Trevor’s Top 40

In case you haven’t been paying attention, right now Hollywood loves robots. We’ve got a steady stream of robot horror, robot romance, and robot movies for kids. Maybe it’s tied to growing interest in AI, as the robot is a physical manifestation of such an ephemeral thing. I suspect this will be a point of discussion for years to come. But for whatever reason, we’ve got robots.

So many robots.

Transformers One, based on the toy commercials disguised as 80s TV shows, didn’t get much love at the box office. Yet I haven’t heard a bad thing from anyone who’s seen it. While I’ve never gotten into the franchise, the trailers gave me some hope that it wouldn’t just be content. And it's not! Honestly, I was impressed. It’s an origin story for Optimus Prime and Megatron, so there are no humans this time around. 

Just a planet full of robots.

Yet because the story is so unapologetically mythic, I found it inspiring. It’s Cain and Abel, Zeus and Chronos, and Braveheart for kids. The character development is so subtle I hardly noticed it, and the tone of the film changes so gradually from small stakes fun to deadly serious that frankly I'm in awe of the deft storytelling. By the end, I felt like I’d gone on a long journey with these characters.

Not like I’d sat through a long ad for Happy Meal toys.

Then there’s The Wild Robot, a commercial and critical darling that’s winning all sorts of awards recognition. It’s… fine. Visually, it’s gorgeous. The voice acting is perfect and the music is great. But the story, about a robot who crash lands in the wilderness and must raise an orphaned gosling, left me cold. If Transformers One wants us up on our feet cheering, The Wild Robot wants us feeling warm fuzzies.

Not there’s anything wrong with that.

However, with Transformers it was organic to the story. Everything about those characters, in that world, had to be epic. And the effect of the epic is awe and inspiration. The Wild Robot feels contrived to manipulate those heartstrings. Nothing about the story has to do that. It wants to. But the bigger problem for me is that it leans into a new mythology, whereas Transformers retells something ancient.

The Wild Robot is about found family and overcoming your programing.

Transformers One is about following a code and fulfilling your potential.

More than than that, The Wild Robot presents the audience, children, with a childish world. At first it hints at life’s harsh realities. The pain of death. The kill or be killed laws of nature. The pain of saying goodbye. But by the end, Roz the robot has taught everyone to be nice and get along, so that a bear can be buddies with his prey. We won’t see the lion laying down with the lamb in this world, I’m sorry. (Also, Tolkien would’ve hated technology improving on nature). Transformers One, however, leaves us with the knowledge that there is evil in the world, predators who will always feed off of their own ambition, and that we must fight against them.

The old myth will always trump the new, because one has been confirmed by time.

When it comes to human technological advancement, artificial intelligence (AI) will probably be looked on as significant as the printing press. Whether you love it, hate it, are anxious, or ambivalent about it, nothing short of a Tower of Babel act of God is going to make AI disappear. It will likely change in some way everything we do, and, at the rate things are going, very soon if it hasn’t already.

But if we’re good at one thing, it’s adapting.

For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to spend any time trying to define what AI is. Rather, I want to discuss what it can do. More importantly, I want to talk about what it can’t do, and I have a perspective that I have yet to hear anyone mention. Full disclosure, I like AI and use it several times a day for getting information. Gone are the days of keyword searches and sifting through results.

Now I can just ask a question like I’m talking to a person and get an answer.

It’s great!

However, in the very near future AI will be able to do more. Much, much more. We’ll be able to ask an AI to make a movie with certain plot elements and actors, done in a particular style, and have it. We’ll be able to ask for a new novel from our favorite author and have a custom made original work. It’s not there yet (I think several movie scripts have been written by AI with little oversight and the results have been dismal), but we’ll get there.

So as a creative, I have to ask if I’ll still be relevant. 

Well, in short, yes. Because the people who anticipate or fear AI taking over creative spaces are overlooking the fact that us humans, created in the image of God, are more than just physical parts and chemical reactions. Every so often you hear about someone receiving a donated organ and developing a character trait of the donor. There are many questions about surrogate pregnancies, where the DNA comes from the parents, but how the baby, who has grown in the womb of another woman and grown accustomed to her voice, will do when suddenly separated from her.

When we create, do we put something spiritual, something of ourselves, into the work?

I think so.

One of the nice things about being in the indie author space is getting to read books written by my friends. Not friends in the parasocial, “I feel like I know him through his work,” sense, but people I’ve actually met in person or through long interactions online. And when I read their work, even if it’s fiction, I get the feeling that I’m spending time with them. While it’s not the same experience as receiving a personal letter, as these stories are written for everyone, I still know deep down that I’m looking into the depths of their hearts.

AI can’t replicate that.

There’s more to writing than word choice and the length of a sentence. Sure, AI will be able to spit out a novel without any adverbs and lots of short, punchy dialog and call it Hemingway. And, because we never met the guy, we may find a surface level satisfaction from reading it. But it will never be Hemingway. We need to remember that. More importantly, as AI becomes ubiquitous and customized novels become easily accessible, we need to know our authors.

Storytelling is communal, not commercial.

Get online and find a self-published novel you like. Then reach out to the author on social media. I promise you, with rare exceptions, they’re there. If you know writers, read their work and share it with your friends. AI is an incredible tool that will facilitate the telling of many great stories in new mediums. But if we allow it replace human interaction, we’re doomed.

Out of the theater reaction video:

Last year I only made it to the movie theater a couple times. The year before that I only made it once. The main problem is that movies are so darn long! With only four hours to myself most days, an epic has to fall in the sweet spot that fits my limited time. So this Saturday, when I realized Mel Gibson’s latest directorial effort was only 90 minutes, I had to go.

Even if the reviews were so-so and I wasn’t super interested.

There will be spoilers.

While Mark Wahlberg receives top billing, Flight Risk really belongs to Topher Grace and Michelle Dockery. Grace plays Winston, a former mob bookkeeper hiding out in Alaska, who is being flown back to civilization to testify. As you’d expect from the That ‘70s Show Alum, Grace plays Winston as a nervous talker with an obnoxious sense of humor. You know who doesn’t have a sense of humor? US Marshal Madolyn Harris (Dockery). She has the unfortunate task of escorting him.

Very unfortunate.

Because the mob is everywhere. From the get-go, everyone gets an uneasy feeling about the pilot, Daryl (Wahlberg). As well we should, because he’s not the vetted pilot, but a mob hitman. For him, it’s not about the money, either. No. He just likes the game, the torture, the killing. And he’s willing to maim himself to accomplish his goals. Wahlberg plays with different accents, shaved his head, and says incredibly foul things in an unhinged performance.

And Gibson knows when to hold a shot to wring the last ounce of emotion out of his actors.

Things quickly go wrong on the flight, for everyone, and Daryl ends up tied up in the back. Which is good. Except neither Madolyn nor Winston knows how to fly. Which is bad. Using her sat phone, Madolyn is put in touch with Hasan (Maaz Ali), who shamelessly flirts with her as a distraction and to bring some much needed levity to film.

Because there’s a pervasive sense of danger.

Early in the flight, before Daryl is revealed to not be Daryl, the plane hits a bird, leaving a bloody smear across the windshield. That token of death remains throughout the film, the only bright spot in the drab cockpit. Anyone could die at any moment. This isn’t a franchise film. The guardrails of a potential sequel don’t exist. Had this movie been made in another era, our doubts of getting a happy resolution would only be heightened.

And I couldn’t help but think of 1985’s Runaway Train.

Both movies take place in the Alaskan wasteland. Both movies are set on vehicles that cannot stop and, left unimpeded, will crash. Both movies center around two desperate men and a woman who legitimately shouldn’t be there. And let’s just say, Runaway Train doesn’t have a happy ending. But it is satisfying, in its own way.

And Flight Risk is also satisfying.

I really appreciated that push and pull of the story. This isn’t a situation where our protagonists are always losing. Sometimes Daryl gets the upper hand, but when he’s put down, hard, we enjoy it. Every. Single. Time. It might be stupid, petty, or contrived. But in the moment I didn’t care. He had it coming to him.

Ultimately, Flight Risk isn’t a great movie. Certainly a lesser Gibson.

But if he was just looking for a practice run before getting back in the saddle, he proved he can still work on a small scale. The movie delivered exactly what it promised, no more and no less. I know most people aren’t impressed. Me? I enjoyed it for what it was.