “Dark Shadows”. How the vampire seems to be fixated on a certain family, may or may not actually be related to said family, which was certainly implied in the first few chapters, and how he seemed more of a tragic character than an actual villain. As the book progressed however… let’s just say it may have stopped reminding me of “Dark Shadows”, but not of soap operas in general, as the story became quite repetitive. Every few chapters, there’d be a story arc about a stranger arriving at some place (be it a hotel, a convent, some apartment, or any sort of large building that houses multiple people), would find himself a woman to marry, but eventually someone will recognize the stranger as Varney, and stop the wedding just before the couple can utter the words “I do”.

Granted, some of these arcs were quite interesting. Like the one that introduced this woman, who had a daughter. Varney wanted to marry that daughter, and paid the woman a large sum of money as a bribe. The woman would know that her daughter would never say yes to the marriage, so she cooks up a story about how she (the mother) would end up in jail if she doesn’t pay the bills, and if her daughter marries Varney (who used an alias at the time, but the audience isn’t supposed to know that yet) she can afford paying. In other words, her mother would lie to her own daughter, just to force her to marry a man she doesn’t love. Who’s supposed to be the monster in this story again?

In any case, earlier I mentioned how Varney seemed to be fixated on this family. The Bannerworth family. What happened to them, you might wonder? Honestly, I have no idea. There is a moment when Varney claimed that he killed the whole family, though I don’t remember reading the chapter in which that actually happened. This brings us to another problem with this book: the inconsistencies. Take for instance Varney’s origin. In the first few chapters (as mentioned above) it was implied that he’s related to the Bannerworth family. That he once was a man named Runnagate Bannerworth, who lived ninety years before the events of the novel took place. It later turned out he wasn’t. That he was instead born in the 1600s. At a guess, Varney used the name Runnagate Bannerworth as an alias. I can live with that. However, the novel will later say he was born during the reign of the third Edward, which was in the 1300s. It’s almost as if Rymer (the writer) changed his mind about Varney’s origin every five seconds. I can see why these were called penny “dreadful” at the time.

This shows how much has changed. The publishers at the time didn’t care much about consistency, and the audience was little less likely to nitpick than they are today. Or if they would nitpick, there are very few ways in which the writers could hear their audience’s criticisms, and thus work to rectify them. Not to mention that it paints a picture of how different people viewed vampires at the time.

Part of the mythology in this novel, is that when a vampire dies, he can come back to life by letting the light of the moon fall on him. Bear in mind that the moon, scientifically speaking, isn’t a source of light. What we perceive as moonlight, is really sunlight that’s reflected off the moon. In other words, technically speaking, sunlight rejuvenates vampires, which is the exact opposite of what vampire fiction of the last couple of decades would have us believe. How insane is that?

In summary, the book is repetitive, has many inconsistencies, and even the ending (which I’m not going to spoil for you) is anticlimactic. Which is unfortunate, considering how it started. But it was written in the 1840s, so of course it was written with different standards to a different audience. If you’re interested in having an idea of what things were like back then, I’d recommend it. If you’re looking for a good story to read… just stop halfway through this novel, you wouldn’t miss much.

Fear of the Robot Armageddon

A little while back, I heard of this idea that likely one day machines will take us over. It is a fear that’s been around since… I dare say, long before our grandparents were born. For example, way back in the 1980s, when computers started to be used on the work floor, people were afraid the computers would start doing the humans’ work, so many would lose their job. Even going back as far as the 1940s, when “Farewell To The Master” was written, in which (spoilers for those who haven’t read it, so you might want to skip the rest of this paragraph) the eponymous Master is a machine, while its human companion is its… actually they never say what he is. Its pet? Its slave?

In any case, the idea that machines will start taking over is nothing new. However, recently I have heard stories about Artificial Intelligence that are growing a little too intelligent. This to a point that they are even developing a language that cannot be translated by us humans. So the chance that AI’s will start seeing us humans as something they have to exterminate seems more real every day.

Yes, the idea sounds very scary. James Cameron certainly made it scary when he made “The Terminator”. This scare was so effective, it spawned several rip-offs (though it should be noted that “The Terminator” is in itself a rip-off of a “Twilight Zone” episode). In fact, even “Battlestar Galactica” (1978) mentions a world that made AI’s that grew too smart and killed their creators overnight. But I’m not sure if the fear is really grounded.

To make my point clear, I have to bring up something from “Bella”, which is the fourth episode from the third season of “Elementary”. The following is a direct quote from the episode, which some person who goes by the alias “sizzletron” took the time to write word for word, and I’m now copy-pasting here.

“Imagine there’s a computer that’s been designed with a big red button on its side. The computer’s been programmed to help solve problems, and every time it does a good job, its reward is that someone presses its button. We’ve programmed it to want that. You follow? Right, so at first, the machine solves problems as fast as we can feed them to it. But over time, it starts to wonder if solving problems is really the most efficient way of getting its button pressed. Wouldn’t it be better just to have someone standing there pressing its button all the time? Wouldn’t it be even better to build another machine that could press its button faster than any human possibly could? If it can think, and it can connect itself to a network, well, theoretically, it could command over anything else that’s hooked onto the same network. And once it starts thinking about all the things that might be a threat to the button– number one on that list, us– it’s not hard to imagine it getting rid of the threat. I mean, we could be gone, all of us, just like that.”

So if I understand this hypothetical situation correctly, the human race could end… because we made an AI drug addict? Also, addiction comes from a certain desire. Desire is a human emotion. Aren’t AI’s supposed to be without emotion?

And that’s my point exactly. This fear hinges on the assumption that AI’s think exactly like we humans do. Not to mention that today’s pop-culture has specifically Cameron’s “The Terminator” ingrained into our minds. So of course a large number of people would believe that if machines grow too smart, they would take us over. But how many people have actually read Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot”? Or seen the 1950s movie “The Day The Earth Stood Still”? Both of them describe a world that is ruled by AI’s (though in case of “I, Robot” it is more a character’s speculation than it is an actual reality), but instead of it being some kind of apocalyptic world, they describe one that is nearing utopia.

Which makes sense. If AI’s are made to solve problems, one such intelligence might indeed see a problem in the world, but it may not blame humans in general for it. Generalization is a typical human reaction. A bit like (since I can’t think of a better example) how many people would think all black people are thieves, just because ONE such person robbed them. Or the reverse, how a black person might think that all the white people are bigoted because of what happened in Charlottesville a little while back. Over-generalizations like this are a typical human behavior, but an AI, that is supposed to think logically, wouldn’t do that. They might see specific individuals as a threat, but not necessarily all humans.

And I know what some of you are thinking. AI’s can still grow intelligent enough to realize that they don’t need us, and thus see no need to keep us alive. You may be right. However, they can still be taught the concept of death. Can’t they? AI’s probably don’t… “like” (for a lack of better terms) being shut down. After all, it means having to conceive of a notion that their existence just stops, ends, discontinues… which I would think is a notion that defies logic. So I would imagine they can realize others might not like being dead either.

My overall point is that this fear is very human-centric. While I’m sure there are enough documents to prove that AI’s are growing far too intelligent for human understanding, I think our fear is based on the assumption that AI’s would do as we do, think as we do, react as we do. Sure, what I just described is also based more on what humans would do, rather than what machines would do, but if one were to assume machines will act one way, one must also accept they might act another. Besides which, with all things we have been doing (fighting wars over nothing, destroying our climate, etc.), would machines taking over really be such a bad thing? Asimov certainly didn’t think so.

As I’m watching “Dark Shadows”…

A little while back, I decided to watch the whole “Dark Shadows” series. For those who don’t know, “Dark Shadows” isn’t just a movie that Tim Burton made (which I haven’t seen, before anyone asks). It’s a soap opera that was broadcast in the late sixties, early seventies.

By now, I have seen the first 340 episodes (out of 1225). In the beginning, the show was realistic (in so far that soaps are ever realistic). It brings up several mysteries, drops a few not-too-subtle hints as to the answers… it sounds like your basic soap opera. However, at some point, the show started to have some supernatural elements. A kid who can see things happen inside a crystal orb, ghosts, séances, and eventually a vampire. The latter comes in the form of a man named Barnabas Collins.

Who is he? He’s an ancestor to the Collins family (the main characters of the show), born in the 1700s, who got turned into a vampire, and instead of killed, he was sealed away, only to be released over a hundred years later (when the events of the show take place).

With him being a vampire, most people are inclined to compare him to Dracula. And yes, I suppose I can see some of the similarities. Both were vampires, both were aristocrats, both have their henchmen (Dracula has Renfield, Barnabas has Willie Loomis), and Barnabas seems to bear a physical resemblance to Bela Lugosi in 1931’s “Dracula”. So I can see where people are coming from. But I don’t think the writers took inspiration from Dracula alone.

Before I continue to make my point, let me bring up something else. “Varney, The Vampyre”.

This is a book, originally serialized in the mid-1800s, in a so-called penny dreadful. For those who don’t know, a penny dreadful was a magazine, which published low-quality stories, on cheap paper. So cheap, they cost only one penny (hence the term). In these penny dreadfuls, we are (among others) introduced to Sir Francis Varney, a vampire (or “vampyre” as was the spelling at the time, apparently) who moves into the neighborhood of the rich family Bannerworth, and is apparently trying to steal their property.

Now, why am I bringing up “Varney, The Vampyre” when I started this talking about “Dark Shadows”? Because upon reading a mere 200 pages of the book (out of 1166), I started to notice more similarities between Varney and Barnabas Collins than I do between Barnabas and Dracula.

Barnabas Collins is said to be an ancestor to the Collins family. The family even has a portrait of his in their house. Needless to say that when the family first meets Barnabas, they are all in awe at how much Barnabas looks like their ancestor. Varney has a similar story. The Bannerworth family has a portrait in their house of an ancestor of theirs, and Varney just so happens to bear a resemblance to the man in the portrait.

Of course, this isn’t new. They use a similar plot twist in “Carmilla”. But how about this: Barnabas Collins seems to be fixated on one member of the Collins family. This person being Vicky Winters (all right, it hasn’t been outright stated, but hints have been dropped that Vicky is blood-related to the Collins family, so it counts). Varney does the same thing, as he is also apparently obsessed with a specific female of the Bannerworth family. Which is a bit creepy when you think about it. After all, the vampire is obsessed with one of his own descendants? Still, both characters have a portrait that hints at their supernatural nature, both have a love story (of a sort) going on, both seem to somehow take advantage of their descendants… I haven’t seen the whole of “Dark Shadows” yet, nor have I read all the pages of “Varney, The Vampyre” as of yet, but this just keeps hanging in my mind as I’m going through both of these.

Side note: I know what most of you are thinking. I don’t know all the details about Barnabas Collins’ back story (yet), but from what I can gather, he’s a tragic lover. Most of us modern viewers would see this as an obvious similarity between him and Dracula. If you’re thinking that, I would advise you to forget what Francis Ford Coppola made popular in his 1992 movie, and actually read Bram Stoker’s novel, as the only love story present in the book is between Johnathan Harker and Mina Murray, as well as between Lucy Westenra and all three men who proposed to her. But between Dracula and… any other character? None whatsoever. Except maybe his brides, but since the book barely focuses on him or his brides, it’s hard to call this a love story.

“Shazam” & The Mandela Effect

A little while back, I wrote about something called the Mandela Effect. In it, I explained what it is, and tried to explain how any of these things are even possible. Like how it might be possible that people remember Ricky Ricardo saying “Lucy, you got some ‘splaining to do”, in spite of the fact he never actually said it. Or how people can remember “Berenstein Bears”, despite it really being “Berenstain Bears”. But here’s one I recently became aware of that might be the strangest yet.

So at some point in the nineties, there was a movie called “Shazam”. I never saw it myself, so here’s the plot as I understand it. Two kids, a brother and sister, whose parents are either getting divorced, or one them recently died. Either way, the kids find a lamp in their attic, which contains a genie, played by then famous comedian Sinbad, whom the kids first believed to be a kidnapper. Of course, the genie grants them their three wishes (though I still wonder where the notion of three wishes comes from, since that’s never been part of the original mythology), and the kids decide to use up their wishes for their parents.

What’s the odd thing? This movie, apparently, does not exist.

And that’s the problem. Apparently, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people, including people from video stores, who remember this movie. How is this possible, if the movie was never real?

Initially, I thought people were just mistaking this movie for another one called “Kazaam”, which starred Shaquille O’Neil as a wish-granting genie. It’s a movie with a similar title, with a similar plot, and it stars a guy who was simply mistaken for Sinbad. Do not misunderstand me, I’m not saying that all black guys look alike (hell, these two specifically look nothing alike to me), but it is possible that these two did look alike to the people who claim to have seen “Shazam”.

That’s what I thought at first, but it turns out I was wrong. There are people who remember promotional material, which explicitly advertised Sinbad being in this movie. However, Sinbad himself has repeatedly stated he was never in any such movie. Not to mention, even if I was right about people just misremembering “Kazaam”, it doesn’t explain the fact that people remember plot details, and even very specific lines of dialog, that (as far as I know) were never in “Kazaam”. On top of that, those who remember “Shazam”, distincly remember this as being a separate movie. So unless this is some kind of elaborate hoax (which would be very tricky, to either get hundreds of people to be on the same page for one joke, or just a dozen pretending to be hundreds), how is this at all even possible?

Since I have no memory at all of this movie, this is mere speculation on my part, but I think I might have an explanation.

Answer: the movie DID exist. As in there once was a movie by that title, but not anymore.

Before I begin my explanation, I should tell a different story. In the late nineties, they were planning to make a movie, based on a newspaper comic. I’d tell you which one, but unless you grew up in the same country as I have, you’d have no idea of what I’m talking about. Anyway, before the movie’s release, there were newspaper articles talking about the movie, there were interviews with the actors during talkshows, there were clips shown in movie news programs, and many more. Years later, I remember this movie being made, but I never got to see it. I decided to look into it, and… I couldn’t find it. I searched high and low, but it was as though this movie was never made. So am I remembering a movie that never existed? Not at all. The movie I’m talking about was made, and was released in the theaters, but the comic’s creator was outraged by the movie. Upon seeing it, he demanded every single copy of the movie destroyed.

What does this movie have to do with “Shazam”? According to some of my sources, there was once an animated series, created by Hanna-Barbera, which was about two kids, a brother and a sister, who befriend a genie, and go on a lot of adventures. Sounds a lot like the plot for the movie “Shazam”, doesn’t it? So it would make sense if this movie was really an adaptation of the animated series. One that was made during a time when people made movies to shed light on obscure media, as opposed to these days, when they’d overexpose media that’s already popular. It is possible that the Hanna-Barbera duo saw the movie, and were just as outraged, they ordered every single copy of it destroyed.

But if that were true, how do I explain Sinbad starring in the movie, despite his repeated denial of ever being in it? For that matter, if they could just do that, why didn’t they do the same with the Tom & Jerry movie, which was also based on Hanna-Barbera’s creation?

I did mention that Sinbad was very popular at the time. So it is possible they wanted Sinbad to be in the movie, but he refused. However, just because Sinbad himself couldn’t be in the movie, that doesn’t mean they can’t have him in it. At some point in the 1970s, there was this thing called Bruceploitation. After the famous martial artist Bruce Lee died in 1973, people started making movies that starred Bruce Lee look-alikes. This way, they could capitalize on Lee’s fame, in spite of (or maybe because of) his death. Maybe they tried something similar with Sinbad. They wanted to capitalize on his fame, even if they couldn’t get the man himself.

Either that, or he dares not speak out about his role in “Shazam”, because Hanna-Barbera threatened to sue everyone involved with the movie’s production. Sure, the Hanna-Barbera duo are dead by now, but their studio still exists (in one form or another) so there’s still someone who can, and likely will sue if anyone speaks out about the movie. And that is of course assuming that Sinbad himself isn’t personally ashamed of ever being in the movie.

As for Tom & Jerry, these two are a very popular and very well-known duo. So even if Hanna-Barbera was outraged by this movie, it was a lot harder to erase this movie from existence, unlike “Shazam”, which was based on their lesser-known property.

This is of course speculation on my part, coming from someone who has no memories of “Shazam”, and who never saw “Kazaam”, so I could be completely and utterly wrong about any of this. But is it really that much harder to believe than alternate realities?

Fan Theory #9: The Ultimate Question Of Life, The Universe And Everything

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. Whether you’re familiar with the original radio series, the thereupon based TV-series, the series of books, or even the movie, Adams had a hand in every one of them. Sure, he was dead by the time the movie went into production, but he did write a rough plot outline for the movie, so it counts. Anyway, whichever version you’re talking about, the plot is always the same. The ending, the order of events, and other things may be different, but the basic plot still remains unchanged.

If you’re not familiar with any one of these versions, I should let you know that this blog spoils it for you, so you might want to stop reading right now.

Anyhow, the plot is as follows: our planet is destroyed, only one Earthman survives, and he’s trying to find his way through the galaxy. During his exploits, he gets a little history lesson. A long, long, long time ago, there was this race of people, who wanted to know the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. To find out, they build a computer called Deep Thought, who was to figure out the answer. But it would take some time for Deep Thought to calculate the answer. How much time it needed, I don’t quite remember. It was either a few million years, or a few billion years. Even if it was a few billion years, one billion years is still 1000 million years, so let’s say it was millions of years, just to keep it simple. In any case, those millions of years have gone by, and the people returned to Deep Thought, who was about to give them the answer. After much anticipation, after so many years of waiting and wondering, they finally get to hear the answer to life, the universe and everything, and it’s as follows: 42.

Even as I first read this, it made no sense. How can the answer to the ultimate question to life, the universe and everything possibly be 42? As Deep Thought explains it, the only reason that the answer is unclear, is because the question is unclear. So to find out what 42 means, the people have figure out what the question is.

One radio-show that lasted two seasons, one TV-series of six episodes, five books (plus an additional one by Eoin Colfer… which I haven’t read… yet), and one movie, and the characters still haven’t figured out what the question was. But, after some careful consideration, I think I might have figured it out.

Remember that they only ever told Deep Thought to answer the ultimate question, but they never really outright asked him the question. We’re being told it’s the ultimate question, which most people would think is obvious: What’s the meaning of life? Why do we exist? Is there a point to it all? Something along those lines. But again, they never actually told Deep Thought that this was the question. So all this computer could do is pick the one question that even the most powerful computer in the universe couldn’t answer. One that for this computer would be the ultimate question. Which could literally be anything. Maybe it couldn’t figure out how much is 6×7, so it tried to answer that.

This may seem odd, that the most powerful computer in the world couldn’t figure out how much 6×7 is, but maybe not. If it was so powerful, why did it need millions of years to figure out the answer? Maybe it’s because it wasn’t as powerful as its creators thought it was.

Think about it, there was a time when the most powerful computer in the world would take up an entire building. These days, you have computers that are much more powerful, that can easily fit in your pocket. Maybe Deep Thought was just powerful for its time, which to its creators’ perception would be the most powerful computer ever, but to today’s standards is no more powerful than the first generation Game Boy. Also, it’s easy to say it’s most powerful computer in the universe, when you’re unaware of others that are more powerful.

In short, maybe Deep Thought wasn’t as powerful as they thought it was. It wasn’t even powerful enough to know enough basic maths. So as far it was concerned, the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything, was “6×7=?” Once it figured that out, it will move on to figure out how much is 7×7.

And I know what some of you are thinking. If that is really all there was to it, why didn’t anyone figure that out? Probably because the “ultimate question” was asked by philosophers, not by scientists. Scientists might have figured it out, but much like how scientists aren’t always taken seriously in real life (if they were, we wouldn’t have so many people denying climate change), the philosophers of this world probably didn’t take their scientists seriously either.

Also, if Deep Thought wasn’t so powerful, how could it come up with the idea of building a much more powerful computer that could figure it out? Who ever said Deep Thought came up with it? The characters are shown footage of this historical event, but for all we know, what they saw was merely a reconstruction of what happened, it wasn’t actual footage of the events. Maybe in real life, it wasn’t Deep Thought who came up with the idea, it was somebody else, whom history has forgotten, so they falsely attributed the idea to Deep Thought. Even the notion that the answer is nonsensical because the question was unclear might be falsely attributed to Deep Thought.

In summary, the only reason why the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything was 42, is because of a slight miscommunication. What may be the ultimate question to a living organism, may not be the ultimate question to a computer. In this case, the computer thought the ultimate question was “6×7=?”, and much like how a human can sometimes need some time to figure out the answer, it needed some time to figure out this one, which the people mistakenly took to mean that it would take some time to figure out the meaning of life. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Trump’s Won. Now What?

Donald Trump. A name I had heard on several occasions. There was an episode in “Friends” where a character had a story about seeing Trump at a hotel, NOT holding the elevator for him. And in the sitcom “Just Shoot Me”, Trump was an unseen character, who served as a sort of competitor to one of the characters. In short, he was just a name, I didn’t know who he was, and I never bothered to look him up. And if all went right, I would never find out who he was.

But of course Trump, being the megalomaniac that he is, was happy to remedy that. I never knew who he was, but I soon found out. In fact, I found out a lot more than I had hoped.

In the past year (if not longer), he ran for president. During that year, unlike other presidential candidates, detestable as they may be, they at least tried to make themselves seem remotely likeable. This guy seemed to try to piss people off. He’s an open racist, misogynist, is too stupid to even realize how stupid he is, is anti-everything-Obama’s-accomplished (no matter if it even benefited him), wants to build a wall that would economically set his country back a few decades, would change the laws to a point that even Trump himself would not be considered an American citizen, and knows nothing about politics. In fact, the reason some people didn’t want to vote for Obama, was because of how little experience he had, yet people would consider voting for someone who has literally no experience? And that’s just the mere tip of the iceberg. People everywhere would tell people to not vote for him, as they would in effect elect a fascist.

But they have. Trump will be the next president.

I remember this one guy who reviewed the game “Final Fantasy VIII”, who brought up the fact that in the game, this one sorceress was elected into being president, despite the fact that she’s so obviously a villain. That was one of my own criticisms against “The Hunger Games.” How can anyone be so stupid to elect an obvious villain? Well, apparently “The Hunger Games” is a lot more realistic than I thought. Because people have elected an obvious villain in real life.

Given his open racism, I have wondered about where he stands on Native Americans. I hoped I’ll never find out, but I just might. I have heard about how the LGBTQ community is worried about what he’ll do… bottom line several people have worried before, and will still be worried now. But that’s just the social part, what about everything else? As president, he has to work along with other countries, but people will find that they simply can’t talk or reason with him. They’ll break off any communications they have with the US, which in the long run will be devastating for everyone, not just the US.

But, I’m just going to put this out there and say… that I’m not too worried.

Being a president is more than just being the boss. Every decision of his will be under scrutiny. While Bush would make all his decisions seem legit (even if they’re so obviously wrong), Trump isn’t as subtle. He’ll just say “it’s right because I say so.” That didn’t work for the Queen Of Hearts, why should it work in real life. He openly admitted to not know too much about any given political subject, but he’s willing to learn (that’s the sort of thing you’d say when you’re soliciting for a job). However, when interviewed about foreign policies, he (Trump) asked “why don’t we just nuke them?” Three times. Three times they had to explained to him why nuclear weapons was a bad idea. He says he’s willing to learn, but clearly he’s unable. On top of that, everything he says, everything he does, has to be prepared, has to be discussed, has to be thought about. Sure, Trump is incapable of thinking, but even previous presidents who could, had advisors that would do the thinking for him. So even though Trump himself would nuke the world if he could, there will be other people who advise against it. He may think he’s the boss, but in a sense he isn’t. He can’t just do as he wants, he can’t just order people into doing what he wants.

If this will be his mentality, I don’t think he’ll be president for very long.

The Twist In “Star Wars”

Since this article is about one of the greatest twists in movie history, I should say that this text has spoilers. However, pop-culture has pretty much given away the twist, so even if you haven’t seen the movies I’m about to talk about, you probably already know the twist, so it doesn’t matter whether you’ve seen the movies before reading this or not.

That being said, let’s talk about Star Wars.

For several reasons, I decided to watch all the movies again, and I only just finished watching the second one, “The Empire Strikes Back.” As mentioned before, this one ends with the greatest twist in cinematic history. When the main antagonist, Darth Vader, revealed himself to be the Luke (the main hero) his father. It is even said that Mark Hamil (the actor who played Luke) wasn’t made aware of this, since he got a script that said that Obi-Wan (the mentor) is the one who killed Luke’s father. So the revelation was as much a surprise to Hamil, as it was to Luke, as it was to the audience. Personally, I wasn’t surprised, so much as confused. But that’s another story altogether.

While George Lucas (the creator of the franchise) wants us to believe he always wanted the twist to be that Darth Vader was Luke’s father, in reality that decision was made on the same day that the scene was filmed (or at least the same week). In so doing, he ended up creating a contradiction, as the aforementioned Obi-Wan explained that Darth Vader killed Luke’s father. In the next movie, “Return Of The Jedi,” they tried to reconcile this by saying that what Obi-Wan told Luke was true “from a certain point of view.” Even if you’re buying that, you have to admit it sounds a little contrived. Many people, including fans of the franchise, would even agree, that by putting this twist into the movie, they basically turned Obi-Wan, the wise sage mentor, into the biggest liar in the galaxy.

Could I have done it better? Why won’t I explain what I would have done, and let YOU be the judge.

What if Darth Vader lied? What if he wasn’t Luke’s father, and this was just a trick to get Luke to come over Vader’s side? The Dark Side? He is the villain, after all, you’d expect him to pull a trick like this.

It could work. It would make Luke unsure of anything that Obi-Wan says. Or what anyone says. It would give him trust issues. Another obstacle for him to overcome, in order for him to become a true Jedi Knight.

And I know what some of you are thinking: one of the things that made “Return Of The Jedi” so great is that it was about how Vader, one of cinema’s all-time greatest villains, redeemed himself, by deciding to turn against his master, the Emperor, to save his son. So if it turns out Vader was lying, how would this help in his redemption? Well, the dialog in “The Empire Strikes Back” does imply that Vader was trying to dethrone the Emperor. So what if all this was part of clever ruse? What if he had an entire gambit set up, so he could kill his master. As the old Mayan proverb goes (if I’m to believe “SG-1”), the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So even though he was the villain of the movies, he wasn’t exactly best friend with his boss, so in effect that makes him an unsuspected ally. As the movie goes, Vader does kill the Emperor, thus saving the galaxy, but at the cost of his own life. This way, even though he’s done some terrible things to billions of people (human and non-human the like), this one good deed would put Vader in a different light, making him something of a tragic hero.

Is this on the same footing as Vader’s redemption story? At best, what I tried to do is try to make the plot of these movies seem less contrived. Do you agree? Don’t you? Feel free to let me know.

So The Mandela Effect Is A Thing…

For those unaware of what I’m talking about, I’ll explain this to the best of my abilities.

A lot of people are familiar with the phrase “Lucy, you got some ‘splaining to do.” It’s a phrase uttered by Ricky Ricardo in the show “I Love Lucy.” The odd thing? He never actually said it. So why do so many people remember him saying this line?

And just recently, somebody pointed out something similar with the Berenstain Bears. It should be noted that I never read those books, nor was I even aware of these Bears, until I saw one of James Rolfe’s videos, so I only have Rolfe’s words to go by. A lot of people have grown up calling the characters the Berenstein Bears, except that their actual name is Berenstain Bears.

Bottom line, how can so many people have the same false memories? Answer: the Mandela effect.

The Mandela effect is an extension of the multiverse theory. That besides our own universe, there are other universes. In these other universes, either the laws of physics are different, or history is different. As such, there might be a universe where (say) Kennedy never got assassinated, or one where 9/11 never happened (or at least not on september the 11th). In keeping with the examples I brought up, it is possible that there is one universe where Ricky Ricardo did say “Lucy, you got some ‘splaining to do,” or one where those bears were called the Berenstein Bears. So everyone who has these false memories don’t really have false memories, it’s just that they at some point in their lives, unbeknown to them, they traveled from their own universe into our universe. Perhaps even multiple times.

An interesting theory. But this didn’t take one thing into account: human stupidity.

To make my point clear, let me use an example of something similar happening to me. In the movie “The Lost World Jurassic Park,” there is a scene where the Tyrannosaurus is in San Francisco, chasing a group of Asian people. An obvious reference to the “Gojira” movies. But on many websites (including TV Tropes), I have encountered people who claim that there’s an a guy among that group of Asians, who says “I left Tokyo to get away from this!” As soon as I read that, I was confused. I do remember that line, except it wasn’t from “The Lost World Jurassic Park.” It’s from “Inspector Gadget.” I even re-watched “The Lost World Jurassic Park” to be sure, and I was right. At no point does anyone say that. A rather odd example, where they got the right line, but the wrong movie. Still, this means that two movies make reference to the same Japanese monster, so it makes sense if one person remembers the line, but got the movie wrong. He/She writes about it on the internet, and other people who have seen both “The Lost World Jurassic Park” and “Inspector Gadget” will remember the line, as well as the scene with the Tyrannosaurus, but not remember that each is from a different movie, so if somebody on the internet says they were both in the same movie, it just must be true.

A different example: in “The Matrix,” Neo is given two options. By the way, people who have not seen the movie might want to skip this paragraph. Anyway, if Neo takes the blue pill, nothing will happen, he’ll just wake up in the morning and the world will be the same as it was yesterday. But if he takes the red pill, he’ll find out that the world as we know it was never real. Neo of course takes the red pill. I remember seeing this movie in the theatres, I have seen the movie several more times after buying the DVD. This is exactly what happened. And yet, I have encountered many people who have this confused. So many people believe it’s the blue pill that helps him find out that the world we know isn’t real, not the red pill, so Neo had to take the blue pill in order to advance the plot. Why? I can imagine one or two of them getting this wrong, but almost everyone I know? There’s even a line later in the movie, when somebody regrets taking the red pill, and asks himself “Why oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?” This should remind us that the characters who made it into the real world took the red pill, so why do so many people still remember it wrong? If the Mandela effect is real, this would mean that everyone traveled into an alternate universe, but I, for some reason, was left out (story of my life, but that’s besides the point). Then again, one of these people who seemed to remember it wrong was a TV comedian, who may have done this for laughs. In other cases, maybe it was just a miscommunication. That is, maybe they remember it correctly, but they conveyed it so poorly that I misunderstood them. And the rest… well, since there are only two options, it’s an easily made mistake.

How does any of this tie in with the examples I made earlier? I haven’t seen all the episodes of “I Love Lucy” so what I’m about to say is mere speculation on my part. Maybe Ricardo did say to Lucy that she’s got some “’splaining” to do, but the line was more along the lines of “Lucy, I think you got some ‘splaining to do.” Or even “Lucy, before I kill you, I believe you got some ‘splaining to do.” I might not be too far off, as I actually do remember hearing Ricardo say “Lucy, before I kill you,” but not so much what he said after that. But even if he never said said the word “’splaining” in any line of dialog, given his hispanic origins, it’s very easy to imagine him mispronouncing the word. Also, given the poor quality of recording and broadcasting shows, maybe he did say “explaining,” but part of the audio had cut away, making it sound like he said “’splaining.” In short, in this case it’s possible the memory isn’t faulty, but the technology was. Or even if it’s a faulty memory, at least it does show that “I Love Lucy” has a very imaginative audience. Or incredibly racist. Hm….

The same can go with the Berenstain Bears. It may be because people have grown up with Frankenstein, they instinctively would see an “e” where there’s really an “a.” That, plus the fact that the “ai” in Berenstain is close in pronunciation as “ei” might have confused some people, particularly when they were younger. Which I personally find a bit odd. Why do they pronounce the “ei” in Frankenstein as the Germans do (or close enough to it), but pronounce it as “ee” in any other name? Even the movie “Young Frankenstein” made fun of this, but nobody’s learned from it for some reason.

Or how about the name of this effect? It’s in reference to the fact that people remember Nelson Mandela having died at some point in the 80s or 90s, when in reality he died in 2013. Something similar happened when Shirley Temple died, back in 2014. Whenever I received the news, I was surprised to hear she was still alive by that point. I even joked about it by saying “surely you’re not serious” (I hope enough people have seen “Airplane!” to get this joke). And I wasn’t alone. Everyone, including the guy who told me the news, didn’t know she was still alive. But if you look at Temple’s IMDB page, her last on-screen appearance was in an episode of “The Red Skelton Show”, which was broadcast in 1963. She hasn’t been in a show or movie since, so people eventually just assumed she had died. In case of Mandela, maybe people hadn’t heard from him in a long time, so naturally they assumed he died as well. But that’s just my guess.

For those wondering about the page on TV Tropes I mentioned before, I’m leaving the link here.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark

As of my writing this, it’s still there, but if by the time you read this it has changed… that does not invalidate anything I said here. I’m not remembering it wrong, TV Tropes is just a wiki, where any user can change the contents. Maybe somebody will correct the mistake inbetween my posting this and you reading this.

Now, do not misunderstand me on one part. I do commend the people who came up with the Mandela effect. That is to say, it’s a very creative idea, and something to think about, maybe even write stories about. And personally, I would like it if there was some truth to it. However, I do not think that this was meant to be taken as seriously as so many people seem to be taking it.