Zardoz

[CharlesPhipps]

We live in a society where Wolfenstein's depiction of the Nazis was controversial.

Better to stop and say it than assume.

[PerrySimm]

Boorman is credited as Director, Producer, and Writer.

Was Orson Welles in Citizen Kane the last person to do all three of those in the same film and actually have the result be good?

How do you feel about, say, Mel Brooks movies? There's no shortage of auteurs out there these days.

Citizen Kane is a great talking point, though. The greatness of Kane is well-understood by any student of film, but today most people have the benefit of not actually having lived through the times in which it was made.

There was a lot of ennui and anomie floating around in the hangover from the end of the 1960s - a time of both free love and yet also senseless conflict and destruction - and Zardoz is a crystal-powered zeerust refraction of those times.

[Rocketboy1313]

I am surprised that Chuck did miss one element in the fact that this is an arthouse movie about the problems of living forever. Specifically, that this is a Space Whale Aesop. It's examining critically an idea that....doesn't exist because immortality isn't real (outside of religious beliefs and transhumanism that doesn't yet exist).

So it's pondering the ideas deeply of a problem that doesn't yet exist.

So? All the best hard science fiction ponders problems that do not yet exist.

I strongly disagree and think the best science fiction analyzes problems of the current world through the veneer of the future.

Replace immortality with the decadence, long life, and free time of western civilization brought on by greater amounts of technology.
Will our society have just a bunch of blithering old people and listless young people no longer being able to see any point in anything because all the fulfilling work is done by computers?

[clearspira]

I am surprised that Chuck did miss one element in the fact that this is an arthouse movie about the problems of living forever. Specifically, that this is a Space Whale Aesop. It's examining critically an idea that....doesn't exist because immortality isn't real (outside of religious beliefs and transhumanism that doesn't yet exist).

So it's pondering the ideas deeply of a problem that doesn't yet exist.

So? All the best hard science fiction ponders problems that do not yet exist.

I strongly disagree and think the best science fiction analyzes problems of the current world through the veneer of the future.

Replace immortality with the decadence, long life, and free time of western civilization brought on by greater amounts of technology.
Will our society have just a bunch of blithering old people and listless young people no longer being able to see any point in anything because all the fulfilling work is done by computers?

Y'know the other thing that those three things will bring? Communism. Oh, we can all chuckle about how silly a concept replacing capitalism is in 2019. But when machines have replaced the working and middle class, the only thing that will be left is no class at all. What's the alternative in a world where there literally are no jobs besides voting in a reactionary president (ahem) that will try and roll the clock back?
See, people have fretted for decades about a Terminator style future. But it isn't Skynet launching nukes that we have to worry about. Its Skynet cleaning our floors, scrubbing our toilets and operating our fast food joints. Unless there is some major upset in technological progress, I give us 50 to 100 years of life being the way we know it today maximum. I guess the next question is: is it a good thing or a bad thing that few reading this will live long enough to see this new age? That depends on your view of the world we live in now is I suppose.

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

I'm just glad the review finally went through. My last requested review from SFDebris and it took years to see.

... Yup! Worth it! So thank you Chuck. I don't care who knows that I requested this. It was me! ME!

Mainly because the request for it to be "Slipped Under the Door" was made years ago too. Things change.

[Madner Kami]

I'm just glad the review finally went through. My last requested review from SFDebris and it took years to see.

... Yup! Worth it! So thank you Chuck. I don't care who knows that I requested this. It was me! ME!

Mainly because the request for it to be "Slipped Under the Door" was made years ago too. Things change.

Thank you o7

[kaingerc]

"Cocaine's a hell of a drug"

[Andrew Joshua Talon]

I mean... This film was so fucked up and so odd and so strange I had to have someone else try to make sense of it. And you can pay Chuck to do that... And frankly given the film in question, no wonder it took so long.

[RobbyB1982]

So, that end shot where they show Connery growing old... where the makeup was elaborate enough it took all day to do it in phases... and they screwed it up TWICE... why not on the third time just film them from the back? You can throw on the extra wigs to show the aging and time passing, and just let body language and acting do the rest. Or have them in silhouette in front of a sunset or something.

Three days of filming to get 10 seconds of footage, in which Connery isn't even recognizable in half of it anyway?

I mean, this is a solution I came up with within seconds of hearing about the problem, so.... why didn't they come up with something else when there were clearly issues?

[Mickey_Rat15]

Did Voyager's wriying staff watch "Zardoz" and say that is what we want to do with the Q Continuum? How they were presented from "Death Wish" forward seems abouy as surreal as could be on what was trying to be a mainstream network.