Thoughts On Ken Prescott's Proposed "SDI-Punk"

I'm a member of an online networking forum for writers and a fellow forum member is Ken Prescott, who'd served as a Marine and wrote the Cold War thriller Not By Sight. In a discussion online, he proposed a new sub-genre called "SDI-Punk," in the vein of cyberpunk and its derivatives like steampunk. If one is going with "imaginative history," steampunk is Civil War to WWI, dieselpunk is WWI and WWII, and then you get into atompunk in the 1950s. Prescott's aesthetic is very late Cold War and derives its aesthetic from things like stealth technology, Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (popularly described as "Star Wars"), and the mysterious Aurora aircraft. There are also plenty of "roads not taken" in regards to the space program in this period, like the X-30. Finally, "SDI-Punk" features a more muscular approach to the Cold War, as befitting someone of his background. He suggested that the best example of this genre is the Clint Eastwood film Firefox, in which an American pilot infiltrates the Soviet Union to steal a prototype Soviet jet controlled directly by the pilot's brain. However, it's not just all cool aircraft--there's culture stuff like cable TV, yuppies, and rap and social movements like the anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid movements. More on them later.

(Here's a guest post he wrote introducing the concept and here's a follow-up post on works of film and literature set in this genre. Firefox is just the beginning.)

This is something I found very interesting, considering I had recently blogged about adapting Dean Koontz's 1980s-set Watchers into a television series and both of us agreed that Stranger Things and The Americans fit in. Having discussed the concept with him and read his blog posts, here's my spin:

One criticism of steampunk is that it's all parasols, Victorian fashion, and a very rosy-eyed view of imperialism and doesn't take into account things like the labor movement, agitating for women's suffrage, and the ugly reality of imperialism epitomized by, "We have got the Maxim gun and they have not." Dieselpunk's politics tend to be a bit more obvious, with both Indiana Jones and the Rocketeer fighting the Nazis, the Shadow fighting Shiwan Khan (a stand-in for Imperial Japan?), and an older Indiana Jones dealing with both McCarthyite G-Men and the genuine Communist menace of Irina Spalko. Part of "punk" is being subversive of social norms and conventional morals and a big part of cyberpunk is hackers fighting corporate domination and high-tech street gangs and criminal organizations. Although Prescott acknowledged elements of this setting that would subvert the overall neo-Reaganite ethos on display with "morning in America" and Communist and terrorist villains with the anti-nuclear movement and the "Satanic Ritual Abuse" panic that led to a bunch of innocent people being jailed (I'd forgotten about that), I'm going to go a bit further down the rabbit hole.

So if I were writing an "SDI-Punk" story, I'd include more of a "punk" angle much like how I bring labor politics and racial issues into my steampunk fantasy novel Battle for the Wastelands and its companion novella "Son of Grendel." As mentioned in the original post, the 1980s had lots of rebellious movements against the anti-Communist/pro-capitalist consensus--the anti-nuclear movement, the green movement, and the growing agitation for world governments to do something about AIDS. There's also the anti-apartheid movement and the resulting plethora of villainous Afrikaners in films like Lethal Weapon II. Even the conservative Bill Cosby wouldn't let NBC remove anti-apartheid posters from the kids' bedrooms in The Cosby Show.

Since Prescott's goal was to create an aesthetic and setting for writers to play in, here're a couple "SDI Punk" scenario of my own creation that could work:

Sometime in the mid-1980s, South Africa's border wars with its neighbors escalate into a full-blown proxy war in the Arab-Israeli sense of the word. Perhaps South Africa's "destabilization" policies backfire, creating a united front of black-ruled left-wing states that's a conventional military threat rather than real history's seething messes. The US backs South Africa (albeit they're The Friend That Nobody Likes) against the "frontline states" backed by the USSR and Cuba. Worries about another Vietnam (and the massive political blowback the Reagan Administration would get from openly supporting the most flagrantly racist regime in the world) keep the U.S. from sending in troops to prevent a potential Soviet takeover of "the mineral treasure house" of southern Africa (which would also menace the "energy treasure house" of the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the sheer distances involved, the growing sinkhole of Afghanistan, and the threat of South African nukes prevent the Soviets from intervening openly. 

However, the US and the Soviets both use the conflict as a chance to test out their newest and fanciest technological toys (either by letting their local proxies use them or sending in their own personnel on a very small scale like the Soviets did in Korea and Vietnam). There's also all sorts of black ops/intelligence skullduggery going around, including attempts by both sides to manage or manipulate popular protest movements. And although AIDS does not appear to have really gotten big in South Africa itself until the early 1990s, more US, Cuban, Soviet, and other Eastern Bloc personnel in Southern African more broadly could provide another victor for HIV to spread either locally or back into their home countries. Such a scenario could inflame the debate about the United States' association with South Africa and the possibility of getting pulled bit by bit into another war and even lead to cross-pollination between the antiwar, anti-apartheid, and anti-AIDS movements. 

(Depending on the personalities involved, one might also see changes in conservatives' attitudes toward AIDS sufferers--they might be more likely to sympathize with a deployed soldier given a bad blood transfusion to save his life or who made one bad decision with a local woman than with a drug addict or a homosexual. And bonus points if some dumbass starts attacking soldiers deployed in Southern Africa as AIDS vectors. Remember this would be around a decade after the controversies over Vietnam, which included instances of disrespect toward veterans. Even if it's not in the movement's best interest, there's always some idiot somewhere and people will talk.)

And although this is not as well known due to the Soviet Union being a closed society less tolerant of domestic political dissent, Afghanistan spawned a Soviet antiwar movement and a growing manpower drain in Africa might add fuel to the fire. The problems that prompted Gorbachev's reforms are still there, even if Prescott's vision requires a stronger USSR, plus internal Soviet politicking is more interesting (and more congruent with reality) than a purely monolithic "Evil Empire."

The Middle East could be another theater for an "SDI-Punk" story...there's Israel's war in Lebanon, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and the Iran-Iraq War. Charles Stross's novella "A Colder War" features the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Iraqis in Iran using Lovecraftian horrors, ultimately culminating in a World War III that features the US deploying atomic-powered bombers carrying Project Pluto nuclear-powered nuclear-armed cruise missiles against none other than Cthulhu. The more cautious/conservative/still-have-PTSD-from-WWII factions of the Soviet leadership aren't going to want an unstable third force on their border and the more aggressive and zealous-for-the-Revolution types might see this as the chance to get warm water ports at long last and put the West's oil supply under Soviet guns. Meanwhile, the US isn't going to want the Soviets to attempt the latter while claiming the former. And it was a war in Iran that spirals into the nuclear holocaust depicted in the amazingly depressing film Threads.

However, a more limited conflict might involve chronic troublemaker Moammar Gadhafi in Libya (who was parodied in the animated Transformers show), since he's so outlandish the Soviets aren't going to go to the mattresses for him. There were real-life skirmishes between Libyan and NATO forces and Gadhafi repeatedly meddled in Chad, so there's plenty of opportunity for "fun" that wouldn't necessarily risk World War III. Hmmm...Libyans as real-life Bond villains with some kind of oil-funded superweapon like Saddam Hussein's Project Babylon? Or, to justify the deployment of something more outlandish, perhaps something more sci-fi oriented like an anti-satellite laser weapon or an independent space program? You could tie in the cultural elements of the 1980s--CNN is reporting live on the early deployments of such things in Chad, devotees of "rap culture" fall for Gadhafi's pan-African schtick and agitate against US intervention, there're more mainstream concerns about another Vietnam, and so instead of an open invasion, you have some kind of balls-to-the-wall covert operation to steal or destroy this weapon like Firefox.

Anybody got any more ideas...?

How I Would Have Done Ramsey Campbell's THE HUNGRY MOON

A week or two ago, I read British horror author Ramsey Campbell's Lovecraftian tale The Hungry Moon. Although I liked the title and the concept and there were some good moments (like a psychic vision revealing the monstrous Lovecraftian moon god's full back-story), overall I didn't enjoy the book. The American evangelist Godwin Mann came off to me like a massive anti-Christian straw-man, the ending didn't really make a lot of sense, and there was too much psychodrama and not enough otherworldly stuff.

However, it's easy to complain. Like I've done before on this blog with movies like The Last Starfighter, Mortal Kombat, and Priest and on Myopia Movies' Patreon, here are some ideas I had that could improve the book. Warning--here there be spoilers.

*In general, I'd tighten up the cast. There are lots and lots of characters and it's hard to tell them all apart. And so many of them have problems that the story is filled up with their drama rather than focusing on the "American preacher accidentally unleashes a Druidic moon god who now wants nuclear weapons" that brought the story to my attention.

*Ix-nay on how the outside world forgets the town of Moonwell exists. If the events of the story took place on a faster timetable, there'd be no need for it. Furthermore, the fact people in London are forgetting about a town in the Peak District hundreds of miles north raises questions as to just how powerful the moon-god is and whether it even really needs to storm the nearby nuclear base in the first place. Why not just mind-control Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and have her launch one at Moscow?

*Play up the nuclear fears. The placement of U.S. nuclear weapons in Great Britain was a very controversial topic in the 1980s, but other than anti-nuclear protests being mentioned and the danger that the moon god would seize control of nearby nukes in order to effect its revenge on mankind for defeating and imprisoning it, this isn't a big part of the story. It's a massive missed opportunity, especially since the climax of the story involves several characters trying to escape the town to get to the missile base ahead of the moon-god and its minions. Female lead Diana Kramer is already an American working in Britain; in my version, she's the wife or daughter of a soldier on the base who got a job working in the town's British school (perhaps the base's school didn't have any teaching positions but administration knew someone who could get her a work permit) rather than someone who emigrated to Britain on her own. She sees what's going down in Moonwell and owing to her direct connection to the base and greater knowledge of what's there, she knows exactly what could happen if the moon god and its devotees gain access to the nukes.

*Consequently, when the possessed Mann fully manifests as the monstrous moon-god, Diana and her remaining allies (after some are killed by the moon-god or its devotees) rush back to the base to warn them of impending assault by "Mann" and its followers. Meanwhile, the cultists are in hot pursuit and the moon god is tormenting them with psychic visions. The book would then climax with something more like a zombie apocalypse outside the now-warned base's gates but with an extraterrestrial monster as the commander and heavy combatant, rather the rather strange and sedate failed escape sequence and the Deus Ex Machina ending.

*Play up the fears of losing control of one's country more broadly. The British once ruled most of the world, but they lost their empire in the 1950s and 1960s and endured a stagnant 1970s. The defeat of the Argentines in the Falklands War boosted their self-esteem, but at the same time they did receive logistical help from the U.S. The placement of American nukes in Britain--weapons that could be launched at the Soviets and invite retaliation on British soil theoretically without any input from the British themselves--is a particularly extreme symptom of a bigger cause.

To that end, I'd connect the nuclear fears and the semi-villainous Mann. Rather than just randomly showing up, I'd have him associated with the nearby American base in some capacity. Perhaps he's a military chaplain or someone associated with the American Christian Right who pulled strings to travel with some followers to live on the facility and use it as a base for his own evangelical efforts.

(A hanger-on would be better, as a military chaplain has very specific responsibilities and is subject to the chain of command. If the base chaplain is spending all his time having rallies in a nearby town and neglecting his soldiers, his superior officer can put a stop to it. A civilian employee or someone who's associated with the base but nobody can explain how might have more leeway.)

I'd also play up the clash between the more easygoing Anglicans represented by the more liberal-minded local vicar, who protested against the nukes and apparently lost congregants as a result, and the more zealous American preacher and his converts. We do see a little bit of that with the Americans' children bothering British children in the school about the sins they need to confess and Mann's Americans followers willing to work without pay to get teaching positions and making the local school, which already had problems, much more unpleasant, but we could get more theological. Mann could cite Revelation 3:14-22 to claim the Anglican churches are the area are "lukewarm," for example, and that he, being British on his father's side and the son of a celebrity to boot, is particularly qualified to revitalize it. Meanwhile, the older vicar thinks Mann is a combination of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" and too much enthusiasm (Proverbs 19:2 comes to mind) and when he starts trying to interfere with the annual ceremony at the Druids' cave, he's stirring up something that's beyond him. Even from a Christian point of view he might think it's something Mann cannot handle--see the biblical story of the demon the Apostles couldn't drive out or the misadventures of the sons of Sceva.

*I would also tone down Mann. The back-story for him Campbell establishes explains his mentality pretty well--as a result of drug use and sexual abuse at the hands of his British actor father's friends culminating in a suicide attempt, he converts to a very zealous sort of Christianity and then devotes himself to spreading it. And Campbell does avoid the temptation of making him a hypocrite stealing money from the till or sleeping with his secretary--he may be a meddling zealot, but his willingness to confront what he thinks is a demon (the imprisoned moon god in the druids' cave) shows great physical courage (the ropes he uses to rappel into a seemingly bottomless cave could break) and faith that whatever lurks there, his God is stronger. He's an antagonist, but he's not a cliche.

However, although Campbell states that he based him on Billy Graham after seeing him at a crusade in Liverpool, his beliefs and actions (and those his followers undertake in his name) are very out of character for Graham. I have never heard of Graham exhorting his followers to burn "ungodly" books, for example, or engage in subversive and control-freak behavior. Really hard-core fundamentalists objected to Graham's openness toward Catholicism, for example. This Catholic writer agrees with their claims about Graham's ecumenism, although he obviously doesn't think this is a bad thing. The same with this one. And it was the Klan who burned Beatles albums, not Graham or his followers. Graham seemed primarily focused on spreading the core Christian gospel above all else, especially after his association with Richard Nixon burned him so badly.

If Mann is supposed to be an evil (or at least arrogant and bone-headed) version of Graham, once he's possessed by the god he confronts in the cave, it would make more sense for him to have near-continuous rallies--the worshipers' fervor is reviving the moon god to its ancient potency--rather than meddle in the town's affairs overmuch. That would also provide a reason for his followers to persecute those who don't go along--he/it needs as many people fueling it as possible and they're not helping. That way we could still have the confrontation with the local comedian who mocks Mann and the eventual killing of the vicar--"Mann" doesn't want any distractions or rivals for attention.

*Furthermore, although Mann does convert some locals to his way of thinking, the vibe I get is that most of his followers are actually Americans who have moved to Moonwell. I'm not even sure how mass importation of foreigners, even white, English-speaking Christians who won't raise so many hackles, is supposed to work--in order to get a British job visa, an American needs a job offer from a British employer and must meet a bunch of other requirements. And although those are the current rules, Britain in the 1980s was tightening its immigration control, not loosening them. Here's more. If one of the local skeptics complained and was told they had valid tourist visas that would make more sense, but it seems they're living in the town, getting jobs, etc. rather than staying in the local hotel. Tourist visas specifically bar working or drawing on public funds, although the willingness of a couple of Mann's followers to teach for free at the school is a convenient workaround.

It would make much more sense that the majority of his followers are Britons from the town--youth bored with formal Anglicanism, conservatives who objected to the vicar preaching against the nuclear base, people feeling guilty about sins they'd committed (one of his converts is a girl who confesses to stealing from her employer, for example) attracted to the notion of forgiveness, spiritual-seeker types, or bored small-town people just looking for something new and interesting. Rather than leading an army of outsiders, Mann is a charismatic cult leader type who, despite being a foreigner and coming from a religious tradition the villagers find strange, is able to sway most of the people of the town to his side anyway. That would make him more sinister, not less. And the fact the villagers who don't go along with Mann, be they liberal Christians like the vicar or irreligious people, become pariahs so suddenly might crank up the horror even further--it'd be like Jews in early Nazi Germany before the killing starts suddenly finding most of their Gentile friends either don't like them anymore or are afraid to associate with them.

This is how I would have done the book. Obviously I'm not going to try to tread on another author's turf so blatantly by trying to write "Matthew W. Quinn's The Hungry Moon" or something with the serial numbers filed off in a more subtle fashion, nor am I going to write a "How I Would Have Done It" fan-fic like I did for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I don't have the knowledge of 1980s Britain, nor do I have the time with my own things to work on. Still, this was a fun thought exercise. :)

Alternate History Scenario: A Secret German Atomic Bomb?

Here's the latest interesting scenario from the alternate history forum--what if Germany had a secret nuclear arsenal? Given how anti-nuclear much of the German public is to the point they'll shut down nuclear plants and go back to coal, even if it means increasing carbon-dioxide emissions, and anti-military, plus the absolute fury that would result from countries Germany ravaged during World War II if this was discovered (the treaties that allowed German reunification renounce forever nuclear weapons, for starters) it seems unlikely. That said, democratic states can be swayed by popular opinion, but a dictatorship has much less reason to care.

So behold "Die Atombomben der Bundesrepublik: An Oral History of Germany's Nuclear Weapons Program," in which the new chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany learns that the reason the East German leadership was treated so leniently after the fall of the Wall is because they bequeathed a secret East German nuclear arsenal to the new united Germany. Unlike South Africa, the new leadership decided to keep said weapons rather than dismantle them. And given the drama that would result if this ever became public, only a few top military officials and the chancellor themselves are aware of this--the new chancellor receives a special one-hour briefing upon their ascension.

(That reminds me a lot of the reveal in I think Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that the Muggle Prime Minister is only informed of the existence of a secret magical society in Great Britain when they take office and it's a massive shock for them.)

The author has gone into a lot of detail about the suppression of the Prague Spring, the East German internal political situation, East Germany's infamous espionage apparatus, etc. It's a really interesting read.

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: Under Siege (1992)

One of the movies I'd wanted to see when I was a kid but wasn't allowed to was the original Under Siege, starring noted martial artist Steven Seagal. Like most movies I wasn't allowed to see I ended up losing interest in it, but thanks to the podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood and Amazon Instant Video, I had the chance to see it again.

Here's the podcast. And now for the review...

The Plot

The U.S.S. Missouri, the venerable battleship that accepted the surrender of Imperial Japan in 1945 and was upgraded to fight in the Gulf War, has finally been retired. It's making one last cruise from Hawaii to San Francisco to be decommissioned. Aboard the ship is cook Casey Ryback (Steven Seagal), personally chosen by Captain Adams (Patrick O'Neal) but disliked by the cranky executive officer Commander Krill (Gary Busey).

Krill throws a surprise birthday party for Adams, led by apparent musician William Strannix (Tommy Lee Jones), but it turns out it's all a scheme to seize control of the ship and sell its Tomahawk missiles (including several tipped with nuclear weapons) to the highest bidder. With most of the crew killed or welded up in the ship's forecastle, it's up to Ryback and some unlikely allies to save the day.

The Good

*The movie is entertaining and moves along at a pretty brisk clip. It's never boring, which is the major reason one sees these movies. :) In TVTropes terms, there are several Crowning Moments of Awesome, including one involving the Missouri's main guns.

*Tommy Lee Jones does a good job as the brilliant but deranged Strannix. It reminds me a lot of his later performance of the manic Two-Face in Batman Forever. And as befitting someone with military command experience (he references attending the War College, which colonels and lieutenant colonels apply to enter) he avoids, as TVTropes puts it, the infamous Villain Ball. Instead of sending out individual goons to be killed, they're to patrol in groups, not pursue Ryback into unsecured areas, check in regularly, etc.

*There's the theme throughout the movie of political-hack superiors throwing fighting-men under the bus. Although one would like to think our military is immune to CYA and other such bullshit, that's not the case. Although I'm violating the Servo Rule about invoking good movies in one's crappy movie (okay "mediocre" is more accurate), the novel Once An Eagle (later adapted into a miniseries) features a slimy politically-savvy staff officer Courtney Massengale and the battle-tested Sam Damon who has to fix or take the fall for his screw-ups.

*The opening scene in which the executive officer is the hard-ass and the captain more mellow reflects something I remember reading about how a well-run Navy ship operates. The captain is supposed to be the "good cop" and the XO the "bad cop." The XO is also more involved in the day-to-day hands-on stuff than the captain is. Commander Krill getting on Ryback's case about his uniform reflects that.

*I'm pretty sure that's really President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush in the movie.

*The terrorists' scheme to get aboard the ship actually makes a lot of sense. After all, Cher filmed the music video for "If I Could Turn Back Time" on the USS Missouri when it was docked in California.

*There's a really creative henchman death involving an I-beam.

*A first-time killer (who starts out the film as a pacifist no less) reacts with all the emotional trauma one would expect when they have to kill a terrorist.

The Bad

*The amount of skill required to hijack a U.S. Navy battleship is the kind of thing Soviet special forces or some other high-end military force would have. The terrorists seem like a bunch of mercenaries initially recruited for a CIA black-ops scheme or even a multinational criminal gang (there's a Eurotrash-looking guy, a Japanese guy, what sound like some Italians, a British guy, etc) led by what seems like a disgruntled U.S. Special Forces officer rather than a coherent unit. The recruiting effort needed to collect the people with all the necessary skill-sets from different nations, armies, etc. would raise all kinds of red flags, especially given the villain's immediate back-story, and then there's getting so many different people to actually work together.

It would make more sense if the perpetrators were some Soviet military or KGB die-hards who know they're on the way out (if this is in the fall or winter of 1991 the coup against Gorbachev has already failed and the USSR is clearly doomed) and are looking to secure their retirement if not take revenge on the Yankee capitalists. They'd be a coherent unit trained and working together for years with espirit de corps rather than a bunch of mercs who might balk at something so extreme and dangerous as taking on the U.S. Navy and simply take the money or some other goodies and run at first sign of trouble or before they even go through the mission. Mercenaries have historically not been very reliable soldiers..

Of course, given how dangerous a company or even a platoon of Spetsnaz would be, it'd be a much different and probably much shorter movie if the baddie rank-and-file were professional soldiers and not thug and merc types.

*Steven Seagal is a capable fighter, but he's not a very good actor. His delivery isn't very strong most of the time. Since he's the lead actor, this kind of presents a problem. :(

*Ryback gives a gun to a character who's an incoherent and frightened mess and expects them to be able to use it intelligently after having a couple of the gun's functions explained to them. One would think a trained soldier would know better. Of course he promptly uses this person as an ammo mule, so maybe he only intended them to actually use the weapon as a last resort.

*Do any of the terrorists have grenades? If they had grenades to use themselves, or if Ryback managed to snag a couple off the terrorists he kills, a lot of those gunfight scenes would be very difficult. Given how Strannix is a black-ops type, I would imagine his people would be carrying a bit more than small arms just in case.

*At one point Ryback basically abandons a bunch of his allies to go gallivanting around with only one other character, never mind that the terrorists still have at least half their numbers.

*A major plot point involves Tomahawk missiles having self-destruct codes the captain of the ship can trigger. I'm pretty sure those don't actually exist in real life--if an enemy got hold of them, they could use them to prevent a ship from effectively using its weapons. It'd be better if they were still relying on targeting data from the Missouri's radars or satellite inputs and could be redirected using the ship's fire control, but even that would be a problem.

*There's a love-interest plot involving Ryback, but there's no foreshadowing of it or any depth to the relationship. Some kind of weird trauma-bonding perhaps? It'd be more interesting if they avoided it completely, since a lot of action films have a token romantic plot and this would be different.

The Verdict

Fun, but more than a little bit nonsensical. See it once. 7.5 out of 10.

A Grimdark Alternative Ending for the 1994 Stargate

The following discussion contains spoilers for the 1994 science-fiction film Stargate, although given how the movie is 24 years old I don't know why that's important.

In the film, Ra plans to send an American nuclear warhead back to Earth, enhanced with the type of materials his advanced technology uses (in Stargate SG-1 it's called naquadah). He states this will enhance the warhead's power 100 times and claims that he created human civilization and now he will end it.

Hold it right there. Assuming that the military sent a W78 nuclear warhead through the Stargate with O'Neill, that's 350 kilotons. A nuke enhanced with naquadah to 100x its force would be around 35 megatons. That's around a third more than the 1960s-era B41 nuclear weapon. Mount St. Helens' eruption was 25 megatons of explosive power, while Mount Pinatubo was around 70 megatons. So Ra sends the nuke back through the Stargate and it detonates in the decommissioned nuclear silo that was the base of operations for the mission. Assuming he can remotely detonate it through the gateway, he's basically just caused a volcanic eruption in the U.S. Rocky Mountains, and that assumes the mountain on top of the explosion cannot contain it. After all, underground nuclear tests generally don't disturb the surface that much.

Mount Pinatubo caused a worldwide temperature drop of one degree, and that was with smoke, gas, and other crap continuously pumping into the atmosphere from the bowels of the Earth and spreading all over the world rather than a one-time big bang and, depending on what's around it, a big radioactive forest fire. Assuming the equivalent of Mount Pinatubo, Ra has just caused--maybe--a repeat of the Year Without a Summer in 1994. That would suck if it causes drought and famine in marginal areas, but it would not destroy modern civilization.

That said, there's a more grimdark possibility here. If there's a major nuclear detonation in the US, it could potentially lead to a confrontation with Russia, although I doubt President Clinton would have ordered a nuclear strike not knowing what happened. Assuming the US panicked and launched on Russia and the Russians fired back, you could have a civilization-ending nuclear exchange depending on what missiles are fired, where they detonate, etc. Bonus points if there's a nuclear winter to cause famine and ecological collapse in otherwise unaffected areas.

Ra (or some other opportunistic Goa'uld who notices) could wait a few years or decades for civilization to collapse, show up and pull his "I'm a god" trick on the debased, uneducated descendants of the exchange survivors, and assume control over Earth. I'm now imagining the Earth's surviving libraries as the equivalents of the fresco Sha'uri showed Dr. Jackson that depicted Ra bringing Earthlings to Abydos and the rebellion that ended his rule on Earth thousands of years ago.

Of course, Ra in the movie doesn't actually seem powerful to pull that off, even if post-nuclear civilization is reduced to medieval levels. He's got a couple fighter jets, one spaceship, and a few guards with armor resembling that of Egypt's gods. The basis of his rule is deception, not raw strength. He might not be able successfully take control of Earth, although one of the TV series' Goa'uld with their planetary empires, navies, etc. would.

That said, I could easily imagine him taking control over part of it. Maybe he keeps Dr. Jackson alive using the sarcophagus long enough to see him returning to Egypt and re-establishing himself as god there once more.

How's that for a Downer Ending?

AH Scenario: The U.S. Nukes Dresden...And Others

I'm still self-banned from the alternate-history forum I've been a member of since high school in order to focus on my day job and more important projects (like finishing my planned sequel to The Thing in the Woods), but I still visit the public sections fairly regularly. There's a relatively new scenario that might be of interest to World War II enthusiasts.

Behold "The Atomic Bombing of Germany, 1945." According to The Good War, an oral history of WWII that I read for AP U.S. History in high school, the atomic bomb was always intended for Germany, although the European war ended before it was ready. In this alternate timeline, the Trinity atomic bomb test takes place in 1944--how the bomb is ready a year earlier isn't discussed in detail, but a memoir by a Manhattan Project scientist on how it could have gone faster is cited--allowing for Germany to be targeted soon after the Battle of the Bulge.

Germany hasn't gotten nuked yet, but the B-29s are gathering in Britain and a lot of faux historical articles in the timeline indicate when the hammer is about to fall. Dresden is going to suffer its historical fate (albeit somewhat worse, if it suffers Hiroshima level casualties as opposed to the real-life ones), and a couple other German cities are on the target list.

I'm not going to apply for readmission to the site just to post on this (and probably get sucked into endless discussions about Star Wars, Donald Trump, etc. in other sections of the forum), so I hope it gets updated soon.

Marko Kloos' First Two FRONTLINES Novels (Some Spoilers)

A relative who's in the military was in town a few days ago and while he was here, he recommended I read two novels by Marko Kloos, a German-born American science fiction writer. The first is Terms of Enlistment and the second (now a Hugo Award nominee) is Lines of Departure. I corresponded briefly with Kloos via Twitter and Facebook (the fact he's willing to answer questions from someone relatively low on the totem pole like me is awesome) and there's a third one he's working on now, plus a couple shorter works set in the same universe.

The Good

*It's a really entertaining series. I typically buy e-books to read while on the elliptical at the gym (my hour and change goes a lot faster when there's something I can look at besides the timer) and this is something that makes my cardio routine go by in a flash. It also makes the MARTA train when I'm going to graduate school much less boring. Even on re-read #3 for both books, things go a lot faster.

*The aliens when they're finally revealed are the most interesting extraterrestrials since the "fish" of Midshipman's Hope and its sequels or the alien-invasion novel Footfall. Most fictional aliens are human-sized or, like the Fithp of Footfall, slightly larger. The Lankies somewhat resemble the Baluchitherium of prehistoric Earth--but are vastly bigger.

*As the protagonist himself points out, the idea that the warring factions of humanity would unite in the face of a common alien foe is pretty cliched--and does not happen. The North American Commonwealth and the Sino-Russian Alliance continue their war even with the wolf at the door. Although cliches can be plausible, it's generally good to avoid them.

*It does touch on the less-romantic realities of space colonization--going from an urbanized Earth to some new colony where there are maybe a million people on an entire planet is going to be pretty jarring and lonely.

*Kloos started out as a self-published writer using the Kindle Direct Program and then 47 North, Amazon's science fiction imprint, picked up him. He's a success story those of us who seek to walk this path (I'm still primarily interested in the traditional route, but I could easily imagine going down his path if I keep querying and nobody bites) could learn from.

The Bad

*The male lead and female lead are in a romantic relationship lasting for years, but she's an officer and he's senior enlisted. That's a serious no-no right there. Kloos is a veteran of the German military, so he should know how these things work. Some acknowledgement of the situation would be a good idea--it could be pointed out in-story they're not in the same chain of command (that's probably the case) or due to long space voyages the rules aren't as strictly enforced.

*We're getting into spoilery territory here, but in the second book it's made clear that there haven't been any human victories in space over the aliens. A solution is ultimately found to that problem, a solution that's pretty simple and obvious. Given how dumb people can be sometimes and how the NAC government was covering up just how bad things were, the fact that this solution wasn't thought up immediately isn't the implausible part--what's implausible is that in-story it took five years. If the war with the Lankies had only been in progress for a year or two that would make more sense, plus it would make the Lankies a lot scarier if they've obliterated half the NAC's space colonies in that sort of a time-frame. It would also explain why the NAC and SRA haven't ended their chronic war--five years is quite a long time to keep fighting in the middle of a burning house. Kloos has written a response to this issue (warning: spoilers) here if anybody's interested.

*From the way they talk about the use of nuclear weapons (and the strategies the humans follow against the Lankies), it seems Kloos thinks the use of a few nukes on a planet would render it uninhabitable to both the humans and Lankies. Unless they're using cobalt-salted bombs, that's not plausible. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were immediately rebuilt and re-inhabited after they got A-Bombed. To be fair if he was a German soldier during the Cold War even tactical nuclear use in an area as densely populated as Germany would be horrifically destructive, but whole worlds are not single countries.

*The Earth is rapidly overpopulating and it seems most of the urban population in the NAC is living on welfare. Some more discussion about how this situation actually came to be would be interesting. If it were me writing it, I'd say that the economy is so advanced that it can generate all sorts of high-tech goodies but automated to the point it only creates a few jobs. However, the government is so starved of funds (due to overly-low or misdirected taxes, an inept tax-collection apparatus, or some combination of the two) that it can't manage guns and butter (and so the masses are reduced to living on soy in crime-ridden ghettos), that its needs are so great it's debasing the currency to meet them (and that's why beef is $100/pound), or a combination of the two. Kloos obviously shouldn't have to explain everything, but at the same time, the reader shouldn't have to come up with explanations for why something works to this degree.

The Verdict

A good series despite some world-building flaws. Definitely worth keeping up with. 8.5 out of 10.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: "Godzilla" (1998)

Last February, I promised my readers that I'd dig up some movies I saw years ago and see how they've held up over the years. After listening to the podcast How Did This Get Made, which my friend Nick got me interested in, I decided on the 1998 remake of Godzilla starring Matthew Broderick. I saw the movie in theaters, which meant it was the summer before I started eighth grade.

EDIT 10/4/2018: The podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood did an episode on it in which I participated. Here's the podcast link. And here are some further thoughts.

Now back to the actual review...

The Good

*Firstly, I liked how they updated the film to reference current events. The original Godzilla was made within a decade of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and was one of the first movies to take into account the fear of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology in general. This film references the controversial French nuclear tests in the 1990s, coming out in theaters two-odd years after the last test took place.

*The film's opening hints that Godzilla was descended from either Komodo monitors or marine iguanas affected by the French nuclear testing. Its design reflects this--although it's primarily bipedal, its forelimbs are fairly long and we do see it moving about on all fours. It also swims like a marine iguana.

*In addition to nuclear testing, the film also touched on issues like the glass ceiling and sexual harassment. The journalism career of female lead Audrey Timmonds (Maria Pitillo) is being hampered by her slimy boss who makes her get his groceries, implicitly offers to trade career advancement for sex despite being married, tells her to go away and leave the "big boys" to do their work, and steals credit for a story she put together revealing the origin of Godzilla. This serves as a motivator for some of Audrey's less than stellar actions.

*Despite being 14 years old, the special effects have mostly held up well as far as Godzilla himself is concerned. There are some moments that have a distinctly computer-generated look to them, but most of the time it still works.

*Godzilla's death is rather sad, even though he obviously needs to be put down.

*There are some pretty amusing moments throughout the film, including "Mayor Ebert" and his assistant "Gene." According to How Did This Get Made, movie critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel didn't like Independence Day very much and this was Roland Emmerich's and Dean Devlin's revenge. In particular, "Mayor Ebert" isn't portrayed very well. And then there's the clever and comical way Nick deals with pursuing baby Godzillas in Madison Square Garden.

*Although the concept of the baby Godzillas has been mocked as an attempt to rip off the Jurassic Park raptors, I found them entertaining. Godzilla has been depicted as having offspring before (Son of Godzilla), but let's just say Minya isn't exactly threatening.

*Finally, someone gives the French, in particular their intelligence services, the credit they're due.

The Bad

*Dr. Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) refers to Godzilla as being a hybrid despite knowing almost nothing about him other than some samples he picked up in Panama. Although scientists aren't immune from jumping the gun (see the cold fusion episode in 1989), I would think a biologist like Nick would be a bit more prudent about hypothesizing without evidence.

*The "we need bigger guns" line was just obnoxiously bad. If they were trying to be funny by riffing on Jaws' legendary "we're going to need a bigger boat" line, it wasn't funny. It was just annoying and came off as uncreative.

*The movie started to drag in the middle, before the hunt for Godzilla's nest gets going. I imagine focusing on Audrey's journalism career and her relationship with Nick was intended to make us care about the characters, but it was rather slow.

*When they send the submarines after Godzilla in the ocean, the officers and crew are wearing hats marked "SSBN" and including the ship names. That acronym is used for ballistic missile submarines. Although I imagine in the event of something like this the military would simply grab the nearest submarines and send them into action, that role would be more appropriate for a nuclear attack submarine.

*The special effects for the baby Godzillas in Madison Square Garden have not held up well. They're pretty obviously CGI.

The Verdict

Not bad, but a bit long. 7.5 out of 10.

Suggestions To Improve "Battleship" (SPOILERS)

Since I don't like criticizing without offering helpful suggestions, here's something for Battleship.

Many critics have pointed out that Liam Neeson, who plays Admiral Shane, does not do a whole lot in the movie.  One of the few scenes he has in the middle of the film is when most of the fleet is trapped outside of the Hawaiian Islands by the aliens' energy field.  It does not appear they're doing very much to try to break through.  There's a federal VIP (Secretary of Defense?) who is pushing Shane to try to probe the field, and after being pestered about it one too many times, Shane tells him he'll order another plane at the shield when the VIP is co-piloting it.

(This is based on a real incident when a Clinton Administration official suggested to General Hugh Shelton that the U.S. could allow an aircraft to be shot down over Iraq in order to have the pretext for war.  Shelton got really angry and said he'd order the mission when the person who made the suggestion--they're not named--was trained to fly it.  That shut them up real fast.)

Although the force field took an aircraft flying into it without being overly affected, it doesn't seem like anyone made any effort to break it afterward.  Given the amount of firepower a carrier battle group has at its command, one doesn't necessarily have to risk the lives of pilots to do this.

While Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) and company are busy fighting the alien invaders inside the energy field, Shane could pull the fleet back and try to breach the field by firing on it with the conventional missiles the fleet's aircraft and missile boats carry.  If that fails to breach the force field, Shane could then request permission to use nuclear weapons.

Given how close the fleet was to the force field--the three destroyers leading the group were cut off when the shield went up--the fleet would need to pull back even farther before even a tactical nuclear device could be used.  And tactical weapons are relatively small as far as nukes go.  The W70 variable-yield bomb could go as high as 100 kilotons, over five times higher than the Hiroshima bomb, while the Tsar Bomba was 50 megatons, 1,400 times the combined destructive force of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and around a quarter of the explosive force of the Krakatoa volcano.

(Since I assume the force field works by dissipating kinetic force all over the entire surface much like how a bulletproof vest does, and the force field is large enough to enclose the entire Hawaiian chain, it would take some serious nuclear firepower to breach it.)

So we cut between Hopper and his destroyer playing cat-and-mouse with the alien invaders inside the force field and Shane pulling the fleet back a safe distance before he begins nuclear bombardment of the energy field.  Just when the nukes are about to fly, Hopper and the U.S.S. Missouri manage to destroy the emitters on the alien flagship and the force field collapses.

Given how the general public irrationally fears nuclear energy and nuclear weapons (I've seen people suggest using a dozen WWII-era nuclear weapons could cause a nuclear winter when you'd need many, many more powerful modern devices to even get that in theory), this could be a means of building suspense.

It could also get more out of Liam Neeson.  We could see him agonizing about the use of nuclear weapons and perhaps even flashing back to the death of a relative from cancer as a result of exposure to nuclear testing or being part of the American force occupying Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings.  If he's an admiral now, he might be a Vietnam veteran, which would mean his father and uncles would be the right age to be WWII veterans or in the military in the early Cold War, when radiation dangers were not as well-known.

(It would need to be made clear that even if a hole were blown in the force shield, the fleet would need to rush through the blast zone, where the radiation is most severe, in order to have a chance of getting through before the aliens seal the breach.  Thus there's great risk of radiation exposure to the crew.)

Good To See Someone Else Agrees With Me On Israel-Iran...

This article got posted on my alternate-history forum today.

Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets

I've said in the past that the Israelis do not have the numbers and the range to successfully cripple Iran's nuclear program.  Good to see people in the Pentagon agree with me. 

This is not the Osirak raid 20-odd years ago or the recent Israeli attack on that mysterious facility in Syria that might have been nuclear-related.  Iran is much farther away from Israel and its air defenses are much more formidable.  The reduction of Iraq's air defenses prior to the ground phase of Operation Desert Desert Storm lasted from Jan. 17 to Feb. 23, 1991, and that was with the combined military power of the Western World operating out of Saudi Arabia and several aircraft carriers nearby.  The Israelis are much weaker both militarily and economically and would be facing a much smarter opponent than Saddam Hussein.

The only way I can think of that the Israelis could successfully destroy the Iranian nuclear program by themselves is nuclear weapons--use ballistic missiles launched from Israel proper and from submarines against the nuclear sites and Iran's air defenses, then send their air force in to mop up.

Thing is, that would be an extraordinarily radical step to say the least, something that will anger the entire world and risk the ruination of Israel's economy due to economic sanctions and the like.  The Israelis would have to be very frightened or desperate to actually do that, and I would imagine the Israeli leadership is aware that the one holding the real power in Iran (the Supreme Leader, not the president) is not the one making nasty comments about Israel, holding Holocaust-denial seminars, etc.

Let's hope nothing comes to pass.  An Israeli attack on Iran would provoke a major Middle Eastern war and jack up oil prices, which would throttle the economic recovery and probably cause a worldwide return to recession.  And if nuclear weapons are used (and there's retaliation with chemicals or germs by surviving Iranian forces or their allies), the death toll would be huge.

Draka/Transformers Fake Film Trailer

Keith posted the trailer for the Draka/Transformers crossover I described in this post on my alternate-history forum.  Here it is for your enjoyment.

(A view of Cybertron from space, city-sized explosions bursting over its surface.)

OPTIMUS PRIME (V.O.):

Our world was consumed by war...

(Earth is seen from space, its ice caps swollen by nuclear winter, dust storms raging over North America, debris floating in orbit.)

OPTIMUS PRIME (V.O.):

...just as yours has been.

(The camera zooms in on Nevada, too fast to make much out, and stops to show SAM WITWICKY and his father RON working on the partly disassembled engine of an excavator, Draka serf tattoos visible on their necks.)

RON:

I wonder what they're looking for?

SAM:

What does it matter?

(Zoom out again. The rubble of the Hoover Dam rises above them along with the wreckage of the power station buildings. Hundreds of other SERFS are clearing away the rubble with both power and hand tools. GHOULOONS and Draka OVERSEERS patrol the area.)


(Zoom out further to space. One of the larger spacecraft hulks suddenly sheds its outer layer of debris and deformed metal and sprouts sensors and racks of missiles.)

OPTIMUS: (V/O)

Now our war has come here...

(RAVAGE leaps into the middle of a party of heavily burdened SERFS, energy weapons fire cutting over their heads. He swats screaming humans out of the way with irritated snarls, shrugging off bullets from the OVERSEER's pistol. SAM crawls away as BUMBLEBEE appears over a rock outcrop, struggling with LASERBEAK.)

OPTIMUS (V.O.):

...and your war has become ours.

(LENNOX, EPPS, and five other SOLDIERS survey the wreckage of a Draka forward base.)

EPPS:

Who the hell could'a done this?

LENNOX:

Not who. What.

(SAM and MIKAELA BANES--who is wearing something scandalously revealing--watch as BUMBLEBEE transforms from car mode to robot mode.)

MIKAELA:

What...the hell...is that?

SAM:

It's a robot. Like, a...super-advanced robot. (beat) From space.

(Watched by RAVAGE, LASERBEAK and RUMBLE, MEGATRON bursts from a new hole in the wrecked dam, shrugging off boulders and fragments of rebar.

MEGATRON:

I...am...Megatron!

(A dozen flame-wreathed metallic objects descend from orbit towards the former United States.)


(ERIC VON SHRAKENBURG is seen talking to an AIDE in a Draka command centre.)

AIDE:

Excellency, we've detected more of the alien signatures among objects that have fallen to Earth in the last few weeks.

ERIC:

How many?

AIDE:

Over nine thousand.

ERIC:

What?!

(Hundreds of missiles streak through space, pinpointing and destroying Draka ships and weapons platforms. An enormous Autobot in robot mode, FORTRESS MAXIMUS, his size indicated by the much smaller Transformers manouvering around him, fires a volley of lasers and kinetic projectiles at incoming missiles from his shoulder- and arm-mounted weapons. The camera turns with him as an equally large Decepticon, SCORPONOK, opens fire on him.)

OPTIMUS PRIME (V.O.):

Autobots! Transform and roll out!

(Montage: Dozens of wrecked, rusting or abandoned vehicles lying/sitting in the streets of bombed-out American cities reconfigure themselves into shiny, new, beweaponed versions of the same vehicles and speed off. More AUTOBOTS emerge from underground parking garages or subway tunnels, some transforming into helicopters or aircars.)


(OPTIMUS in truck mode leads a convoy of Autobots down a freeway through the desert.)

STARSCREAM (V.O.):

Decepticons! Attack!

(A formation of Draka Falcon hypersonic fighters dissolves suddenly as a third of their number open fire with energy weapons and massacre the rest.)


(Several DECEPTICONS rampage through a Draka military base, shooting anything that moves. Several American SERFS cheer them on until STARSCREAM absently obliterates them as well.)


(A shadow falls over a DRAKENSIS OFFICER, and we see in his face that he's just learned the meaning of fear. The camera spins to show the towering form of DEVASTATOR rising above him.)


TITLE:


STARRING SHIA LABOEUF


(SAM accepts a gun offered to him by EPPS.)

SAM:

Guess I'm in the army now.

TITLE:


JOSH DUHAMEL


(LENNOX pulls the pin from a grenade with his teeth.)

LENNOX:

Enslave this, you sick freaks!

TITLE:


MEGAN FOX


(MIKAELA moves in to kiss SAM.)

MIKAELA:

You're twice the man any Snake will ever be.

TITLE:


AND SAMUEL L. JACKSON


(AGENT SIMMONS looks up over the back of a speeding jeep as Iowa cornfields blur past.)

AGENT SIMMONS:

That's it! Enough is enough! I have had it with these mutha(inaudible) Snakes on this mutha(inaudible) plain! (He lifts a rocket launcher.) Everybody strap in! S'time for some pest control!

TITLE:


WITH THE VOICES OF PETER CULLEN


(Freed SERFS stampede through a newly blasted gap in a razorwire fence, watched over by OPTIMUS PRIME, JAZZ, LENNOX, and his SOLDIERS)

OPTIMUS PRIME:

Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.

LENNOX:

Hell yeah.

TITLE:


AND FRANK WELKER


(A hologram of MEGATRON addresses ERIC and his ADVISORS.)

MEGATRON:

Know this: I have conquered and enslaved worlds for a million years. You are no more than insects to me.

(The camera pans over an apocalyptic battlefield in the ruins of Los Angeles, hundreds of AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS fighting each other and DRAKA soldiers shooting at both and trying not to get stepped on.)


TITLE:


UNITED PRODUCTIONS OF SAMOTHRACE PRESENTS


A MICHAEL BAY FILM


(SAM silently screams a denial.)


(MEGATRON and OPTIMUS PRIME charge at one another in slow motion amid burning rubble.)


TITLE:


TRANSFORMERS


COMING THIS SUMMER


(AGENT SIMMONS struggles with a remote detonator, pounding on it with his fist when it fails to activate.)

LENNOX:

You want a hand with that?

SIMMONS:

Naw, leave me alone, I got this.

(A Draka fortification explodes in a colourful and extremely noisy fireball.)

"United Productions of Samothrace" is a reference to the world the Alliance survivors settle in the Alpha Centauri system after the Domination of the Draka conquers the Solar System.  The conceit Keith is going with is that this is a Samothracian film.

Having Samuel L. Jackson playing Simmons isn't IMO the best idea, but maybe if they have John Turturro playing the Draka commander who has made Mikaela his concubine, that'd work.  Turturro's Simmons is comic-relief in the second and third films, but in the first movie, he was downright creepy and evil.