Guest Post: The Heist in the Mulberry Garden By Luis F. Salcedo

The production of silk was one of the closely-guarded secrets of ancient China, as it was a major export item and source of wealth, but a group of Byzantine monks managed to steal the secret by smuggling silkworm cocoons out hidden in their beards. What if the story were told...as a comedy? What if it starred...Seth Rogen?

What follows is the pitch for this movie from Luis "Lou" Salcedo...

The Heist in the Mulberry Garden

It’s The Interview meets the sword and sandal in the Far East. I took some historical liberties with the dates and character but it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Xander (James Franco) and Stavros (Seth Rogen) are two Christian monks leading a mission by the Patriarch of Constantinople to evangelize to the Chinese Emperor and his royal court. Stavros tries to convince the elderly Emperor Wu to convert. Xander meanwhile is busy seducing the Emperor’s granddaughter Liu Jingyan. Xander is caught by the girl’s father Liu Yan. Both Xander and Stavros are imprisoned and sentenced to be executed but luckily escape in the chaos generated by the Eastern general Hou Jing seizing power. The other missionaries under Xander and Stavros’ leadership are not so lucky.

It takes them several years to return to Constantinople in one piece.

The Patriarch of Constantinople is none too pleased. He wants to have them sentenced to do missionary work in Northern Europe (a death sentence!) but the Emperor Justinian (Jesse Eisenberg) gets him to back off when hearing about Xander’s misadventures with the Chinese princess in the mulberry garden. He wants them to go back to China and steal some of the Emperor’s silkworms. Justinian’s marriage to his wife Theodora (Jennifer Lawrence) is on the rocks and there are rumors that she is having an affair and might leave him. The silkworms would come in handy in showing that he is worthy of her love or something like that.

They agree only because the alternative is risking a chance experiencing the blood eagle. The two plan to outwit Justinian and immediately escape to India when the opportunity arises. The Roman emperor, suspicious as he is, puts them under the supervision of his commander Flavius Belisarius (Rupert Friend). They set out from Constantinople, leading an expedition of one thousand, including several hundred Hun mercenaries. They plan on going to China via the steppes.

The Roman expedition is betrayed by the Hunnic commander Dengizich mid-journey. The expedition is additionally almost wiped out by a band of angry Tibetans but Xander, Stavros, Belisarius and part of the expedition reach the border. They are greeted by the general Wu Mingche and his subordinates Pei Ji and Huang Faqu.

The current Chinese ruler, Emperor Xuan of Chen is unimpressed by the Roman expedition and believes them to be spies sent by the Northern Zhou and Qi. Then well…I got nothing else at the moment but you know where this may go.

The final scene would be something along the lines of Seth Rogen and James Franco’s characters sitting alone on a Chinese junk sailing down the Yellow River. Maybe the whole junk is filled to the brim with silkworms.

TENTATIVE CAST

James Franco as Xander
Seth Rogen as Stavros
Jesse Eisenberg as Emperor Justinian
Jennifer Lawrence as Empress Theodora
Ian McKellen as Patriarch Menas
Rupert Friend as General Flavius Belisarius
Daniel Henney as Dengizich
Hasan Minhaj as Ramagupta
Kevin Hart as Rosco

James Hong as Emperor Wu
Henry Golding as Emperor Xuan
Li Bingbing as Lady Qian
Fan Bingbing as Lady Liu Jingyan
Chen Jianbin as Liu Yan
Andy Lau as Wu Mingche
B.D. Wong as Pei Ji
Daniel Wu as Huang Faqu
Liu Xiaoqing as Zhang Yao'er
Jackie Chan as Hou Jing
Ian Chen as Chen Shubao
Chen Shubao

The idea for this movie would be either a giant $100 million dollar money sink that gets torpedoed due to public pressure mounted by a combination of woke social media activists and nationalist elements in the Chinese government who would see the film as insensitive. Expect some whining about cultural sensitivity coming from state media. Or it becomes a moderately successful, acclaimed movie that no one likes to acknowledge except for the rare movie contrarian on Reddit.

Guest Post: An Alternative, Happier Take on PASSENGERS

I'm Facebook friends with Van Allen Plexico, who I met through James R. Tuck at DragonCon awhile back. He's friends with Jayme Lynn Blaschke, who wrote the following post about the science-fiction semi rom-com Passengers on Facebook and graciously allowed me to borrow it.

So take it away Mr. Blaschke. Beware spoilers if you haven't seen it...

Okay, PASSENGERS. The Wife and I saw it last week. You all know about the controversy surrounding the Chris Pratt character's actions. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about something that has been overlooked amidst the hubbub: This movie just isn't very good. At it's heart, it's a rom-com, with all the requisite story beats that go with the type (once Jennifer Lawrence arrives on the scene, that is). 

Trouble is, there's no comedy. There are a few jokes, sure, but the story type depends on humor to carry the narrative. That's missing. Instead, the script compensates by replacing the comedy elements with Serious Bleak Interpersonal Trauma, which doesn't work with the established structure. It *could* have worked, had the film been intended as a "ship in a bottle" type story about mortality, gender issues, consent and free will... but it isn't. Those issues are pulled in to the story for cheap emotional resonance, with no intention of examining them in any depth. Instead, all that is chucked out the nearest airlock for an absurd, action-packed 'splodey finale. Lawrence's character is instantly back in love with Pratt, her bitter hatred and feelings of betrayal completely forgotten. They live happily ever after.

There are four separate movies fighting for supremacy here, and none of them triumph. It's a mess. Jon Spaihts is the screenwriter, and it's hard to judge his ability as few of his scripts have made it to production, despite buzz as to how great he is and almost the entirety of his output coming in the SF genre. Still, I get the impression that this is a guy who learned everything he knows about science fiction by watching Armageddon, Event Horizon, and the like. Bester, Clarke, Dickson and Simak are absent from his reading list, I suspect.

Case in point: HUGE SPOILER WARNING! The denouement comes when Pratt (who should've been vaporized 20 minutes earlier, and killed a dozen times over afterward, except rom-com, remember?) figures out that the "Autodoc" robotic healing chamber aboard the ship can induce a suspended animation-like state in subjects. But there's only one Autodoc on board the ship with more than 5,000 passengers and crew. So Pratt can put Lawrence under, so she can complete her trip, undoing the grave injustice he inflicted upon her earlier. He would die alone, however. Being the Love Of Her Life, she refuses, and they (presumably) grow old and die together during the 88 years of the voyage remaining. Isn't that romantic?

Which is fucking stupid, pardon my French. They didn't have to die. According to all the information given to the viewer, there was nothing to prevent the two from *alternating* their use of the Autodoc. Leapfrog, as it were. Assuming Chris Pratt's character is 30-ish (he's 37 in real life) and Jennifer Lawrence's character is 26 (her real age) or slightly older, and that human life expectancy is somewhat longer in this high-tech future (reaching 100 is reasonably common, I'd expect), then they potentially have decades left they could live on the colony world. Follow: Pratt puts Lawrence under for six months. She wakes up, they spend a month together making mushy sweet love, then *she* puts *him* under for six months. Repeat. 

By the time they arrived at Homestead II, they'd be in their 70s, roughly. Barring any injury or illness the Autodoc couldn't fix, they should be healthy and fit, and due TREMENDOUS compensation from the parent company for saving the gazillion-dollar colony ship and all the liability it going BOOM! would've created. And Lawrence should be independently wealthy in her own right, transmitting breathless, harrowing non-fiction accounts back to Earth to be consumed by rapt audiences (presumably, she still has an agent to handle that--The film's complete amnesia regarding her entire career at the end was another big annoyance for me). Point is, they'd have 30, maybe 40 good years ahead of them, and they'd set foot on the colony world as the richest, most influential people there. They'd arrive as celebrities. Pratt could build Lawrence a MILLION houses and be romantic as hell. Instead, the screenwriter had that final vision of the little wooden house under the tree, and didn't think beyond that.

Human beings want to survive. Want to live. The course this film took was defeatist and doomed. This film could've been so much better. It wasn't. The end.

I admit I hadn't seen the movie due to concerns from friends of more feminist inclinations about how creep-tastic the "I'm lonely to the point of suicide so I'm going to wake this hottie up to keep me company" part was. However, having read more about the movie, it's my understanding they do acknowledge how bad and selfish Chris Pratt's call was, even though he does have some very extenuating circumstances.

About the references to money, it apparently is possible to communicate with Earth--it just takes 13 years to get anything back. So with some creativity, the financial arrangements might be doable.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS and X-MEN: APOCALYPSE Trailers

Over the last couple days, I've gotten a couple really nice cinematic bones thrown my way. The trailers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and X-Men: Apocalypse have just been unleashed.

If the Turtles are giving interviews to the media (the whole "we're brothers who hate bullies" thing), I'm guessing the masquerade has been broken. Of course, when it looks like there's a straight-up alien invasion happening in New York, I think people would be a lot more tolerant of "freaks" than they would be before.

And enter Casey Jones. Pretty impressive--able to take down a bunch of Foot guys in seconds and even evade a gigantic mutant. If the movie is anything like canon he and April are going to hook up. I imagine her cameraman and Michelangelo are going to be so disappointed. :)

I also like what they did with the Foot this time around. They basically seem to operate like a Special Forces battalion and even dress the part in the scene where Casey rescues April from a bunch of them. They still kept the Shredder Japanese, although with recasting he's now a skinnier guy with a goatee. Did the mutagen we see him keeping at the end of the first film make that happen? It could be a nice in-universe explanation.

My one quibble is it looks like in the trailer April is taking off her clothes in public for no reason. Given how this movie is being produced by Michael Bay (albeit directed by somebody else I think), I suspect there's his typical silly Fanservice going on. And I say this as a Megan Fox fan.

I enjoyed the first one, much to some of my friends' horror. Hopefully this new one will be fun.

I admit Apocalypse was not one of my favorite villains back when I was an elementary schooler reading the X-Men comics and watching the X-Men animated series. However, this trailer succeeds in making him really cool.

And Jennifer Lawrence is back as Mystique. I liked her better than Rebecca Romjin, who played her in the X-Men films that came out when I was in high school. She's a great actress generally, plus Mystique in X-Men First Class and Days of Future Past is a much more complicated character. And in her speech to Cyclops, we have her going full-blown Katniss Everdeen, which is always cool. We also have Sophie Turner, best known for Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, as the young Jean Grey. Interesting...

Hmm...Magneto as one of Apocalypse's Four Horsemen? Never seen that before. Given how in Days of Future Past we see an elderly Magneto lamenting how stupid he'd been as a young supervillain perhaps it's his alliance with (or subservience to) Apocalypse that's his wakeup call.

And it looks like they're bridging the gap between the 1960s/1970s First Class era and the 2000 films both chronologically (this is the 1980s) and thematically (Xavier losing his hair).

I wonder if they'll bring in, or at least hint at, Mr. Sinister? I remember reading in the Age of Apocalypse comics--in Mr. Sinister's death scene specifically--that he'd made a Faustian bargain with Apocalypse to gain immortality and the freedom to pursue his scientific research.

HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY Pt. 1 (2014) Review

Last night I saw the third The Hunger Games film, Mockingjay - Part 1,with a friend. Here's my review...

The Plot

With the aid of a group of rebels including Capitol dissidents and the people of the long-thought-destroyed District 13, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and some of the other tributes have escaped from the arena. Now they're in hiding in District 13, whose leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) plans to lead the rebellious districts in the final war against the decadent Capitol. Coin and Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) plan to make Katniss an iconic figure for the rebellion, but the Capitol has cards to play of its own...

The Good

*I liked how they made District 13 look. There's a giant central shaft and tunnels radiating off in different directions, with bomb shelters below and aircraft hangars at the top. The vibe I got off it was that they were living in a re-purposed missile silo, which given what District 13 produced for the Capitol before the rebellion, makes a lot of sense.

*I like how in the overhead shots of District 13 you can see buildings engulfed by the forests, broken bridges, etc. It shows that the people once lived on the surface and retreated below-ground before Capitol aerial attacks without having to explain it.

*Jennifer Lawrence is a great actress. She does a great job conveying emotions like horror (the ruins of District 12) and blinding, straight-up FURY ("you will burn with us"). Bravo.

*I liked Jennifer Lawrence's rendition of the song "The Hanging Tree." It's apparently one of the most popular songs in the world right now. So in addition to being a talented actress and (from what I've read about her) an awesome person in general, now she's a pop star. :) I need to come up with some folk music for the wider culture of my Wastelands world. Something akin to "The Hanging Tree" would really fit. I've gotten the song off iTunes and I've listened to it a whole bunch of times...

*When they cut from her singing "The Hanging Tree" to District Five rebels marching on the giant dam complex that fuels the Capitol, carrying no weapons to defend themselves but explosives to attack the dam, it shows just how much of a cult icon Katniss is becoming to the people of Panem.

*Per my earlier comment, the scene where Katniss returns to District 12 and finds in absolute ruin, complete with, well, go to this image, is well dramatic and well-done. Especially when you see off to the corner what a surviving dog is doing. TVTropes calls it Scenery Gorn and damn if it isn't effective.

*The propaganda campaign the Capitol wages against the rebellion is actually quite clever. No details for spoiler reasons, but it's something that on the surface makes a lot of sense. It's a testament to human ingenuity and fallibility that the most evil things (like the Capitol's exploitative system) can be made to sound so good. If you want something similarly clever, there's this rumination on the Sith.

*The producers have been criticized in many quarters for splitting the singular Mockingjay novel into two movies, but where they split the book makes sense.

*There are some good moments of humor, many of which revolve around Katniss's sister Prim's cat.

The Bad

*It was a little slow in places. I found myself looking at my watch a couple times. That being said, there weren't any obvious places where material could be cut.

*It would have been good to see the Capitol bombers attacking District 13. Although there are good, dramatic reasons to focus on Katniss, her mother, and her sister hiding in the bunkers while dust falls from the ceiling, it would have been cool to intersperse those scenes with images of Capitol aircraft engaging District 13's air defenses.

The Verdict

Go see it. 9.0 out of 10.

More HUNGER GAMES Movies?

According to this link I found while doing some Twitter work for a client, the producers of The Hunger Games film franchise are planning more movies even after the second Mockingjay film is done. It looks like they're leaning toward new characters in the pre-existing universe rather than trying to come up with more adventures for Katniss, whose story is pretty much done with Mockingjay.

(Not going to go into any more detail for spoiler reasons.)

Although this looks like a blatant cash grab, it could actually be pretty interesting. Here are some ideas I just spun off the top of my head:

*A prequel about Haymitch Abernathy--how he became a victor, how his family was murdered in reprisal for his figuring how out to use the Arena itself as a weapon, and how he started the path toward becoming the ornery drunk he is. To make things even more interesting, he'd competed in a previous Quarter Quell where the Capitol demanded twice as many tributes as usual. It'd basically be the first movie with twice as many tributes and (apparently) twice as much brutality, with a male protagonist and a downer ending I won't be getting into for reasons of spoilers.

*The rise of the evil Capitol President Coriolanus Snow. He apparently murdered and manipulated his way into power, so he could be a Villain Protagonist. Think a sci-fi version of House of Cards set in probably one of the most thoroughly vile fictional societies ever created. Given how Snow apparently prostitutes victors to the other decadent aristocrats of the Capitol, this is something that could get into serious rated-R territory here.

*The rise of the Capitol and how it took control of the Districts and established the exploitative system that presumably provoked the first rebellion. If things were really so dark and desperate that one can make any case that the Capitol's system was needed to save humankind (at least in North America) from extinction, this could have a lot of Grey and Gray Morality going on.

*The first rebellion-This is when the Districts rebelled and after defeating them (with the exception of District 13, which made a separate peace), the Capitol imposed the Hunger Games on them. This could be really interesting, especially with the referenced rebel attack on the Capitol in the Rocky Mountains and how it was foiled by aerial bombardment. It could be a Hope Spot (like the scene in Valkyrie where all the top Nazis are getting rounded up and the viewer actually thinks the coup will succeed) followed by a massive downer when the attack is defeated and/or when District 13 betrays the rest of the rebels. This could be so epic it could be made into multiple movies.

Life lesson for writers--create worlds so detailed and "big" that you can write lots of stories set in this world, not just stories about the important characters. This is by no means advice to scrimp on characterization though--I doubt The Hunger Games could be the phenomenon it is now if not for the character of Katniss.

P.S.

Producers of The Hunger Games, if you read this, please don't discard any of the above ideas for legal reasons. I've heard that Hollywood people sometimes ditch good ideas that they find others have come up with due to fear of lawsuits. Remember, ideas can't be copyrighted.