Life Lessons from Comic-con: Kevin Smith, Ron Moore, and J. Michael Stravinsky

I just got back from San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) and it was as usual, a madhouse.  Some 200,000 people went through the convention center, and there were great costumes and panels.  While I could tell you about the various announcements (the new Wonder Woman trailer for example), those have been covered by many other sources.

Comic-con is actually a pretty inspiring place for writers and creative types, who often start as “fans” and end up giants in the field.  In addition to the big giant panels (Game of Thrones, Star Trek, Star Wars, Walking Dead) there are actually a lot of smaller panels that offer tips for those looking to break into the industry and to create their own art.

I thought I’d write about lessons from 3 well-known writers who spoke at Comic-Con whose talks you may not have heard about on the latest geek newssite:

• Kevin Smith, who usually has a huge session at Hall H on Saturday night, is of course the writer/director of Mall Rats and Clerks in the 90s, and just launched a show on AMC called Geeking Out. 
• J. Michael Stracinsky is the creator of Babylon 5 and the more recent Sense8, and a well known writer in Hollywood.  
• Ron Moore, recently show runner of Outlander and Battlestare Galactica, started his career working on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

While I could write entire blog posts about each of these guys and what they said at Comic-Con, I thought I’d share one little inspiring tidbit from each talk:

J. Michael Stracinsky:  At the end of his talk, JMS told us that he was once just like those of us in the audience, sitting at Comic-con looking up to the writers/creators on the stage.  He did this to encourage those of us in the audience to “take the leap” and express ourselves creatively, and see if we can turn it into a career.  

He then told us the story of one of his friends who worked for the state of California until she was 53 years old.  She told JMS that she felt like there was nothing of her in the work she was doing – there was no creativity, and she wanted to do something that expressed her personality more, but felt like it was too late.  JMS asked her what she was passionate about – and she said she liked “pets”.  She was also into “photography”.  He encouraged her to combine these interests and to do “pet photography”.  Her objection was that while that would be a good "hobby",  it would take years to establish herself to be able to make a living at something like, this – it might even take three years, and then she’d be 56 before she was really doing what she loved as a career.  At this point, he paused and told us he asked her this question: “And how old will you be in in 3 years if you don’t pursue this passion project?”

“That’s right, you’ll be 56 years old.”  He told us this story, he said, to remind us first of all that it’s never too late to get started, but also to remind us that time is passing and that we should get started on those ideas and stop wasting time, start doing the things that we love now.

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Ron Moore:  Ron was on a panel with other writers of Star Trek.  Of course, he spent many years working on Star Trek: The Next Generation and then various other Star Trek properties before becoming a show runner of his own.  He tells the story of how after he moved to LA, he was struggling as a writer.  He started dating a girl that worked on the set of the new Star Trek.  She was able to get him a tour of the set.  He was so excited that he wrote up a spec script for ST:TNG and took it with him.  At the end of the tour, he pulled out the script and asked the guy who was giving the tour if they could get the spec script to someone that could take a look. The tour guide ended up being Gene Roddenberry’s assistant, and took the script to the show producers, who liked it enough to hire him as a writer on the show.  It goes to show you, you never know what coincidences or circumstances will lead you to get a break in front of the right person.

Kevin Smith: Kevin always gives a great talk at the end of Comic-Con, usually with a few unexpected stories about Ben Affleck and/or JJ Abrams (whose Star Wars Panel  was just before Smith’s last year).  Kevin said a lot, but here are a few random inspiring thoughts. You can make a TV show but getting it on a network may be tough; you can make a movie, but getting it into theaters may be tough.  Do a podcast and there are no gatekeepers, you can send it in to iTunes and there it is, and he encouraged everyone to start their own podcasts, just start recording yourself and others talking about stuff that you care about.  He also said that there was a time when Star Wars wasn’t cool (I remember this time) and no one talked about it.  Grown men were OK talking about sports and stats, but not about Star Wars and Comic-books.  Since he had no one else to talk to about Star Wars, he put scenes in his movies where the characters were sitting around talking about Star Wars. This inadvertently led to many opportunities for him – but the key was he was just putting down what he wanted to talk about.

How many times, he asked, have you sat there watching something on TV or elsewhere and thought, I’m just as smart as those guys, and could do this as good as they’re doing it? He used to think the same thing.  He told us the story of how he told his sister, when he was 21 years old, that he told his sister that he was going to be a film-maker.  She told him “OK, then be a film-maker”.  He repated that he “was going to become” a filmmaker, but she insisted that he just start “being a film-maker”.  He started following the advice and started to think about of himself as a film-maker who just hadn’t made a full feature film yet.  He adopted the mindset of a being a film-maker and started making films about stuff he knew and he was passionate about.  And that led to him becoming a film-maker and then being there on stage in front of us at Comic-con, and he encouraged everyone in the audience to do the same.

So there you go, Comic-Con is not only a place to see your favorite actors, or cosplayers dressed like super-heroes, it’s a pretty inspirational place, especially for those of us who believe we have our own stories to tell and want to turn our passions into reality.

The 7 Things I most disliked about the new Star Wars movie!

OK, I’m done with my political rants and back to writing about sci fi and film.

Of course by now everyone’s seen Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens (at least any serious nerd will have), and most reviews were positive.  Before I continue, let me get this out of the way: I actually really enjoyed the latest installment of George Lucas’ epic from a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away.  In fact, I’ve already seen it twice in the theaters – once with my co workers and once with my nephews (who are all under 10 years old) – and will probably see it again before its theatrical release is over.

There have already been many good reviews and articles listing what to like about the new movie, so I don't think you need to read another one (a few things to like: Daisy Ridley as Rey, Harrison Ford's return as Han Solo, the banter between Po and Finn, the realistic feeling sets, the lack of CGI, the music, etc.). I thought I’d go a different route;   in showing my appreciation for the film, I’m actually going to list 7 things I didn’t like or that they (J.J. Abrams and company), didn't do well in The Force Awakens.

Why? Because I, like millions of fans, have been waiting a long time to see another Star Wars movie, and there were things I was hoping to see that I didn’t.   Don’t worry Star Wars fans; Disney has made over a billion dollars from the film already, so I don’t think my little blog entry will hurt!

SPOILERS AHEAD!  If you haven’t seen the The Force Awakens yet (and that means you're probably on another planet or just plain don’t like science fiction or action films), then I suggest you stop reading here!

1. BB-8 is “Cousin Oliver” – but I wanted to see more R2D2 and C3PO!   OK, I know, I know, everyone loves BB-8 because he’s the new “cute” droid, so how could I possibly not like the cute little guy?
   Well, I didn’t dislike him, exactly.  It’s just to me he felt a bit like Cousin Oliver in the Brady Bunch – those old enough to remember the Brady Bunch will recall that when the little kids (Bobby and Cindy) started growing up, the producers felt they needed to add a cute new small kid into the show to keep their audience happy, and voila, here was little cousin “Oliver”!
   The same thing happened in Harry Potter, as Harry and Ron and Hermione were growing up, cute little Colin Creevy showed up (same with Ender’s Game, where Bean became the next Ender).
   But C3PO and R2D2 weren’t children who were “growing up”, so there was no reason that they couldn’t be used in the same way as they had been.  George Lucas’s original idea of having not one robot (as an accessory to the heroes), but rather two “droids” who made up an interstellar "odd couple" was brilliant: it played well and added quite a bit of humor to the original trilogy.  In the prequels, this humor was mostly missing and I think it’s because the droids were an after-thought (Jar Jar Binks was the new cousin Oliver in the Phantom Menace, which kind of backfired). 
   If you watch Star Wars (err I mean Episode 4, A New Hope), the first 10 minutes are about R2D2 and C3PO bickering with each other about what to do – from Princess Leia giving the plans to R2, and C3PO’s insistence that R2 had no “secret mission”.
   Lucas once said that he viewed the droids as being the only characters who would be in all three Star Wars trilogies – in fact, he went so far as to say that in some ways, the films were from the two droids’ point of view.   In the prequels, this bickering and humor between the two was sort of missing.  OK so JJ Abrams did it better than in the prequels, but it still doesn’t change that BB-8 is basically cousin Oliver. I missed that interaction between C3PO and R2D2, which was given short shrift. "That little droid is going to cause me a lot of trouble" says Luke. "Oh," answers Threepio, "he excels at that!"
   
   
   
2. The repetitive plot.  OK so the resistance (weren’t they supposed to be in charge now? If so, why are they called the “resistance”?) hid something in a droid.  And the Empire (err, I mean the Nazi-like First Order) has built a super weapon, and kidnapped the main female character.  The men (and wookie) have to go in to rescue her and to help out the rebels(err, resistance), get this, shut off the power of the shield so that the rebels (err, I mean the resistance), can destroy this new Death Star (err, I mean Starkiller base).   While the Death Star had the ability to destroy an entire planet, the Starkiller base can, get this, destroy several planets at once!  (in my best/worst jar jar binks voice: How rude!).
   
   
3. The Death of Han Solo.  They killed off one of the most beloved characters in all of movie-dom! While I didn’t dislike how it was done (the father-son thing is very much in action here and has mythological themes), the actual death was very quick and there wasn’t much back-story between Han Solo and Kylo.  One review I read, which I agree with, is that there was a moment of shock, and then the filmgoers (and characters) moved on from there, kinda forgetting about it.  I guess I, like many others, felt that it should have packed more emotional wallop – like the death of another beloved figure on a bridge in The Fellowship of the Ring.   When Gandalf fell off that bridge, his (apparent) death had the emotional impact of a ton of bricks right there in the gut. Fly you fools! It was hard to recover from, not just for the audience, but particularly for the Hobbits!   Give them a moment, for pity's sake! Not to mention, the Elves ... "What are they singing?" ... "A lament for Gandalf" ... "What are they saying?" ... "I haven't the heart to tell you".
   
   
4. The aftermath of the Death of Han Solo.   When they return at the end having accomplished their mission, you would think that Princess  (err, I mean, General) Leia would hug Chewie, who was the person that knew Han Solo second best after Leia herself!    But instead, she hugs Rey instead and Chewie just walks by.  Really?? This actually felt like they cut some scene that was supposed to be there, or they deliberately had her hug Rey, as a clue that Rey may indeed be related to Leia after all.  But still, come on, Chewie was Han Solo’s life-long companion, and Leia was his ex, you think they would be the ones to miss him the most? This isn't a case of wookie discrimination (i hope - hug the nearest human!), since Chewie hugged her first in the earlier scene.   I thought this star wars was supposed to be more about the characters and less about special effects?  Fail.
   
   
5. Kylo Ren taking Rey prisoner.  Just as Princess Leia was taken prisoner in Star Wars (err, I mean Episode I, A New Hope, again) by Darth Vader, at some point Kylo Ren decides to take Rey as his prisoner rather than getting the droid BB-8 who had the “plans he was looking for” (or at least the map), because she had seen the starmap once.  Really??  It’s one thing for Kylo to suck out of Po’s head that he put the map to Skywalker (more on this macguffin below) into the droid BB-8, it's entirely another for Kylo to pull out the details of a starmap from Rey’s head when she saw it only for a brief few seconds!  OK, so I realize it was a plot device to get her and Kylo alone so he could, inadvertently, Total Recall the Force out of her, but still … even Recall had a better premise than this!
   
   
6. The map to Luke Skywalker and all that jazz.   OK, I understand that this was the main macguffin in the movie (a "macguffin" is a “plot-enabling device” that pushes a film’s characters forward towards some arbitrary goal), but I’m not sure it made a lot of sense.   Luke was supposed to go searching for the first Jedi temple, but it looks like here he knew exactly where it was, and left a map to it with Artoo, before he  disappeared.  He’s been living on that little island for what, 10 or 20 years? Really? What happened to his spaceship? Did he send it back with Artoo after he found the temple? Anyways, suffice it to say while I appreciate the macguffin to move the plot forward and to bring back Luke Skywalker in the second film (not to mention that the starmap projection looked cool), I wish there had been more of Luke in the first film, and perhaps a better explanation for what he’s really been doing out there?  It was only, you know, the point of the plot of the whole film!
   
   
7. How quickly Rey’s Force skills develop. OK perhaps they will explain this further in the sequels, but even Luke Skywalker (remember him, the guy who took down Darth Vader and the Emperor), needed training from old Ben Kenobi before he could do anything. Anakin, the chosen one, needed training too.   Rey not only is able to look into Ren’s mind (OK I could buy that) but suddenly does a Jedi Mind Trick on Daniel Craig’s Stormtrooper?   Luke Skywalker’s light sabre calls to her like some kind of Force psychometry, and then she is able to best Kylo Ren, out of nowhere?  Again, I liked Daisy Ridley’s performance as Rey quite a bit, but this all seemed a lot to swallow.  Even for a galaxy far, far away!
   

And there you have it – 7 things I didn’t like about the Force Awakens.    It’s funny that I’m writing this because as I said, I actually like the movie.  Quite a bit, especially comparing it to the Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi, both of which I saw again recently.

Stanford Sloan GSB, Entry 21: The Spring Quarter, Star Wars, and the Class of 2010

The Class of 2010

We just met members of the Stanford Sloan Program class of 2010, who are having their orientation this weekend, as I write this. We gave them a “welcome” presentation (“The opening ceremonies for the class of 2010”, as our Master of Ceremonies, Tim, Tim, described it), in Bishop auditorium, the main auditorium at the GSB.

In the words of Darth Vader from Star Wars (more on the Star Wars theme later in this blog post): “The Circle is Now Complete”.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since we sat in Bishop, watching the Sloan class of 2008 give us their wacky and informative presentation about what life was like in the Sloan program, amidst the MBA's at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

I can remember sitting in the theater, with my then future-friends/classmates, watching these guys and wondering: “Wow, these guys seem to be such good friends and having such a good time – I wonder if our class is going to gel like that?”

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I remember the 2008 class members, with their private jokes about texting each other at night and hurrying to a restaurant, bar, or social gathering in Palo Alto. It was clear they were having a good time, and I doubted whether we'd be like that in under a year's time.

I sat with my own personal combination of excitement, anticipation, and even anxiousness, about how I’d fit in to the Stanford GSB. I wondered if I’d like taking classes again (it had been 15 years since I’d been to school), wondering if I’d get along well with my classmates, and more importantly, whether I’d be able to relate to any of them personally.

The Sloan program, after all, consists of a very diverse group of people, from a large number of countries, at very different stages of life (from single Sloanies to families with 4 kids) and stages of work (from entrepreneurs to unemployed to Employed for Life).

As I sat in the audience yesterday, that question was finally answered. We have gelled as a class and it was funny to see in our skits and videos just how well we’ve gotten to know each other (and the faculty and administration, who several members of our class played during the skits). Particularly hilarious was our classmate Bree’s imitation of the director of the Sloan program, Marie – who knew we had such a good impersonator in our class?

The experience turned out to be more emotional for many of us than we expected - Of course our first priority was to welcome the new class with open arms and to give them a preview of what they might be like a year from now – which we did. But it also brought forth the realization that we have come full circle and our year at Stanford is almost over! In fact, there are only 4 weeks of classes left, only one big Sloan party left (The Latin party), and then finals, and finally graduation in June.

Many of us are going on the international study trip to South America, though some of us are more concerned about what we’re doing afterwards, with the job market and economy as it is and won't be attending.

What a year it’s been and what great friendships we’ve formed. I find it funny that even those classmates who I didn’t always get along with, or those I didn’t relate to very much during the school year - have become trusted friends that I’m looking forward to seeing sometime after graduation.

The Spring Quarter
Several of the new members of the class told me they’d been reading this blog regularly (one even said that was how he learned about the program), and asked why I hadn’t written any entries lately.

Honestly this last semester has been really busy – not so much with academics, but since it’s my last semester at Stanford, I’ve been trying to meet with as many interesting folks on and off campus, and figuring out exactly what I might be working on next that academics have fallen to a “lower priority”.

Which leads to a piece of un-asked for advice that I’d give to the new class: Think about why you’re coming to Stanford and what your priorities will be. Of course, there will always be academic, social, and professional aspects of your year here, and in the fall quarter they will be all mixed together. But come January, I would suggest it’s important to have a sense of what you’d like to get out of it – is it more experience with Finance? Is it to meet a team (MBA’s, Engineers) that you’d like to start a company with after the program? Is it to get to know professors that you want to keep in touch with? Is it to break into a new industry? Is it to socialize?

Whatever it is, you've got to focus on what's right for you!

Spring Electives
So to give our future Sloanies and others who are interested in classes at the Stanford Business Schoool, here’s the low down on the classes I’m taking this quarter.

I decided to take only four classes this quarter. There are two required core classes (as part of the Sloan curriculum). I took two electives this quarter, which should (fingers crossed) give me the right number of credits to graduate. I intentionally took a light load this quarter (I had 5 classes in the winter quarter, several of which were very demanding). Again, this gets back to priorities – one of our classmates is taking 6 classes this quarter, because it’s our last quarter at Stanford and he wants to take as many classes as possible.

The core classes:

•Non-market strategy.
This was a term that I hadn’t heard before. The idea of this class is that while most business focus on the “market strategy of a firm” (what are competitors doing, what is my product strategy, m&a, marketing, etc.), many firms (particularly big multi-nationals) have to deal with things that are not directly market-related. What things? A big thing called the government is a good example – many firms are in industries that are regulated, that might face environmental issues, that are attacked by citizen groups, and on and on.

As an example, our first case was about Shell and greenpeace and the media. More recently, we spoke about patents, trademarks, and intellectual property protection. Last week we did simulation based on the Microsoft anti-trust case – where one study group (my study group) played Microsoft and another study group played the Department of Justice and we argued whether Microsoft had violated anti-trust laws or not.

The best thing about this class? It makes me think about things I really don’t think about much. The worst thing about this class? It’s at 8:00 am in the morning – I call it my “sleep killer” class.

• HR class.
This class is about HR-related issues and how to structure personnel and compensation based on the strategy of the firm. Some cases we studied include Southwest Airlines, the Portman hotel, and InfoSys, to name a few.

I like the general theme of this class, because I don’t always think about HR issues as being strategic, but rather operational. However, contrary to my expectations, all the assignments in the class are data regressions, which has cause more than one of my classmates to wonder: “Is this a class about financial modeling, or Human Resources?”.

It seems like many professors here at the GSB in what I would consider “soft subjects” (HR, organizational behavior, marketing.) really want to hammer in the point that business-school in general and their field in particular is about data analysis and quantitative techniques – i.e. that it’s not really touchy feely, but rather quanty-crunchy.

I remember our negotiations instructor, when someone said "negotiation is more of an art than a science". She got very upset and yelled at him: “what have I been teaching you? This is a science, not art!” Of course anyone who’s done complex negotiation in the real world knows that it is as much (if not more) of an art involving personalities as it is a science, so I ask you: what gives?

It seems to me that teachers of soft subjects want to portray their subject as “real science” in order to get “academic respectability” from their peers and of course, to get tenure (can't say I blame them). I remember our Organizational Behavior professor’s grading of our final papers, refusing to acknowledge that the case that he laid out for us had more than one way to come up with a “right answer”.

Oh well what can you do? How about running a data regression on it and see if what I say can be backed up with empirical data LOL!!

Best thing about this HR class? The case discussions. Worst thing about this class? The data regressions, and the fact that it’s a “3-day weekend killer” class – it’s on Friday afternoon and Monday afternoon.

My two electives:
Of course everyone has taken different electives this quarter. I’ve taken two classes that I really like and help me to branch out in my own thinking:

• The Business World: Moral and Spiritual Inquiry through Literature.
It might seem funny to be taking a literature class in business school. But this class has been hailed by many MBA’s as a class to take in your last quarter of business school because it provides a good way to “cap” your experience and to think about larger issues of life, purpose, and where we’re headed in our lives and our careers.

I can’t agree more. Each week we read one book, and then we have our three hour class session on Thursday to have a discussion/debate about the book and the themes that were raised by the book, and how/if they have any relevance in our own lives and careers.

We started off by reading F. Scott Fitzgerald (the Last Tycoon) followed by two well known US plays about salesmen – Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, and Glengarry Glen Ross, by David Mamet. We then read a novel that had very strong elements of Jewish-American culture post WW II in it – The Ghost Writer, by Phillip Roth. Then we read a novel about post WW II Japan – An Artist in the Floating World. We’re now reading a spiritual novel about a Japanese characters who travel to India on a spiritual quest – Deep River, by Endo. We have a few more international readings, ending a Tolstoy story..

This class might seem like a lot of work, because we’re supposed to read an entire book every week. But, the books are all pretty small (especially compared to the 800 page Tome we have in Non-Market Strategy) and very easy to read. In fact, I can honestly say that this is the only class in my entire business school experience for which I expect to do 100% of the readings – Why? Because they’re all classic works of literature and all very well written.


• Leadership in the Entertainment Industry.
My final class this term is about the entertainment industry – yes – film-making and TV. Given my interest in the film industry (I have been an executive producer and investor on a few indie film projects in my spare time), this is one of my favorite classes. It is taught by an Oscar-winning documentary film-maker (it was cool to go to Blockbuster after we’d started the class and see Professor Guttentag’s name on a movie there).

Each week, we have speakers from the entertainment industry come by and give us a talk, after which we pepper them with questions. This is definitely the fun part of the class. For example, we had the head of Fox TV channel come by and talk about the issues facing the entertainment industry as it goes on line (they funded Hulu for example, but haven’t figured out how to make advertising profitable online). He talked about the history as well. I tried to get him to tell us if Fox was going to renew “Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles” but he was mum on the subject, since he hadn’t even told the producers yet.

We also had Alexander Payne, the director of the film Sideways come in and talk about directing and his experience in the film industry. He was particularly terse in his answers. It kind of made me laugh when one of us would ask some high-minded artistic question and ask his opinion of it and he’d just stroke his chin and say “I don’t know. Never thought about it. Next question.”

Of course the class has more than speakers – it has field trips, which are particularly fun.

The House that Lucas Built
Last week we went to the Presidio in San Francisco and visited Industrial Light and Magic, the company built by George Lucas after the success of Star Wars.. There are actually several companies housed in this gorgeous complex built on a very large park area on San Francisco Bay.

Anyone who is a fan of movies know about the Star Wars films and George Lucas. It was incredible to be able to go the company and see how people work and how the offices are laid out. We were told that they don’t generally do public tours, so we were very lucky to have gotten a tour. The hallways are lined with artifacts from movies that ILM has worked on. This of course, included props and costumes from the Star Wars films – including Stormtroopers, Darth Vader, Yoda, C3PO, and even Han Solo in carbonite!

ILM also did the special effects for the Indiana Jones movies, and (unbeknownst to many) the Star Trek movies, among many many others. In fact, they did all the special effects for the new Star Trek movie that’s coming out next week. There were artifacts from all these movies strewn throughout the hallways - it was so cool! My favorites turned out to be the Matte paintings that were used as backdrops for scenes in the film. Needless to say a classmate and I "got lost" on this tour, and had to be picked up and led back to the tour!

The complex actually houses several of Lucas’ companies – ILM (the special effects company), Lucasfilm (which is the film production company which owns the Star Wars films), and LucasArts (the video game company). We got a private Q&A with the heads of these companies, which was great. One thing that was interesting to me was the key role of the video games in this entertainment empire as it moves forward.

Since this trip wasn’t listed in the syllabus it came as a surprise to all of us, and definitely contributed to making this one of my favorite classes at the GSB.

We have one more field trip scheduled in the Bay area, which also relates to George Lucas in a roundabout way:

'In the 1980’s Lucasfilm/ILM had developed some animation rendering technology which was spun out as a separate company and was funded by a famous Silicon Valley entrepreneur. That company worked on 3d animation and rendering technology, and eventually used that technology to make animated 3d films. I’ve heard that they don’t give public tours either, but we’re going to visit them the week after next. The company? Pixar!

Now who says Business school isn’t cool?

The Day the Earth Was Almost Destroyed

[NOTE: Now that I’m on winter break, I’m taking a partial hiatus from writing Stanford GSB related blog entries, at least until the term starts back up in January]

As a fan of Science Fiction movies, I couldn’t resist going to see “The Day the Earth Stood Still” – the new version with Keanu Reeves, on opening weekend. I’m a big fan of the old version from the 50’s, despite its dated cold war themes, and generally can’t stay away from anything Sci Fi related.

So what did I think of the new movie? I’d love to give it an enthusiastic thumbs up, but can only manage a “so-so” review.

The old and new films are both about the arrival of an alien visitor (who looks human, to make us comfortable, and whose name is Klaatu) who lands in a major American city (Central Park in the new one, and if I’m not mistaken Washington, DC in the old one). One thing that hasn’t changed from the old Cold War theme: The government tries to take possession of the alien, and shoots him. They won’t even consider allowing him to speak to a gathering of World leaders at the UN.

Are we really that parochial? If an alien really visited the Earth and landed in the US, is this the attitude that we would take?

Unfortunately, I think they got this one right, in both versions. I’d like to think that if the representative of an advanced civilization were to arrive to deliver a message to the Earth, just happens to land in the USA, that we would let him speak to the UN – to all the nations of this planet. But I can just see our military whisking away the alien away to Guantanamo as a presumed “enemy combatant” and commandeering his ship as “foreign technology” that we want to re-engineer.

A neat new twist in the movie is the reason for the alien’s visit. In this version, Klaatu is not just the representative of alien civilizations watching the Earth; he says he is a friend of the Earth (though as we learn, this doesn’t mean he’s necessarily a friend of the human race).

He’s here to decide whether we are killing the planet or not. This green theme is a pretty good new spin, if somewhat overused these days. Klaatu tells us that there are only a few habitable planets out there, and he can’t allow us (humans) to kill this one. Quoting Klaatu (Keanu Reeves): If the earth dies, humans die too. If only the humans die, then the earth still lives on. A fair, logical argument.

Like most good science fiction, the first part of this movie actually makes you think about larger issues. It certainly made me think about habitable planets and how many there might be out there. There’s a famous equation, the Drake equation if memory serves, that takes assumptions of the number of stars, the number of planetary systems, the number of habitable planets, and the number of advanced civilizations. If you work out the numbers with only 1% for each variable, you come up with a large number of inhabited worlds.

What would happen if the probabilities were so small that there only a few habited planets out there, as is the case in this movie?

And of course, this movie does make you think about what would really happen if an alien spacecraft were to visit our planet and why.

Those are the positives. Jennifer Connolly does a pretty good job as an astro-biologist (is there such a thing? How much biological material have we actually found in outer space?). She’s also the step-mother of 11-year old Jacob, whose army engineer father she married a few years ago, but who passed away.

This is where, in my opinion, the movie starts to fall apart. Why does this have to be the case with almost all science fiction movies?

They start with an interesting concept that actually makes you think; but, as they try to bring the movie into the standard hollywood three-act script, they all end up with some variation of the standard formulas, ruining the originality of the film and making the second half into a dumb thriller or action or preachy lesson.

I don’t think I’m revealing much when I say that that at first Klaatu decides to destroy humans off the face of the earth, because he views us as a destructive force (which the government cronies and the Secretary of Defense, played excellently by Kathy Bates, do a very good job of convincing Klaatu of).

Eventually, he comes to realize that humans are more than just a destructive force. That we have strong emotions and that they include compassion and longing, etc. This in-and-of-itself is not a problem - The problem is how he comes to this realization; It’s done through the 11-year old Jacob, who single-handedly destroys this multi-million dollar Hollywood production. Well done, kid. At least you saved the Earth, sort of.

So, OK, I have to admit, as a kid, I loved it when kids played an important role in science fiction. E.T. involved kids and aliens. Wesley Crusher had an interesting role in Star Trek the Next Generation.

But this one just doesn’t work. The 11-year old snot-nosed kid, not only disobeys his mother every chance he gets, sporting an “oh I’m so cool” braided hairstyle that’s well beyond his years, but he also tells the government exactly how and where to find Klaatu, leading to the abduction of his step-mom by the government in the process. We're then led to believe that this might have been a good thing becuase he got to spend more time with the Alien.

I have to say I wanted to smack the kid off the screen so that we could get on with a real science fiction movie. Alas, it was not to be.

After seeing the movie, I looked up some reviews to see if I was alone in this sentiment and was just being a cruel, heartless adult. Here’s my favorite part of the CNN review: “Jacob is a whiny, obstinate, and disobedient little boy that would lead most extraterrestrials – and not a few of the rest of us – to reach for the destruct button.” Amen.

For other science fiction fans out there, think Jar Jar Binks. Now I wish someone would get a-hold of this flim and create a phantom edit (for those of you who don’t know someone created an edit of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace which digitally editout out Jar Jar Binks, without whose annoying antics the film might have been a relatively good film). Unfortunately you’d have to chop off the whole third act of the movie to do this. Oops.

Note: As a film-maker myself, I’m not supposed to be suggesting that anyone do anything that infringes on the copyright of Hollywood films, so I can’t really condone a phantom edit. (BUT IF YOU HAVE ONE, LET ME KNOW, I’D BE HAPPY NOT ONLY TO WATCH IT BUT TO WRITE ABOUT IT HERE IN MY BLOG. EVEN BETTER: what if someone were to edit out the kid and put in Jar Jar Binks, the movie might be actually be more fun and less annoying!).