DOC BROWN SUICIDAL?

BACK TO THE FUTURE:

WHAT IF DOC BROWN WAS 

SUICIDAL?? 

1985: The first time we see scientist Doc Brown is when Marty goes to meet him in the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall. To Marty's surprise the back of Doc's van opens, sending out huge plumes of coolant gas into the air. 

A car reverses down the ramp. Some sort of souped-up Delorean. The door opens revealing the inside is also full of coolant gas from the rear vent ejectors. Toxic if you breathed it long enough. 

Doc appears a little flustered, out of it. But at sight of Marty regains his composure. After all history is about to be made. Literally. So begins an adventure of a life-time. Or several in fact.  

But heres what really bakes the noodle. What if Doc Brown was trying to gas himself in his own failed time machine? But then thought better of it? 

Think about it. He'd lost everything building a time machine in his garage and he wasn't even sure if it would work. 

He'd lost so much already: His mansion burned to the ground in a devastating fire, destroying family heirlooms and leaving no legacy. 

Was it arson? Biff? The real-estate agents? Who knows. But he lost his entire fortune, went bankrupt and had to sell the property to real-estate developers hungry to rip-up Hill Valley. That alone might have crushed lesser men. But not Doctor Emmett Brown. 

For the next three decades he resided in a tiny garage littered with furniture from his beloved mansion that no longer existed. 

Meanwhile the world around him changed radically. The 1980s had signalled the end of Mom and Pop businesses in the wake of corporate take-overs. 

Where grass and trees and fields once stood, now concrete and noise. Truckers roaring passed his window at all hours.  

The Hill Valley he once loved had traded its 1950's soul to modernity. Like many residents Old Man Peabody sold off his property. Miles of farmland as far as the eye could see - just gone. Now a huge carpark. 

 

The local hardware store became a Walmart. Chains like McDonalds killed-off the cool little teen hot-spots like Lous Cafe. 

The grassy Courthouse Square and war memorial removed and paved over for yet another parking lot. 

Motorways ripped-up the suburbs. The wholesome community dissipated under the grinding wheels of advancement. No more Howdy-Doody-Time. Just MTV and the stark reality of Reaganism. 

Hill Valley was no longer 'a nice place to live'. Just another truckers-stop. A place kids wanted to get away from as soon as they were old enough. Kids like Marty McFly.  

So all that time the Doc lived alone, no family, nothing but his dog. He'd sacrificed everything clinging to a hope that his Flux Capacitor would make time travel possible. 

If it did work he could see where all this advancement was going. View firsthand what future lay before mankind. 

Part of him was excited by the prospect while another part felt terrified. What if no blade of grass remained? What if the whole damned world had become one giant parking lot? 

Well maybe there was nothing for it but to go back into the past and be done with it. Find somewhere that made sense. And maybe peace of mind. 

That was the dream. 

But he had to overcome his own doubts first. What if he really was ...crazy? 

Then one day Marty McFly rocks-up into his life on something called a skateboard, listening to something called VanHalen on something called a walkman. Just some dumb kid from the rotting suburbs. But the only person in the whole world who believed in him. Marty gave him strength. So Doc finished the time machine.  

But maybe that fateful night a beleaguered Doc sat in the Delorean and doubted himself once again. What if his calculations were wrong? Jesus. This was insane. 

What the hell am I doing? I've just built a time machine - out of a Delorean?! Stolen nuclear pellets to power it and now Im in cahoots with Libyan terrorists!  

Maybe during that anxiety attack, he flicked some switches and filled the car with coolant gas? He breathed it in. Started feeling drowsy. To hell with it all. 

The voices were right. He was no inventor. He was sixty-five years old! Just another crazy crack-pot who'd wasted his entire life chasing windmills blowing in the American dream. A dream now made of asphalt and concrete. 

But then something stopped him. Maybe the fear of death. Maybe the buzz from the Flux Capacitor, fluxing. 

Maybe because Marty was coming to see him at 1:15am and the last thing that kid needed was finding his best friend dead from car fumes. All his doubts had to go. It was time to man-up and face the music. 

If his calculations were correct, at 88-miles per hour - they were going to see some serious shit. The rest as they say is history. 

TIM BURTONS PLANET OF THE APES

The forgotten Ape Movie.

Tim Burton’s re-imagining of

PLANET OF THE APES.

Most Gen Z's have probably seen Rick Jaffas Apes Trilogy, re-affirming simian dominance with its CGI apes. And as great as those movies are, they probably wouldn't have happened at all, if it wasn't for the ground-work laid down in Tim Burtons Planet of the Apes Re-boot. 

A movie largely forgotten in the wake of swanky CGI superstars such as Jacksons King Kong and Golem from Lord of the Rings, putting all physical make-up prosthetics to shame. But lets look at a simpler time. When CGI knew its place.  

It was the year 2001 and Burtons re-imagining of  Planet of the Apes  was released to an unsuspecting public. But news soon spread. 

I remember this movie was a big deal at the time. The first Ape movie since the 1970s? Wow. And directed by Tim Burton - master of the reboot - such as the Batman franchise. Not to mention Mark Wahlberg and Helen Bonham Carter. So the stakes were high and I was excited to see this re-boot.

DEVELOPMENTAL HELL

A re-boot that was some thirteen years in the making. Originally helmed by indy film-maker Adam Rifkin, he envisioned a more Gladiator Roman Empire approach. It almost happened too, with Rick Baker doing all the make-up.

That is until the suits got cold feet and cancelled the idea. Over the next few years the film fell into developmental hell, seeing various directors come and go, including Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi and Oliver Stone. Even James Cameron was in talks. Various ideas were put before the suits but nothing came of it.

Finally in 1999 Tim Burton agreed to do the job, with renewed interest from Rick Baker.

To save money the suits wanted CGI apes but Burton insisted on Bakers prosthetics. It would be the last time actors would wear make-up in an ape movie.

APE SCHOOL

While the sets were being built, the actors attended ‘Ape School’. An attempt to focus the actors into their characters. Principle actors Eli Roth and Helen Bonham Carter would learn to ride horses and work on simian attributes.

‘It was like going back to Drama school’ Reflected Carter.

For six weeks they had to learn to walk like an ape and make such gestures second nature. 

RELEASE

2001: A long queue stretched round the block. Eager fans waiting to get inside the cinema. And for what it was this movie was a fun roller-coaster ride.

Still from a critics standpoint it felt a little rushed, lacking character development and the slow pacing and realism of the original. 

I just wish it was given more space to breath. Probably should have had a couple of sequels. But hey.

WAHLBERG VS HESTON

Mark Wahlberg plays the ace hero - a stark contrast to the flawed and more realistic character of Charlton Hestons cynical Taylor: a world-weary dude tired of society and just glad to see the back of 20th Century Earth.

Taylor evolved. He started out as a jaded idealist searching for something better than man, but soon learns the hard truth about Ape society and ends up defending a world that he once turned his back on.

In contrast Wahlberg can’t wait to get back home. And this is the thing. Wahlbergs character remains cartoonish by comparison. And like cartoons he never evolves, is never scarred by the things that happen to him. 

Thus all his experiences come to nothing. He goes out much the same as when he went in: butch and boring. 

TARGET AUDIENCE

I think these flaws lay in the marketing of Burtons movie. Clearly the suits were making it impossible for this movie to be anything other than popcorn fodder. 

The original was targeted very much at an adult audience: Humans hunted and strung up like rabbits, rounded up and experimented on. All echoing the Jewish Holocaust most would rather forget.

On the other hand, Burtons movie was a much more dumbed down affair. Humans are enslaved yes but the horror is watered down, dismissed in favour of pandering to a younger audience. A sort of Disney-esque approach.

Despite these faults I still enjoyed Burtons version and Rick Bakers make-up was fantastic. 

The Twilight Zone ending suggested a sequel that would plant itself firmly as a direct adaptation of the Pierre Boulle novel. 

A sequel that never happened because Burton (tired of the suits) washed his hands of the whole affair. 

'I'd rather jump out a window' He said. 

Still the movie has endured. And without Burtons legacy, we wouldn't have Christopher Nolan doing Batman re-boots, let alone those pesky CGI Apes swinging past our screens. 

DIGITAL JUNGLE

Welcome to the 

DIGITAL JUNGLE 

The next step in the Ai revolution 

Typical planned obsolescence directive 101. Microsoft wants all MS10 users to upgrade to MS11, which will include Ai.

What this means is that older perfectly good laptops and computers will suddenly become redundant, only adding to the already overflowing e-waste currently in landfills.

As a result a huge back-lash has ensued as hundreds of consumers refuse to play ball. And it’s no surprise. Because nobody wants it. Yet we can’t seem to put the brakes on it. It’s like trying to ban the automobile and sticking to horses.

CRAP TOPS

With the advent of AI integrated PC's, people are starting to wake up to the fact that something isn't quite right. And it’s been a long time a coming. But we’re only starting to realise the obvious stuff we took for granted is now being taken away from us. The gradual realisation that we’re being duped by the latest in craptops . NONE of which offer complimentary programs.

Essentially swanky tablets with keyboards. But then you have to PAY EXTRA for all the stuff that used to be free such as MS Word. That’s like buying a car but the wheels cost extra. 

They don't even have Dvd drives. That’s now a £20+ extra external drive, that only plays discs encoded in the last few years. Anything older it will spaz-out and you’ll have to buy a more expensive player or just give up.

Same with the Adobe Premier suite. And Pro Tools and so on.

Everything's becoming a subscription to a digital cloud that can be tracked and followed. That you have to pay yearly to access. Now its AI in your PC.

EMPLOYMENT ISSUES 

Another issue is employment. Nobody reads e-mails anymore. You spend all your time perfecting your bespoke Cv and e-mailing it off. Forget it. Just look at the amount of junk-mail each and every one of us gets in our in-boxes. Now imagine you’re an employer with tons of applicants to wade thru, amid a slush of junk-mail.

To combat this, employers now use algorithms to sift thru hundreds of applicants. AI has already made the choices, based on your entire internet presence. From your Facebook to your Tik-Tok accounts.

Time to print out a Cv the old fashioned way and physically hand it in at the companies reception desk, provided of course they have a receptionist in the first place. And they are not a robot.

This is the future. Where the user-experience is dominated by Ai. Innovation will grind to halt, masqueraded by regurgitated ideas, masqueraded by slop. Time to rebel.

WORLD-WIDE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM 

It’s the next step in the Ai revolution. An interactive world-wide digital ecosystem. Where we’re all like ‘totally connected’. Oh kumbaya.

Gee-whiz! It all sounds so jolly romantic! But wait. Didn't they say the same about the internet?

"imagine someone in England able to talk to someone in Australia!"

Wow. Great! Now we have Facebook and a whole bunch of other platforms,  which in themselves are digital eco-systems. But since Covid, they've now become toxic environments of online slander, ghosting, fake accounts and  armchair warriors and trolls.

Don’t get me wrong. Digital eco-systems work great within smaller models. We call them intranets. The IRS uses them all the time, so do many businesses and establishments, including the Pentagon.

But that’s also the problem. A world-wide digital eco-system will not solve the issues of online child trafficking, snuff porn, age legislations. All it will do is compartmentalise your user experience, while all the bad stuff carries on regardless.

It’s all just an excuse for control of your mind. Think Vertical Integration on a planet-wide scale. Imagine everything owned by just one company. The only choice is the companies choice. But that’s no choice at all.

And with a world wide digital eco-system, thus we become embroiled in an echo chamber of our own making. 

DIGITAL JUNGLE

Enter the Digital Jungle: where everything wants to scam you. Eat you alive. 

If you think accountability is bad now, just wait until you are in the digital jungle.  

In the good old days, you could get ill from contaminated bottled water due to human error. In the digital jungle however, it could be Anthrax because no human element will be involved other than the nut-cases who implemented it.

KILLER DRONES

A digital jungle could be rife with drones because information is king and a drone is vital to intel-gathering. 

Cyber attacks could be a thousandfold  and policing them would be impossible. 

Worst still, these drones could be armed with guns and missiles. 

Might sound far-fetched but this has actually happened in Sudan, where  drones fired missiles at a Kindargarten, killing at least 79 people, 33 of which were children. 

Now imagine this in sleepy England:  your kid is being bullied at school. Without accountability, any jealous child could order kill-drones off Wish and attack their rival classmates. 

PLANETARY ID CARDS

Britcards are already being forced upon an unsuspecting public. The potential means you losing all control of your banking and travel privileges. Integrated Ai means that if you miss that red light, a parking fine, or IRS penalty, could mean a block on your bank cards. 

Worse case scenario, a Digital Jungle means the inevitable planetary ID card, which would mean nowhere would be safe to run to.  Even your own Ai laptop would turn you in. But perhaps I'm a little carried away here.

BANKING HACKS

Worst still, your bank account could be bled dry due to being hacked 24/7. Because all your personal information is online and any AI can hack into it as everything about you is linked by AI. So then you have to pay various subscriptions to keep you 'safe'. Its a tried and tested gangster-racket. In other words: "Protection Money".  

THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO 

It was bad enough when You Tube became part of the Google suite. Gone are the days when you could just post dick-picks online and run away laughing. 

Now everything is accountable. Trackable. Now those dick-pickers have to subscribe. Phew! But as a result we’re all becoming part of the digital eco-system, where anything can happen and will.

Yup. Its the last days of disco folks. 2025 marks the end time that we'll  be able to decipher truth from AI. With such built into your computer, you will be fed bespoke news. Bespoke soulless Ai Slop. You won’t know what is real and what is not. 

And that goes for Presidents and dictators too. The amount of political Ai slop being churned out is unbelievable. Nothing seems real anymore. Fake news is King. But like all kings, they have their day. 

DEATH OF THE INTERNET 

Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson predicts that folks will no longer put stock in the internet and will no longer use it as a source of fact and objective information. The result of this could mean the death of the internet. 

This could be a blessing. The world could turn back to traditional methods of trade, such as real shops and face-to-face business.

And it’s no surprise this happens, when you can’t even buy something online these days without getting ripped-off.

TAKE THE POWER BACK

Finally peeps are drawing the line. It’s a little late in the game but it’s a start. I guess.

I for one still have a couple of old laptops using XP. They have FREE MS Paint (!) FREE MS Word and a whole bunch of other software most folks now have to subscribe for. I’m like the one-eye asshole in the country of the blind! But it wasn’t some miracle hindsight. The modems simply broke and couldn’t do upgrades. And that’s why they have lasted for the best part of twenty years.

What’s more they have Dvd drives (!) I get to play my favourite Dvds and Cds, burn discs and so on. I should capitalise on it. Next year I’ll be a millionaire, Rodders.

So time to dig out and dust off those old Dvd players. Keep your old Cds and Dvds. Hell. Even VHS. Because those classic movies and songs will no longer be available ANYWHERE without paying a massive subscription. Like that sound engineer who's been thru twenty computers over the years but his bulky hunk-of-junk tape player from 1965 keeps chugging along beautifully.

It is literally like the last five minutes of Terminator 3, where the good guys use Analogue to fight AI. And everyone reading this needs to do the same.

Don’t be duped by the digital wool being pulled over your eyes. Yes the car quickly killed off the horse. But now we are paying for it dearly. It’s time we got back to the future we wanted. 

If we are to navigate this new digital jungle at all, the balance between technology and human needs must be restored. And that requires people talking face to face with our lord and masters and holding them accountable.  

DISNEY VS DR WHO

WHY DISNEY PULLED THE PLUG ON 

DR WHO 

Like it or not. Dr Who's entire popularity is the direct result of the Daleks. 

A fact original producer Verity Lambert took very seriously. And if it wasn't for her insistence on keeping the Daleks in the show, there would be no series.  No Dalek Mania. No Dalek Movies. No legacy at all.

Writer Terry Nation would have faded into obscurity and the BBC would likely have imploded long ago. 

Verity Lambert Original Producer of Dr Who 

Show runner Russell T Davis at least acknowledged this fact and brought the Daleks back during his initial tenure. Gaining 8.64 million viewers. Enough to prick up the ears of Disney. By 2023, they had added the show to their streaming platforms, giving Dr Who a wider, global audience. 

However RTD has miss-placed this success with his own merits, rather than admitting it was really the shows historical monsters.

And heres the dilemma. RTD brought Dr Who back from the dead.

But instead of embracing what aint broke, he tried to appease to the LGBTQ minority and put Dr Who in a dress without any context as to why, other than ticking boxes.

Thus creating an echo-chamber of bland assistants during Whitakers time and throwing Nguti Gatwa into painful musical numbers and expecting him to be taken seriously.

Gatwa left the show exhausted in every sense of the word. Trying to live up to RTD's impossible standards.

That said, there's been some great stories of late: The Devils Chord, Dot and Bubble, The Story & The Engine to name but a few.

But the lack of Daleks of late, just shows how disenfranchised RTD has become with them, despite owing his entire success to their involvement.

Point of fact: he was given a Dalek prop (that builders spent weeks constructing), only for him to let it rot in his back garden. 

What does that tell you?

So its no surprise that Disney pulled the plug.

Russell T Davis: gloating over his miss-placed success

QUATERMASS 2

   

QUATERMASS II

THE ULTIMATE SEQUEL 

When cinema goers got treated to the second outing in the Quatermass movie series in 1957, reviews were at best, mixed. Which is a shame because this film has a shed-load to offer all fans of sci-fi.  I mean, it even has Sid James in it from Carry On. Whats not to like? 

For another thing, Quatermass 2 economises its limited screen time with great efficiency. Right off the bat, we are thrown into the mystery of Winnerden Flats, a rural town wiped from the face of the Earth without explanation. 

Like some Sci-Fi Columbo, Quatermass is on the case, investigating a shady organisation supposedly making food produce, using a recipe so secret, its company goons are willing to kill all trespassers. 

And when it comes to sequel suffixes, this was the first film ever to simply add '2' or 'II' on the title, spurning a long line of movies that followed suit. Notably Friday the 13th Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...etc 

In terms of mystery and action, Quatermass 2 does not disappoint. A solid plot entrenched in conspiracy and pod-people taking over the Earth.  A testament to its time, it was originally written as a six-part Tv series by one of the BBC's leading script writers Nigel Kneale. 

However, Kneale despised the movie adaptation, particularly actor Brian Donlevy as Professor Quatermass, feeling his delivery was too wooden and John Wayne Yanky Doodle for the part. Still, a ham-fisted Donlevy seemed a fairer bet than his tv counterpart, (John Robinson) who approached the character as a affluent debonair Sherlock Holmes / Noël Coward in space. 

Kneale also part-wrote the script for the movie version and although he was unhappy with the final result, the movie adaptation certainly packed more punch than its Tv counterpart. It also had a better ending. Whereas the TV version had  Quatermass  blundering out into deep space, the movie version kept the plot firmly on the ground. 

Where as Invasion of the Body Snatchers reflected fears of communism, Quatermass 2 stabs at the very heart of the then Conservative Government. Much like today, 1950s Britain was a maze of bureaucracy gone mad, as Government funding is squandered, thrown nilly-willy at pie-in-the-sky endevours, such as taking control of the Suez Canal, against public opinion. 

'Quatermass II was about the evil of secrecy...'  Stated Kneale in an interview with writer John Fleming.  'It was a time when mysterious establishments were popping up: great radar establishments and nuclear establishments like Harwell and Porton Down for germ warfare. All the Quatermass things have been very much tied to their time...'

If anything, Quatermass 2 suffers from being shot in black and white. For a film of this scope, featuring complex battle scenes set against an industrial complex, some of its impact is lost purely because of the lack of colour. Certain scenes are shot in semi-darkness and its difficult to see the entire splender that unfolds due to the quick editing. 

Maybe one day we'll see a colorisation of this film. In the meantime enjoy. 

WHEN ACTORS SLAG

WHEN ACTORS SLAG THEIR OWN MOVIES

It kinda sucks when you go to all that effort to make a movie and your actors slag the shit out of it.

Tippy Hedron's bad experience on The Birds doesn't count. Nor does Ed Harris's near-death experience in James Camerons The Abyss.

I’m talking about divas getting paid huge bucks to sit around all day like lounge lizards and yet they still complain.

Maybe  these types of actors should cut the film-makers a break? 

Take Star Wars for example. Everybody hated it. The camera crew hated it. The editor refused to edit it. The actors thought it was the worst script they’d ever read.

Director George Lucas was really up against it.

‘It almost didn’t get made at all’  He once said. And no wonder. With that sort of encouragement, film-makers require tough skins to deal with such rejection.

Janeane Garofalo played The Bowler in the 1999 cult-classic Mystery Men and slagged the movie off big time.  She said: 

"It was very long hours and very little got accomplished. It was one of those alleged blockbusters that was over budgeted and over hyped. It went from being a great script when it was sent to me, to being - in my opinion - a fairly mediocre non-event. But it was nice to get paid that much to sit around. I have no idea what they were trying to do with the film, but they sure didn't accomplish it."

Although it bombed at the box office, fans united world-wide in their praise of its slick humour, stunning sets and imagination.

It really doesn't take much to bomb a movie. A couple of bad reviews is enough. In the 1960s Dalek Mania took Britain by storm.

So it was only natural to make movies about them.

But only two ever got made before the British Press got their claws in and killed it with a couple of bad reviews. Yet, despite all that, the films became cult classics and even actor Peter Cushing regarded his portrayal of Dr Who as one of his faves.

Tom Hardy was pretty cynical of Mad Max: Fury Road. But I believe he formally apologised after seeing it.

Invariably it’s the end result that counts. Because long after the movie stars of today fade into tomorrow, who cares about who bitched about what.