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Heinlein's 'All You Zombies' Now a Sci-Fi Movie Head Trip
HughPickens.com writes: Sara Stewart reports at the NY Post that the new sci-fi movie Predestination, opening January 9, is "loopier than Spielberg's [Minority Report]; its plot twists and turns 'like a snake eating its tail,' one character remarks, until you're not sure whether its developments are even plausible in a fictional universe." It's based on Robert A. Heinlein's science fiction classic All You Zombies, first published in 1959. The story involves a number of paradoxes caused by time travel, further developing themes explored by Heinlein in a previous work, By His Bootstraps, published some 18 years earlier. Predestination's plot concerns the intersection of a time-traveling assassin and an androgynous young writer
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"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I watched this film and and followed the plot fine, but was left feeling very unsatisfied at the end of it.
Most movies involving time travel generally try avoid paradoxes or major plot holes, but with Predistination actively embraces time travel paradoxes, taking them to the extreme.
Maybe someone thought it would make for a "deep" and clever plot, and I had no problem following it, but as I understand it completely, I just felt frustrated with it in the end, because, the science fiction of time travel aside, it's an impossible scenario with no logical resolution.
Anyway, without posting major spoilers I won't say anything more.
FYI: There are no zombies in this movie. (Or, at least, there were none in the original story, and it doesn't look like they randomly added any to the movie.)
It's just straight-up scifi time travel.
Ever read "The House in November", by Keith Laumer? Kind of the same thing, but more story to it. "All You Zombies" was short, sweet, and to the point.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
But then I realized something very simple - his story is at heart all of our stories, only much LESS complicated.
The heart of the question about him is 'where did he come from and why does he exist?"
And the honest truth is we don't know where ANYONE comes from or why ANYTHING exists.
Consider the case of a cyclical universe. Many physicists believe that the multi-verse constantly spews out big bangs, that spew out more big bangs, in an endless cycle.
That model of the universe is at heart identical to his existence, just on a much larger scale.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
True. I would Love to see "Stranger in a Strange land", "I will fear no Evil", or "Friday" turned into a movie
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Loved that story (and not for the obvious reasons). Heinlein tackled themes decades before they were mainstream, never mind acceptable. I guess that's one of the reasons his stories stand the test of time.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Starship Troopers was directed by Paul Verhoeven, who likes to push action movies just over the edge of campiness. Action movies that don't fit either the comedy or drama genre fall flat, because frankly, shoot-run-shoot-chase-shoot is tedious. You need to either care deeply about the characters portrayed, or be entertained by laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Verhoeven emphasizes the absurd, which makes scenes like the one where Clancy Brown throws the dagger through Jake Busey's hand during training ( then yells "Medic!") hilarious.
Before I saw it, there was a part of me that wanted Starship Troopers to be a serious movie worthy of the title of Sci Fi, and I remember being initially disappointed that it wasn't. But because he turned it into a "fun" movie, I came to appreciate it as entertainment.
John
If you can't follow the loops you are asleep since it paces them out, and it's consistent.
The Space Corps stuff is a good bit of background scenery to the main story and is the main thing that tells you it's in Heinlein's idea of the 1970s and a good way to tell the viewer that you don't have to worry about events in the film that never happened in the 1970s.
Very good casting, good plot, good acting (some people will hate the accent of one character but I think it fits) - maybe a bit slow in parts but that could be so that the viewer can keep track of the time loops while half asleep or drunk.
So how did I see it? I'm in the future (international date line), and it had a limited release in Australia a few months ago.
Agreed. Starship Troopers was awful. I LOVED it.
But I would remark that the original story All You Zombies, predates it by decades, and as such deserves a bit of credit. The people that wrote Primer, read All you Zombies, or I'd have already eaten my great grand sons' hat.
Moreover, this movie is far more understandable. As such, it can be considered superior, in at least one aspect.
Basically, it depends on how you judge a movie
You are judging all time travel movies by the same rules. I don't that that's appropriate, anymore than judging all cowboy movies by comparing them to Blazing Saddles.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
For a Heinlein time travel story, I prefer "The Door into Summer". It's not nearly as complicated as "Zombies", but it fits together well.
(Yes, I've thought about this too much.)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
You didn't get it. One world. One timeline. A human that wasn't descended from the standard strain of humanity. It's a fulfillment "paradox" in that it's a paradox only if the main character would make different choices. But the character doesn't because the character didn't and the character won't. It can be argued that the character can't make different choices any more than George Washington can make different choices about what is already set in history. Once you accept the concept of time travel and reject the concept of "many worlds", all of history throughout time is set in stone. Predestination.
Actually, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would be great as a movie...