Reflections on STRIKE TEAM ALPHA, 30-Odd Years Later

Staying over at my grandparents' house when I was a child in the early 1990s, I found my uncle's trove of 1970s and 1980s geekdom. We're talking Doctor Who novels (I specifically remember Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion), Dragon magazine, etc. And in particular a lot of tabletop war games, including Strike Team Alpha from 1978. That one was my personal favorite, largely because they had a dinosaur-like antagonist race called the T'Rana. Uncle John eventually let me take it home, but I misplaced it somewhere in my parents' house.

Well, after years of sporadically looking for a new copy (including finding and calling up the original creator, who sent me some pictures of game-manual artwork), I found one on eBay and ordered it (as part of a two-pack with Full Thrust, a British space-fleet tabletop game that's still in production today). Although I don't really like playing tabletop wargames, I do really enjoy the lore and I do remember liking Strike Team Alpha's storyline.

So on this merry Thanksgiving, I got the manual out of the plastic sleeve they sent it in and re-read it for the first time in close to 30 years. How did it hold up? Well here goes...

*The backstory predates Warhammer 40,000's "every faction is evil" darkness by nine years. Earth demands a 95% tax rate from asteroid colonists due to the massive self-importance of the people, or at least their leadership ("Earth being the self-acknowledged center of the Universe decided that its asteroid colonies were not paying the proper respect to the birthplace of humanity"). Colonies that cannot or will not pay are wiped out, prompting the surviving colonists to convert their habitats into generation ships and bug out for another solar system. Earth's population, rather than realizing their own greed and tyranny provoked this and failing to acknowledge the sheer courage this took, call this "the Exodus of Cowards." And when the belters foolishly reveal where they've set up their new homes, the result is the founding of a united Earth government that launches an incredibly destructive war of conquest. Like seriously, three-quarters of the colonists on Tau Ceti are killed in the opening nuclear attack and the subsequent "War of Reclamation" is specifically described in the manual as "a war of terror." One gaming scenario involves miners being used for forced labor rebelling and offering the metals they'd mined to mercenaries to help them re-establish self-government. And that's before the wars with the cat-like Sha'anthra (who wage wars almost for fun with other species or with each other) and the T'Rana (who are genocidal Explosive Breeders) kick off. And the outlying colonists, though they're clearly higher on the moral food chain than the Terran Federation, will often fight each other.

(The more I think about it, the more this sounds like Joss Whedon's space Western Firefly and its film adaptation Serenity.)

*Per the above, although the back-story isn't preachy and annoying, you can tell the politics involved. Not only is the initial exodus from Sol driven by a greedy centralized government that taxes people literally to death, but the Terran colonial occupation regime explicitly forbids ownership of energy weapons by private citizens or even local governments. As a result, colonial militias are equipped with broadly late 20th or early 21st Century assault rifles, machine guns, etc. despite the presence of literally predatory alien races, human pirates, etc. And many of the scenarios the game-book provides include colonial rebels and their hired mercenaries fighting collaborators and the Terran Federation years afterward. Live free or die, indeed. The game came out not long before Ronald Reagan became the U.S. President and reflects some of the zeitgeist of that era.

*There's an apocryphal quote out there that says amateurs talk about tactics and dilettantes talk about strategy, but professionals talk about logistics. And the logistics make sense. The game emphasizes small-unit combat because supporting a large army across interstellar space would be a nightmare. The frontier colonies are underdeveloped (likely intentionally, to keep them from rebelling) and the core industrial worlds are so far away. The supplies and gear for super-advanced weaponry used by the Terran Federation's Marines would have be carried across light-years. So campaigns would need to be short and sharp.

*Speaking as someone who is now vastly more knowledgeable about history than when he was eight, the war with the T'Rana looks a lot like WWII, particularly the last madness of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We're talking an overly-aggressive enemy that fights to the death, literally eats their enemies, picks unnecessary fights that ultimately doom them, will destroy conquered territory rather than allow it to be liberated, etc. The end of the war looks like what would have happened if the U.S. had rejected both the atomic bomb and invading the Home Islands and decided to continue the conventional bombing/blockade...something that wouldn't work against something as large and self-sufficient as an entire star system. The T'Rana are (mostly) contained, but there are still raids.

*The game features tactical nuclear weapons, not just small nukes delivered by missile or aircraft that one might expect, but nuclear weapons deployed by individual soldiers. We're not just talking something like the infantry-operated Davy Crockett recoilless rifle that seems like something that would actually be useable (albeit unbelievably risky to due the fact a single infantryman or combat team could start a nuclear war), but nuclear hand grenades. The game was clearly devised in a time before precision-guided weapons that would allow more-accurate conventional weapons to be used in place of battlefield nukes. There are also fusion-beam weapons called "sunguns" that are sort of like flamethrowers, except one needs to wear anti-radiation protective gear.

*However, the game does feature something called a "battlerob," which is essentially a semiautonomous robotic light tank. Groups like Amnesty International have already spoken out against "killer robots," so this is something that's going to be a political issue in the future.

*The game also features rocket-propelled explosive ammunition, much like Warhammer 40,000's bolters.

*One of the play-testers was George Alec Effinger, a noted science fiction writer and winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards.

*There are quite a number of typos in the manual.

Verdict: Still a fun world to blow things up in (and it was interesting that many concepts were used in later, more successful games), but finding a copy (and especially finding the Ral Partha figures designed for the game) is going to be a real pain. It'd be nice if there was licensed fiction set in this world (that's one reason I reached out to the original creator), but that seems a bit...unlikely at this point.

More Alternate History: The Latin Empire of Constantinople Thrives? The Yamato Goes Out Like A Boss?

Two more interesting alternate-history scenarios from the Internet's premiere forum. Just because I had myself banned from there six years ago (except for a brief drop-in back in mid-2017 to plug The Thing In The Woods) doesn't mean I can't read the public forums and funnel people to some worthy stories.

Yet Another Roman Empire: The Latin Empire of Constantinople-During the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the vindictive duke of Venice redirected the crusading army to Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. After various intrigues they ended up seizing control of the city, sacking it, and creating a Catholic empire controlling the city and its environs while Greek lords or Turkish invaders grabbed the rest. Although the "Latin Empire of Constantinople" was terminated after a century or so, many historians believe this was the point of no return for the Empire even though it didn't fall until 1453.

But what if the Catholic rulers of the "Latin Empire" had more outside support and were more competent? There are many historical cases of an empire ruled by a foreign conquest dynasty thriving, with Qing China being a major example. In this scenario, the intervention of France and Holy Roman Empire allow the Latin Empire to wipe out one of its major competitors early on, giving them a stronger territorial base and greater independence from the Italian merchant princes. The Latin Empire's ruling family also seeks to intermarry with the leaders of the various breakaway regions like Trebizond, playing the game of thrones in Anatolia.

How does it work out for them? You'll have to read the timeline to find out. :)

The Final Japanese Mass Naval Sortie: Operation Ten-Go-During the historical battle of Okinawa, the Japanese launched Operation Ten-Go, in which they dispatched the enormous battleship Yamato and much of their remaining surface fleet. The idea was that the ships would fight their way to Okinawa, beach themselves, and support the defenders with their massive guns until they were destroyed. In real life, the fleet was intercepted and utterly destroyed by air attack in one of history's great anti-climaxes. Here's a computer recreation of the Yamato's obliteration (complete with what might be gun-camera footage from the planes involved), complete with the absolutely ridiculous numbers of carrier-based aircraft that were brought to bear on the world's biggest battleship and its escorts.

 

However, in this scenario, the Japanese fleet is able to get more fuel from Singapore to Japan itself and dispatch more ships on the mission. This allows the Japanese fleet to weather the carrier attacks that in real history destroyed it and have one last surface engagement with the American battle line.

How does it go? Read to find out.

West African Socialist Federation? President H.P. Lovecraft? More Fun Alternate Timelines

The good old alternate history forum serves as another place where I can find content to blog about, even though I'm no longer a member. Here are a couple interesting ones I found over the last couple weeks.

African Yugoslavia: A West African Story-In this one, a mutiny by French African soldiers who haven't been paid for their World War II service kicks off a war of national independence in what's now Mali beginning in 1944. The French's heavy-handed response (in real life this resulted in a massacre) turns more and more of their African subjects--and in particular their African soldiers--against the government. Various rebel groups unite under a clique of intellectuals advocating "African socialism" who in real life became the leaders of independent Senegal, Mali, etc. Faced with a prolonged war in the interior of French West Africa when they've been bled white by World War II and fighting against rebels in Southeast Asia as well, the French ultimately cut their losses and concede independence. What results is an authoritarian left-leaning African federation that refuses to cooperate with the Soviet Union--as the title suggests, basically Yugoslavia in Africa. The author appears to be from West Africa himself and has very detailed knowledge of the history, cultures, and personalities involved, so it's a pretty interesting read.

The King In Yellow: The Presidency of H.P. Lovecraft-In real life, author H.P. Lovecraft was a socially-inept recluse and starving artist, but this is one of many things that change as a result of the dying Dowager Empress failing to poison her imprisoned reformist nephew, the legitimate Qing Emperor. He regains the throne and purges Manchu reactionaries, provoking a three-sided Chinese civil war and ultimately the partition of China. Ripples from these changes include a healthier and more prosperous family life for the young Lovecraft, who serves in this timeline's version of World War I, begins publishing his own political magazine, and ultimately runs for office. 

Although it would be easy to portray Lovecraft as essentially an American Hitler (after all, they were both starving artists in their younger days and extremely, extremely racist), Lovecraft's real-life views were a lot more complex, especially as he grew older. What happens is interesting--he governs as functionally a New Dealer, with a secret society/government agency whose member use his real-life fictional creations as titles (in deliberate mockery of the Ku Klux Klan) that serves as his muscle. There are a lot of in-jokes pertaining to Lovecraft's real-life fictional writing, although in this timeline that exists only as poetry books he writes to deal with wartime PTSD. The wider geopolitical situation is complex...in addition to a divided China, Mussolini stays a socialist and becomes dictator of Italy after WWI as part of a wider Communist bloc that includes the Soviet Union and a Communist Germany where historical Communist leader Rosa Luxembourg (who tried to overthrow the nascent Weimar Republic and ended up getting shot and thrown into a river) is ultimately succeeded by none other than real-life Nazi Joseph Goebbels. This is less bizarre than it sounds--earlier in his Nazi career, Goebbels was part of a more left-wing faction (which emphasized the "socialist" part of National Socialist) before throwing in with Hitler and his more right-wing clique that was supported by the military and the industrialists.

Oh, and Nikola Tesla is heavily involved in this world's Manhattan Project. :)

Chamberlain Grows a Spine and a German-Soviet Truce: Two WWII Alternate Timelines

The premiere alternate history forum on the Internet once again doesn't disappoint, with two interesting new timelines for your entertainment. Both are set during World War II, one beginning before the war actually starts and the other in 1942 or so. Here goes...

Defying The Storm-The mighty CalBear, the gear-head who wrote a post on this blog about the failure of the Iraqi Army against ISIS and a book-length alternate history on how the Nazis taking Stalingrad could have extended the war into the 1950s, came up with a somewhat more subtle scenario. The divergence is that Dr. Morrell, Hitler's doctor who was feeding him all sorts of drugs, is killed by Allied bombing and Hitler's new doctor discovers just what his predecessor was doing. Hitler is weaned off the various drugs and is much more clear-headed and not so nuts. Meanwhile, Stalin develops a kidney infection, ignores his doctors' advice, and dies just as the Soviets win the Battle of Kursk. As a result, the vague talks of a separate peace in 1943 that didn't go anywhere result in a compromise peace. Germany keeps the Baltics and parts of Ukraine and returns some territory to the Soviets, who in turn resume their pre-war trade with Germany. There's also some puppy-kicking by both sides--the Germans agree to return all Soviet prisoners of war, with those who fought for the German army specifically identified, while the Soviets in turn deporting all Soviet Jews into German-occupied Poland (!!).

(Just in case we forgot just how malignant the totalitarians were. CalBear's book depicts what the Nazis wanted to do to the Russians if they won, which would have been vastly worse.)

Now Germany is able to rely once more on Soviet oil and grain and can move its forces into Italy to contest the Allied advance and into France to deter a large-scale invasion. But the United States is about to unleash the atomic bomb and neither the Germans nor the Soviets think this peace will last. Things are about to get very interesting. This whole scenario was inspired by this depiction of a naval battle between the 1945-level U.S. Navy and what the Germans could have had if they'd won--or at least not lost--the war in the East, so we might be seeing that scenario at some point.

(EDIT: Owing to some forum drama about whether the USSR would have made such a peace treaty, the thread may have been moved to a members-only section. If you click on the link above and you go to a log-in screen, that might be what happened.)

Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942-This one diverges from our history during the Sudetenland Crisis. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is injured in a plane crash upon returning from a diplomatic visit to Germany. This delays the Munich Conference until after the Nazis' infamous Kristallnacht, which disabuses Chamberlain's notions that Hitler could be reasoned with. Although Czechoslovakia cannot be saved, British rearmament starts earlier than in real history and this has consequences, most obviously when the Germans attack Norway. The Germans also don't get Czechoslovak assets in British banks, something that will likely have some negative economic consequences for them.

(The book Wages of Destruction describes just how much of the early Nazi economy was smoke-and-mirrors nonsense kept going by loot from their earliest conquests, like the Austrian and Czechoslovak gold reserves.)

So if you're interested in World War II and in particular things that could have gone differently, these are both worth a read.

Books Make Good Miniseries: S.M. Stirling's DRAKA

Once upon a time at DragonCon, author S.M. Stirling said that books typically make good miniseries and short stories make good movies. I'm an administrator of a Facebook group dedicated to his works and recently the possibility of films or TV series based on his notorious Draka series from the late 1980s and early 1990s came up. This set the wheels spinning--I'm inclined to think that each of the three main books would make for a good three-hour TV miniseries.

Marching Through Georgia-This would be based on the first novel and depict the Draka's entrance into this timeline's World War II. While the Draka armies surge into the southern entrances of the Caucasus mountain passes, paratroopers under the command of young officer Eric von Shrakenberg land in the northern entrances to trap the German defenders, accompanied by American reporter William Dreiser. Although Dreiser doesn't like the Draka's practice of large-scale slavery, he is intent on convincing his American audiences to cooperate with them to stop Germany, which has conquered European Russia and is currently enslaving and killing Jews, Russians, and Poles by the millions. Here we can see all the consequences of Generalplan Ost in their horror. 

However, throw in enough about the Draka as the story goes along that we get the creeping realization their winning might be even worse. Through Eric's memories and Dreiser's heavily-regulated visit we see just how horrible life in the Domination is. On leave Eric has to stop two Janissaries (soldiers drawn from the slave population) from raping his driver, millions of slaves are worked to exhaustion in military factories to prepare for the coming war, Dreiser is threatened by a Security Directorate minder who thinks he's going to try to spread sedition among the slaves, and Eric's father Karl tells Dreiser it's in the US's interest to help the Draka stop Germany and Japan from becoming great powers because the alternative to their dividing the world between them (and the Draka enslaving everybody under their control) is Germany, Japan, and the Domination allying against the United States. Draka small-talk reveals even more horrors. For example, Eric's fighter-pilot sister thinks buying a female Russian guerrilla as essentially a concubine would be doing her a favor (the master-slave sexual dynamic encourages a lot of situational lesbianism among Citizen women), other soldiers talk about how "it's a long way to the Atlantic" as though they've planned to conquer their ostensible French allies from the get-go, Dreiser thinks that the Draka view the rump Soviet state in Siberia as a "caretaker" before they take over themselves, and even the "distressingly liberal" Eric advocates the Domination merely "regulate and tax" occupied Europe rather than enslave the entire population and casually discusses sterilizing alcoholics and "retards." 

Ultimately, even though the Nazis are defeated, the Security Directorate assassins sent after Eric for his liberal-minded ways are dealt with, and Dreiser makes arrangements for Russian guerrillas who helped the Draka to be evacuated to the United States, we have a more ominous ending than a happy one. It's been a long time since I've read this book, but the first half could be the everything leading up to a large-scale last-ditch Nazi attack that threatens to destroy Eric and company and relieve the trapped Germans and the second half could be the Nazi attack itself and the aftermath.

Under The Yoke-This one is based on the second book and would be a straight-up horror show, albeit with a slightly happy ending. All the stuff the Germans were doing in Russia and Poland? The victorious Draka are doing it on a somewhat more subtle level from the English Channel to the Pacific Ocean. American secret agent Frederick Kustaa, pretending to be a brain-damaged Draka veteran (i.e. so he doesn't have to imitate their very distinctive accent, spar, dance, etc), is sent in to facilitate the defection of a European nuclear scientist who'd been given Citizenship but soon found he could no longer bear working for the absolutely worst people ever. However, while trying to smuggle the scientist out of Draka-occupied France, he gets involved in the internal politics of a newly-established Draka plantation, including rebellious young Communist Chantal LeFarge who has attracted the attentions (ahem) of both the master and the mistress and Polish nun Marya Sokolowska, a Resistance agent. 

The first half would be everything leading up to Frederick's arrival at the plantation. Frederick's insertion into Finland and helping Finnish rebels fight Draka occupation forces while bachelor Draka officer Andrew von Shrakenberg is unknowingly hunting for him would be a big part; meanwhile you have Marya and Chantal arriving at the plantation and becoming part of the household staff. The second half would be everything that happens after Frederick arrives. The ending features a pregnant Chantal escaping with the American extraction team while Frederick, Marya, and Andrew give their lives to stop a dirty bomb from detonating--for Chantal at least it ends somewhat happily and the other three essentially become martyrs saving thousands of people from death by radiation poisoning.

The Stone Dogs-This one, based on the third book, would be a generational saga like something out of James Mitchener. To tighten it up, I'd start right before the 1970s secession of India from the anti-Draka Alliance for Democracy and the consequent Draka invasion to keep the focus on Frederick and Marya LeFarge (the twin children of Chantal, fathered by a Draka rapist but born free in America who become secret agents), the young Draka officer Yolande Ingolfsson, and the returning Eric as a reformist Draka politician. To tighten it still further, the miniseries could focus on the race for a stalemate-breaking superweapon. The Draka have the titular "Stone Dogs," a bioengineered virus intended to drive the Alliance military insane, while the Alliance has a computer virus that causes Draka military assets to self-destruct when the Domination goes to war footing (and an almost-afterthought sleeper ship The New America in the event of a Draka victory). The first half of the miniseries can end with the cornered Eric forced to launch a nuclear attack on the Alliance when the spiteful Yolande engineers the escape of the enslaved Marya, whom she'd deliberately told about the Stone Dogs. The second half can cover the resulting nuclear war and the peace treaty in which the Draka grant Citizenship to the Alliance survivors on the Moon and beyond (but not on Earth, for more horror) and allow the New America to leave the solar system and establish a colony at Alpha Centauri. It'd be a combination of 2001 (or 2010 since that involves a US-Soviet confrontation) and The Day After.

Drakon-Per Stirling himself, this fourth book would be the one that would work best as an actual movie--I think he compared it to Predator. Only the very beginning and a couple minor scenes take place in the world of the victorious Domination and most of it in modern-day New York City. Basically an accident with wormholes deposits female Homo drakensis (the Draka genetically-engineered themselves into a superhuman master race) Gwendolyn Ingolfsson in our world and she begins building a personal empire with the ultimate goal of bringing in a conquering Draka army. A naval vessel from Samothrace (the colony established by the Alliance exiles) sends cyborg secret agent Kenneth LeFarge through a wormhole after her and the battle is on. Given how the book was written in the late 1990s, maybe make it a 1990s period piece? In an age of smart phones and online videos, concealing the events of the climax would be very difficult, but in the Domination frame-story, it seems only a few people are aware of what really went down.

Hmm...make a Drakon movie first, with the victory of the Domination depicted in flashbacks or something Gwen or Kenneth tell their respective servants/allies? If it does well enough, then go whole-hog on the original trilogy.

Two WWII Alternate Timelines: Sweden Attacks Germany In 1945, Smarter German Defense Post-1942

Even though I'm still self-banned from the Internet's premiere alternate history forum, I still check out cool stuff in the public forums. Here're my latest finds:

Footsteps In The Snow: The Swedish Intervention, April-May 1945-Historically Sweden was neutral during World War II and over the course of the conflict had built up a large military for a country its size to deter or fight off an attack by either Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. However, this neutrality involved selling the Germans iron ore and even allowing the passage of German soldiers through Swedish territory, something that raised eyebrows among many in the Allied camp. The Swedes also trained Norwegian and Danish exiles as "police troops," provided intelligence to the Allies, hosted Jewish refugees, and allowed U.S. planes to use Swedish airbases, so it wasn't like the Swedes were semi-allies of Germany either. 

(This article describes Sweden's WWII policy in more detail and includes some rather critical commentary from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.)

It's not early on why Sweden chooses this time around to break neutrality to attack the weakening German army in Norway, but it's hinted the goal is to strengthen Sweden's position in postwar Europe and in particular give them a say in what's done with Norway. The Swedes also assist with the ejection of the last German forces from the Nazis' former ally Finland--perhaps this time around, the Finns will avoid getting, well, Finlandized. And the timeline's author suggests that Soviets could have been the ones liberating Denmark from the Nazis and it took conniving between the Germans and Western Allies to keep them out. Keeping Denmark out of Soviet hands might be another reason.

Prolonging the Futility-Hitler dies in 1942 after a bite from his dog (with whom he was playing too roughly) becomes infected, much like how a king of Greece died twenty-odd years before after being bitten by a monkey. However, the Germans still lose at Stalingrad. The Allies are coming and they're angry. Without Hitler's micromanaging and bad military decisions, how long can the Axis drag things out? The author admits the Germans in some cases are rolling sixes and the Allies are rolling ones, which might explains how the Germans are doing better than expected even without a drug-addled lunatic in charge, but it's not completely without reason. If you've read An Army At Dawn, you'll see how incompetent the U.S. Army was early in the war and how skilled the Germans were, even with the Germans running their North African operation on a shoestring and with the Allies' massive materiel superiority and control the air. And it's Goering, more flexible and less fanatical than Hitler (IIRC he was the only top Nazi diagnosed as a sociopath, which would explain his being self-seeking rather than serving a Goal greater than himself), who succeeds Hitler and that would explain a lot of it. I think some of the events later in the timeline are starting to stretch disbelief, but that's my main quibble.

"Remember the Texas," Or WWII Starts In The Atlantic

Here's another fun alternate timeline from the public section of the alternate history forum: "Remember the Texas! The United States in WWII." It diverges from real history in June 1941 when a German U-Boat captain mistakes the American battleship USS Texas for a British battleship and sinks it. Although the U.S. and Germany had an undeclared naval war going at this point, this represents a truly massive escalation. The United States declares war on Germany (even the isolationists are not going to tolerate this), despite the U.S. military being absolutely nowhere near ready.

(If you read An Army at Dawn, you can see how horrendously unprepared the U.S. was for Operation Torch, and that was much later against a much less motivated and less competent opponent.)

Highlights of the timeline include:

*Different British generals commanding in different theaters, which almost certainly means a more competent defense of Singapore when the Japanese come south. The author argues that Japan will attack Western colonies in Asia due to the same issues that drove their attack in our world, and with the Pacific undermanned they might have an easier time. In this world, that war begins in the Far East and there's no Pearl Harbor, so American society as a whole is not going to be as vengeful. Hopefully no Japanese Internment in this history--even J. Edgar Hoover thought that was a bad idea and he wasn't exactly a champion of civil liberties.

*A lot of experienced personnel are pulled out of the Philippines for the European war, which will make the islands' almost-inevitable fall much less severe for the U.S. in terms of personnel and equipment losses.

*Per the above, Douglas MacArthur commands U.S. forces in China. Given his blunders in the Philippines (this paper makes a strong case that the Japanese conquest was largely due to his mistakes), this is going to be another improvement on real history, although one wonders how an ego the size of MacArthur's would coexist with an ego the size of Chiang Kai-Shek's. Hopefully they can keep each other's yes-men away--as someone points out in the thread, MacArthur when he didn't have cronies telling him what he wanted to hear could come up with pretty clever stuff like the Inchon Landings.

*Operation Chariot, in real history the St. Nazaire Raid, gets beefed up with U.S. aircraft carriers and battleships into a much larger operation intended to hash the German fleet based in French ports and eliminate (or at least greatly diminish) the U-Boat threat. Most of the timeline so far consists of this world's Operation Chariot and discussion about how plausible this would be.

Movie Review: SHADOW IN THE CLOUD (2020)

Owing to COVID, most theaters are closed, the ones remaining aren't playing a lot of new movies, and a lot of movies that would otherwise have been released to theaters are getting sent to streaming. One such movie was the WWII horror film Shadow in the Cloud. The initial streaming price was $20, so I waited until the price dropped to $5.99 before I rented it. Here goes...

The Plot

It's 1943 in New Zealand and the war against Japan is full swing. Maude Garrett (Chloe Grace Moretz), a women's auxiliary carrying a mysterious package, unexpectedly boards an outbound bomber for Samoa. The all-male bomber crew are generally not pleased with her being there (and make this very obvious), but orders are orders. Relations between the crew and their new passenger continue to degrade, made worse by threats from Japanese raiders and a mysterious evil force menacing Garrett in the ball turret where the men have stashed her.

What exactly is going on? Stay tuned to find out...

The Good

*The movie is short and fast-moving. It don't think there's ever a moment where it's boring, which is more than I can say for a lot of movies.

*The movie has a pretty original concept. The only WWII horror film that's come out in recent years that I can think of is Overlord. And military folklore of the war was replete with gremlins as the cause of things going wrong, so as a period piece that kind of works. Furthermore, the Pacific Theater gets much less pop-culture attention than the European Theater and the contributions of non-American Allied nations like New Zealand even less, so remedying that is a good idea. And based on the credits sequence, the movie seemed like it was intended to pay tribute to the contribution of women to the Allied war effort. That's something else I can get behind.

*Moretz is a good actor who does a good job with her role, conveying Maude's physical prowess and the horrors of her back story and current situation. When she's alone in the ball turret there are some truly squick-inducing moments that she really sells.

*The film realistically depicts the arbitrary violence of war. One minute someone is talking and the next minute they're shredded.

The Bad

*For the first third of the movie, none of the characters are likeable. The men are largely misogynist jerks who treat Garrett with absolutely grotesque levels of sexualized disrespect and one is racist toward another crew member on top of that. Meanwhile, Garrett herself is a shriek who is clearly trying too hard. Captain America: The First Avenger handled it much better with Peggy Carter's remark about how she knows what it's like to "have every door shut in [her] face." Although to be fair I don't recall Carter ever facing the absolutely ridiculous degree of disrespect Garrett gets, she handled odious men much more competently.

*Garrett seems to be good at absolutely everything. As I mentioned earlier the film seems like it was intended as a tribute to the WWII women's auxiliaries and so she clearly has to be competent, but she overshadows the men a lot of the time. I could imagine her being very skilled at one or two things (i.e. a mechanic or a pilot who's had weapon/combat training), but everything? This goes overkill into "girl power" territory. I won't say "Mary Sue" because she's too flawed a personality and has too much horrible stuff happen to her to be a perfect self-insert who never suffers, but it's getting there.

*The male characters aren't well-developed. Obviously one can't do too much with a movie this short, but still. None of them have bad delivery and all seem to play their parts, but none of the characters or the actors who play them really stick out enough for me to comment on them.

*Although we meet a few of the individual crew early on, there's a scene where they introduce themselves one by one to Garrett over the radio (after they put her in the ball turret for takeoff) and they're depicted individually against a dark background in what seems like the introduction of game show contestants. That was kind of lame, plus it made it harder to keep track of who was who when, for most of the film, we hear rather than see them. It would have been better if the film had cut from Garrett in the ball turret to the men above passing the microphone around or started the movie by introducing the crew and then having Maude show up. And then there's a scene where the men are all fighting among themselves that's shot in almost freeze-frame sequence against black that could also be shot more conventionally.

*After the big reveal about Garrett's mysterious package, the plot takes a turn for the ridiculous. We're talking about "climbing around on the outside of an airplane in the middle of a dogfight" level of ridiculous. And then there's that ridiculous moment you probably saw in the trailer. No more discussion for reasons of spoilers.

*The ending has a last-minute scare sequence that gets into even more unsubtle "girl power" territory. I might've been more forgiving of the earlier stuff (maybe she's just a quick study and a good listener who's running on adrenaline) if it weren't for the very end.

The Verdict

I waited a month or two for the price to drop from the new-release price of $20 to $5.99. If you must see this, wait until the price drops further and in the meantime watch Overlord. Never boring and a good concept, but from halfway through the movie on an increasingly ridiculous execution. 6.0 out of 10, barely, and that's because it's exciting.

Alternate History: Japanese Avoid Midway To Attack South, Large Scandinavian Jewish Population

Went visiting the alternate history forum again and found a couple interesting scenarios that I'm posting here for your enjoyment.

Operation FS: Japan's Final Strike-One of Japan's military plans that was never actually executed was Operation FS, the planned occupation of Fiji, Samoa, and New Caledonia. The ultimate goal of the plan was to cut off Australia from the United States and force it out of the war. The plan was supposed to be executed after the destruction of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Midway. Fortunately the United States won that round and the plan, already in jeopardy due to the Battle of the Coral Sea, was shelved. In this scenario, due to some messages getting through to the Japanese high command that didn't in real history, the U.S. loses the carrier Yorktown as well as the carrier Lexington at the Coral Sea. This leads to the shelving of the Midway operation and the go-ahead to strike south. Although economic realities mean that Japan is still going to get reamed--and the timeline's opening states the operation will ultimately fail--how the Japanese ultimately fail and what effects this operation has elsewhere could be significant. And these types of scenarios are always fun to read if one is interested in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

Gyðinga Saga - The History of the Jews of Scandinavia-In this scenario, there's a larger movement of Jews into Scandinavia earlier than in real life that leads to the emergence of a Jewish community that views itself as neither Sephardic nor Ashkenazi. The main scenario has some plausibility issues--the latter part discusses the experience of these Jews under Nazi rule, but with a divergence that far back Hitler might not even come to power in the first place--but the follow-up discussion is pretty interesting. For starters, these Jews will be much, much more European genetically (due to intermarriage between male Jews and pagan women of other Scandinavian or Baltic ethnic groups, with the resulting children raised as Jewish) than the Ashkenazi, whose non-Jewish DNA is from a different European population and stopped entering the Jewish gene pool much earlier. This in turn led to discussion as to just what the Nazis, whose anti-Semitism was primarily racial rather than religious, would make of the Gydes. After all, the Nazis largely spared the Karaites, on the grounds they were more akin to Turkic peoples. One board member theorized that the Nazis would view them as "Judaized Germans" rather than racial Jews and try to "deprogram" them rather than exterminate them. This might resemble the German abductions of Polish (and other Slavic) children of ostensibly Aryan ancestry for Germanization.

Philo-Semitic Mussolini? Israeli PM Anne Frank? PRESIDENT PATTON?

Still self-banned from the alternate history forum, but I still drop in now and then to see if there's anything interesting. I found this timeline The Footprint of Mussolini and so far it's pretty cool. It diverges from our history when a Communist attempts to assassinate Mussolini in 1932, only for a Jewish Blackshirt (Mussolini early on included prominent Jews in the fascist movement, had a Jewish mistress, and only began to implement anti-Semitic laws to suck up to Hitler later on) to take the bullets instead. This makes Mussolini rather more friendly to Jews than in our history (he narcissistically equates himself with Italy and therefore a Jew dying for him translates to the idea of Jewish loyalty to Italy), which has a lot of important consequences.

*The alliance with the Nazis is more distant (there's a Dual Pact between Germany and Japan but no Anti-Comintern Pact that formed the basis of the Axis), leading to Mussolini having a more cautious agenda in the Balkans. He and allies like Bulgaria dismember Yugoslavia and later Greece on their own, avoiding participation in Operation Barbarossa and the war with the Soviet Union.

*In order to strengthen Italian control over Libya, Mussolini essentially buys a substantial number of Jews from an increasingly resource-strapped Hitler. These tend to professional and educated types and in particular German and Austrian Jews, whom he thinks would be loyal to him because they would clearly have no fondness for Hitler. One such family is that of German businessman Otto Frank and rather than gaining posthumous fame as a writer, his daughter Anne goes on to have a political career in Israel.

*Using the above situation as an example and under heavy pressure from the increasingly-deranged post-Stalingrad Hitler, Hungarian dictator Horthy dumps his Jewish population on the Italian border. When it's reported to Mussolini that these Jews are all chanting "Il Duce, save us!" he apparently has a flashback to the day a Jew saved his life and agrees to allow them in. The SS sent into Hungary to remove Horthy and round up the Jews for slaughter don't take this well and soon we have a war between Italy and the Third Reich. The Hungarian Jews (including none other than Elie Wiesel) turn the tables on their persecutors big time by requesting not Italian soldiers to protect them (as Mussolini expected) but ships to evacuate women, girls, and boys who have not had their bar mitzvah and guns so the older boys and adult men can hold Trieste against the Nazis. Seriously, it's a Crowning Moment of Awesome for an entire ethnic group and there's one line ("next year in Jerusalem!") that several readers claimed brought tears to their eyes. I admit it impressed me.

*Mussolini, seeking to aggrandize himself while the bigger players are a bit busy, sets up Italy as the guarantor of neutrality for various Mediterranean nations, creating a fascist bloc there. Although we haven't gotten to the Cold War as of March 2019, a Mussolini-led third force in the Mediterranean would be quite the wild card.

*With no African campaign and invasion of Italy to create Stalin's long-desired Second Front, D-Day happens in 1943 and not 1944. It's a much bloodier affair, as the Allies are less well-prepared without the experience fighting the Italians and the Germans haven't been bled as severely fighting in Russia.

*There are some hints that General Patton will have a political career of his own after the war rather than rather ingloriously dying in a Jeep accident.

Although some people might be concerned this scenario whitewashes Mussolini, he still commits plenty of ugly deeds in this timeline. Sufficient to say the Slovenes pay and pay and pay for their collaboration with the German invaders and there's still the matter of Ethiopia. And given some hints in the content published thus far, there's still more to come. This whole scenario is pretty interesting, so I'm definitely keeping an eye on this one.

ISIS Nukes Brussels, The Seljuks Beats the Mongols, and Stalin Joins The Axis

Although I'm still self-banned from posting on the biggest alternate-history forum on the Internet, I do visit the public sections to see what interesting actual alternate history (as opposed to the endless political arguing I quit the forum to avoid) is being discussed.

This led to my finding three more interesting timelines in recent weeks. One takes place in the modern day, the second in the days where Turkish power expanded into Asia Minor at the expense of the crumbling Byzantines, and the third during World War II.

The Sultanate of Rumistan: An Alternate Anatolia-The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum was established after the defeat of the Byzantine Empire by the Seljuk Turks, which began the process of Turkifying and Islamizing Asia Minor and the Byzantines' long decline. The Sultanate was eventually defeated and forced to pay tribute to the Mongols after their defeat at the Battle of Kose Dag, but in this timeline, the Seljuk sultan listens to his experienced commanders and waits for the Mongols to come to him rather than attack them immediately. The Mongols are defeated and the decline of the Seljuk Sultanate--which ultimately led to the rise of the Ottoman Empire--is averted. This is going to make life rather difficult for the Byzantines, but the author knows a whole lot about the workings of the Seljuk Sultanate, the neighboring Kingdom of Georgia, and the Byzantine secessionist regime in Trebizond and it's really quite interesting.

The Maw: When the Lights of the World Went Out-This story begins with agents of the infamous Islamic State somehow getting hold of a nuclear weapon--just how they got it hasn't been explained yet--and they smuggle it from the Middle East into Belgium. They set it off in the downtown area of Brussels, killing tens of thousands (if not more) immediately and provoking France to nuke ISIS's capital of al-Raqqa in reprisal. A straight-up World War II level obliteration of ISIS soon follows. It looks like the author was setting up a much darker scenario based on the hints he was dropping, but the timeline hasn't been updated in some time. Given how the real-life migrant crisis in Europe has been, well, a crisis, a world where ISIS agents snuck into Europe via Greece and ripped a chunk of a major EU city out with a nuke, I suspect the people getting the worst of it are going to European and refugee Muslims.

The Twin Vipers-Stalin joins the Axis. Although given Hitler's ultimate desire to conquer the Soviet Union, exterminate "Jewish Bolshevism," and turn the Slavs into helots for German Spartans and how in general fascism and Communism are opposed ideologies make this sound absolutely insane, there were talks to that effect. Rather than refusing to deal more than the bare minimum with people whom he viewed as racial enemies, the Germans were actually willing to admit the Soviets to the alliance to help defeat Britain. That would have made life very difficult for the Western Allies, since the Soviets could menace the Middle East and India in a way the Germans could not.

However, this timeline begins somewhat earlier than the real-life talks that took place after the defeat of France when the 1939 border conflict between the Soviet Union and Imperial Japan that ended with the Battle of Khalkin Gol escalates into a full-blown war. This leads to Mussolini getting sidelined, the British and French fighting the Soviets in Finland, and even Operation Pike, an Anglo-French plan to bomb the Soviet oil fields that didn't happen in real life.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

The film podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood rounds out the Indiana Jones movies with the last one, 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yes, the one with Shia LaBeouf in it. Not actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf, fortunately, but still. I remember finding it rather disappointing when I first saw it--the McCarthyite G-Men questioning Jones' war service came off to me as a shot at the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (which questioned the 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry's Vietnam record) and everybody seemed rather passive standing around with Soviet guns pointed at them much of the time.

So ten years later, was it as disappointing as I remember it? Let's take a watch (here's the podcast) and find out...

The Plot

It's 1957 and although McCarthyism historically would be winding down, it's still possible for academic Henry "Indiana" Jones (Harrison Ford) to get accused of being a Communist. Especially since he's narrowly escaped from a band of Soviet soldiers on the loose in the United States under the command of Communist zealot Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett). Placed on indefinite suspension after the FBI searches his office, he meets an angry young man named "Mutt" Williams (Shia LaBeouf) who brings a message from Jones' former colleague Harold Oxley (John Hurt) passed on via his kidnapped mother Mary (ACTRESS REDACTED FOR SPOILER REASONS). The race to prevent the Soviets from seizing the power of the legendary Crystal Skull is on...

The Good

*Some people think Indiana Jones should stay in the realm of fighting Nazis and Judeo-Christian supernatural lore, but after 1945 the Nazis were squashed flat and the totalitarian danger was the Soviet Union (and to a lesser degree Mao's China). You can't have him fighting Nazis after WWII if you want to continue his having adventures, and Spielberg's original idea of having him fight an uprising of Nazi die-hards somewhere after WWII sounded really forced. I had no beef with the Hindu sacred stones of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Hell, I found that one better than the explicitly Christian Last Crusade. And this isn't the first time Indiana has tangled with the Reds--once upon a time there was Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and other times he fought the Soviets.

*Spielberg cast actual Russians as the Soviet soldiers so they'd have authentic accents. Some of them even look distinctively Slavic. That's some good attention to detail there. The refrigerator from the infamous refrigerator sequence is also one of the older models that latch and cannot be opened from the inside--i.e. the kind that children suffocate in. That also shows attention to detail, as those models would eventually get phased out but that wouldn't have happened as early as 1957 given how I remember my mother warning me as a child (i.e. late 1980s or early 1990s) about the dangers of refrigerators.

*Although I'd griped about the relative lack of action sequences at the time, Indiana and Mutt's adventures following the trail of the kidnapped Oxley and Mary (whom we find out later is a lot more important) utilize actual archaeological skills like excavating, looking for clues, etc. It's not all about throwing down with German and Russian soldiers and Hindu death cultists, people. :) And our heroes are passive captives a lot less often than I remember.

*Blanchett does a good job as Spalko, a Soviet agent who (possibly if you go with the movie; definitely if you include expanded-universe stuff) has psychic powers. Not only that, but she's an extreme True Believer in Communism. Not just Communism, but straight-up Stalinism given how she talks about the man. And she has some very sinister and supremely creepy plans. The Nazis' vast armies and open contempt for freedom, democracy, etc. were an obvious danger, but the Soviet threat was more subtle.

*There's some stuff that's pretty funny, including the diner brawl scene and at least one incident where Indiana tries something that would have worked in the 1930s but doesn't owing to his advanced age.

*LaBeouf is oftentimes aggravating as Mutt, but that may well be intentional. He's an angry young man with a giant chip on his shoulder, apparently a bit of a strained relationship with his mother, and somewhat lacking in male role models. And he can convincingly emote, not just when he's angry but when he's legitimately upset.

*Indiana's interaction with his love interest in the film (not saying who for reasons of spoilers) is pretty funny. They're like an old married couple, except they're not. It's one of the most entertaining parts of the film. And said love interest's age allows for the frame story of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles--at least part of which is canon, considering how in the movie he talks about riding with Pancho Villa--in which he's elderly and living with a daughter and grandchildren to not contradict this one. After all, the record for the oldest natural mother is in the mid-late 50s and Indiana's daughter from the show does resemble this movie's female lead somewhat. Not going into any more details for reasons of spoilers, although you guys should know who I'm talking about by now. Especially since although her showing up is supposed to be this big surprise, she's on the poster.

*Although a lot of people had a beef with the refrigerator scene, there were people who survived Hiroshima despite being within 300 meters of the detonation. Here's some more, with one survivor using a freezer. The landing and rolling should be the problem, but then again, he did drink from the Holy Grail about nineteen years before. Even if you have to drink continuously from it to stay alive, it still might've conferred better-than-usual health.

The Bad

*The earlier films had German soldiers operating in other countries during peacetime in full uniform and in large numbers and nobody seems to care. The opening sequence features at least a couple squads and maybe a platoon (40 men) of Russian soldiers roaming around Nevada. The fact they're in stolen U.S. uniforms makes it less ridiculous than I remember--I'd thought they were wearing more distinctive Russian gear--but still. Infiltrating a few agents here and there isn't hard, especially in an open society like the U.S. But dozens of men? The Germans tried to infiltrate saboteurs into the U.S. during WWII and they got caught pretty quickly. Surely in this more paranoid time someone acquiring that many U.S. military uniforms, vehicles, etc. for disguises would be noticed. Maybe if it was obviously older stuff like WWII-era Lend Lease material from when the US and Soviets were allied that might work, but nobody mentions that. A snarky "thank the Lend Lease program for their generosity" would be all that was needed.

And later they're in actual Soviet uniforms in South America. You know, where the U.S. had a history of slapping down anything remotely resembling a Communist movement. This is not to say that U.S. intelligence is omniscient, but surely somebody would notice something. Especially, you know, the whole "in Soviet uniform" part. Very obvious, especially with the ludicrous amounts of equipment they bring with them that has Russian writing on it. The Soviets had better HumInt than we did; they'd be better at subtlety.

*For reasons of realism/plausibility, I would have set the film in 1954-ish. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died in 1953 and Stalin's successor Khruschev might've wanted Stalin devotee Spalko out of the country and not potentially threatening his reforms. Ergo, send her off on a spying mission where her occult talents could be useful. McCarthy's colleagues turned on him in 1954, but the harassment of Indiana could be part of the Red Scare's death spasms. Indiana's love interest would be younger and thus more likely to be the mother of Indiana's daughter as depicted in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. I could easily imagine him having a daughter of out of wedlock given how much of a cad he was as a younger man, but if said daughter was the product of a fling or one-night stand and he had no involvement in her life, why is she looking after him in his old age? Do her kids need a father figure that badly that she'd be willing to take in a man who left her mother "in trouble" decades prior?

Yes, I am that much of a stickler for continuity and plausibility and IJ has a well-laid-out timeline.

*Mutt refers to having attended prep schools with fencing and debate, the former of which he puts to good use. Given his familial situation, how exactly could they have afforded that, especially given the implication he was kicked out of many of said prep schools? Colin Williams must've had quite an RAF pension.

*The monkey sequence is entirely too over-the-top. There's pulpy (like Mutt's sword duel with a Soviet agent, which according to the almighty TVTropes was actually filmed for real aboard two speeding jeeps) and then there's just ridiculous.

*A character who was Indiana's war buddy betrays him to the Soviets for money and then is entirely too aggressive in chasing him around. One's switch doesn't totally flip from "friend" to "enemy" like that--the slide to damnation is typically more gradual. Maybe if they'd been injured somehow as a result of their betrayal earlier in the film, then they'd blame Indiana rather than themselves and pursue him vindictively. Think Darth Vader blaming Obi-Wan for his crippling in Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, which fuels his further descent into evil rather than making him reconsider his actions. But that's not what happened.

(In his defense he does later seem to try to be friends with Indiana, recruit him for another money-making scheme, etc., but if his heart really isn't in it, why is he following him to South America? Even if in addition to paying off his gambling debts the Soviets were blackmailing him--they were very good at that--he seems way too enthusiastic.)

*And given the importance of what's going on at the base in the opening sequence, it seems unlikely there'd only be a few guards at the gate even though it's out in the middle of nowhere.

*There's a fair bit of obvious CGI, especially where small animals are concerned.

*In the movie, Indiana references having been at one point a double agent in Berlin during WWII. Basically he would have pretended to be working for (presumably) the Nazis while really working for the U.S. Thing is, given the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade and some of the non-movie adventures, it's clear he's no friend to Hitler and his goons. The Nazis would be fools to think he'd be willing to betray the U.S. for them after all that, and the sheer amount of bad blood between him and them would make working together very difficult. Better to leave that out and make it that he was a commando or something. Per the other Indiana Jones material, he spent most of WWII keeping the Axis from getting their hands on various supernatural super-weapons like he was doing in the 1930s, so they should have left it at that.

The Verdict

I expected it to suck. It didn't. Pleasantly surprised. 8.0 out of 10.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: V for Vendetta (2005)

The movie V for Vendetta and I have a long history. I don't remember seeing it in theaters when it came out, but I do remember using it as the basis for an opinion column I wrote for the University of Georgia student newspaper The Red and Black about the dangers of government surveillance and overreach in the age of terrorism.

It got a lot more personal when I studied abroad in Great Britain in 2006. I, like many other tourists, got caught up in the liquid-bomb scare, which broke out the night before we were going to leave to return home. My flight home had to wait for several hours on the tarmac at one of the London airports while we were all being background-checked. I had to pack up the books I'd bought in Oxford for the trip home rather than bring them on the plane. I could have bought new books at the airport bookstore, but at the time I thought the ban on all carry-on items not bought at the airport was a scam to make people buy all-new products and unnecessary to protect the security of the flights, so I didn't. Fortunately the airplane's televisions were on and I watched V for Vendetta as well as a significant chunk of The Wind that Shakes the Barley and at least one Doctor Who episode dealing with the Cybermen. I ended up watching the movie at least twice.

Now 12 years later, Myopia: Defend Your Childhood is doing a series on films people thought were So Profound when we were in college, to see if they still hold up. V for Vendetta was one of the films, and I made sure to appear on it. I may have mellowed out a little on politics since college, but governmental overreach in the name of fighting terrorism, a war, etc. is still a personal bugbear. Here's the podcast. Now for the review...

The Plot

Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) works for the British Television Network, a successor to the British Broadcasting Corporation in Great Britain. In an age of peril--the United States has fallen into civil war and there's been at least one global pandemic--Britain has turned into a police state under the rule of a "High Chancellor" Adam Sutler (John Hurt) and his Nazi-like Norsefire Party.

Sutler's regime, however, is challenged by the mysterious V (Hugo Weaving), a terrorist with near-supernatural fighting abilities who disguises himself as Guy Fawkes. V blows up Old Bailey on November 5 and vows, a year later, to blow up Parliament itself. Evey finds herself mixed up in the whole situation when V rescues her from some rape-inclined "Fingermen" (secret police) and ends up staying with him for an extended period. Meanwhile, some ordinary British police assigned to help investigate V find themselves stumbling onto a conspiracy dating back all the way to the founding of the Norsefire regime.

The Good

*There's actually quite a bit of intertextuality in the story, some overt and some more subtle. V's campaign against Sutler's dictatorship, though driven by the ideological belief that governments should fear their people and not the other way around, also has a strong element of personal revenge. The Count of Monte Cristo shows up repeatedly throughout the film. I also noticed a strong resemblance to the story of The Phantom of the Opera, especially the more Phantom-sympathetic interpretations--a pretty young woman falls under the thrall of an older disfigured genius and it's not completely non-consensual on her part. I can appreciate thoughtfulness.

*The script was well-done. I rather liked V's introductory speech and the vocabulary he uses. Very impressive.

*I also liked the acting in general. I don't think there's a bad delivery in the whole film. Hugo Weaving and Stephen Fry are particularly impressive.

*There's a really well-shot scene involving dominoes.

*V's strategy as a terrorist makes sense. Terrorist organizations often try to trick governments into overreacting and driving people who would otherwise not support the terrorists to do so. Some of V's schemes involve this.

*In the comic, the Norsefire government is able to seize control of Britain after the country abandons its nuclear weapons, causing it to avoid being nuked during World War III. Even without getting nuked, Britain would be cut off from world trade, inundated with massive flows of refugees, and subject to possible climactic disruption, and I could imagine that kind of crisis spawning a dictatorship. However questionable that proposition is in the first place--West Germany and other mainland European states part of the NATO alliance didn't have independent nuclear capability and they were going to get trashed regardless, plus the Soviet government has had a grudge against Britain from the beginning--that obviously needs to be updated. The descriptions of how the world and the United States in particular--which would not tolerate such a regime taking over one of its closest allies--are in a state of chaos are small and subtle, but they work for story purposes.

*Britain has an extensive security-camera surveillance system. The film shows how easy it could be used to track down enemies of the state (much like the film Enemy of the State, in which our own much less overbearing system is used for the same purpose) as well as stop crime.

*The subtleties of a British (or specifically English) fascism are well-done. The official action hero is named Storm Saxon and he's depicted as rescuing a British woman kidnapped and tortured by a caricature of an Islamic extremist, regime propaganda is delivered by something obviously based on the BBC, the Anglican Church is promoted heavily, etc.

The Bad

*Waaaay too much 9/11 Trutherism in the film. I'm not going to go into more detail for reasons of spoilers. It is entirely possible for a government to overreact to a legitimate danger rather than "there are no dangers and any 'dangers' are straw enemies to justify seizing power." The Japanese Internment doesn't mean the attack on Pearl Harbor didn't happen, the 1944 Sedition Trial doesn't mean the Nazis weren't dangerous, and McCarthy's excesses doesn't mean there weren't Soviet spies in the U.S. government. That was my single biggest beef with the film, as it undermines its credibility as a warning against government overreach.

*The movie drags a bit in the middle before things start ramping up toward V's endgame.

*We get a second "homosexual persecuted by the regime" story later in the narrative when we've already been given one, although to be fair, the second is more vivid than the first. Given how Norsefire is explicitly English-supremacist and a character having an Irish mother is brought up to threaten them, perhaps one of the two persecution narratives could be swapped out with a real or suspected IRA sympathizer? Even the democratic British government violated the rights of Catholics in Northern Ireland during the fight with the IRA, and I imagine Norsefire would be even uglier. Or to create an even more sympathetic victim, someone totally unconnected with terrorism who's a little too publicly proud of their Irish or Scottish heritage for the regime's taste?

(There's also a timing issue as to when homosexuals start getting persecuted that I'm not going to get into for reasons of spoilers. Making the second victim into someone falsely accused of being an IRA supporter for advocating for Catholics' rights in Northern Ireland and keeping the first victim as-is makes more sense chronologically, given the origins of the Norsefire regime, when it takes power, and when it starts persecuting different groups. Another alternative: Perhaps the second victim could be a Muslim falsely accused of being a terrorist? A prominent Norsefire official served in the military in various Middle Eastern places before the regime took power, so that's where he could have gotten his guinea pigs. Given how the film is a cautionary tale against anti-terrorist overreach, perhaps a Muslim victim would have been too on-the-nose, or the suits would have thought bigoted consumers wouldn't see the movie. I remember people complaining about a character having an illegal Koran, so that might've pushed them further along the boycott-denounce road.)

*The sense of time gets a little wonky toward the end. How long is Evey with V?

*Given some of the stuff that happens to Evey in the film I would expect her to be a lot more screaming-angry than she ends up being. Her reaction comes off as really understated. Natalie Portman can do better angry than that. Hell, she sounds angrier here when she's rapping on Saturday Night Live.

*Per the above, what happens to her would realistically require multiple people to pull off, not just one. Not going into more detail for reasons of spoilers.

*The back-story for the Norsefire regime on the level of Britain itself starts breaking down once we get deeper into it. Sutler is depicted as being a powerful Conservative politician with Nazi-esque banners, marching paramilitaries, etc. even before the St. Mary's plague that threw society into crisis and swept Norsefire into power. That he'd even get that far seems extremely unlikely--the British National Party suffered quite a bit when they got prominent enough for their then-leader Nick Griffin to get a spot on the BBC show Question Time, where he showed himself to be an idiot. And the BNP was trying to avoid looking like a bunch of Nazis. Sutler's crew is even more overtly evil than the BNP--they would have been marginalized (and potentially outlawed if they did more than prance around) and Sutler would never get into the position he was in before the St. Mary plague breaks out. And if he's not part of the British government (no more details for reasons of spoilers), the whole story doesn't work.

*Historical accuracy problem: Guy Fawkes was not a freedom fighter trying to overthrow an oppressive regime. He was part of a scheme by some English Catholics to re-impose the Catholic monarchy on an increasingly Protestant country. Yes, the British government was persecuting Catholics and that's not cool, but assuming the plan even succeeded--rather than provoking an even more extreme anti-Catholic backlash--the resulting government would have had to become oppressive simply to stay in power and keep its conspirators alive. We're talking Inquisition-level stuff here. Fawkes has more in common with Osama bin Laden than with V, even if V is borrowing his aesthetic.

The Verdict

Good, but could be better. I'd have liked it a lot better without the 9/11 Trutherism. 8.0 out of 10.