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Rick Will Never Be Free

(Originally said as part of a conversation.)

“Listen morty I hate telling it to you this way but what people call ‘love’ is actually a chemical reaction that drives animals to procreate, it’s strong and before you realize it you’re in a terrible marriage.” –Rick

He said shit like that to deflect from his deeply broken heart when his wife and daughter were killed in his “whiny baby backstory” That’s an example of what’s called “shadow projection”. He just happens to be good at putting it into seemingly scientific terms. Blame the concept of love because what you love was taken from you.

The scene in the toilet episode when Rick talks to Tony in the giant Rick robot.

“You know what shy pooping is, Rick? It’s a pointless bid for control. You wanna take the one thing in life that you think is truly yours and you want to protect it from a universe that takes whatever it wants. It took my wife, it clearly took something from you. We can spend our lives fighting that, or we can be free.” –Tony

It’s my favorite line of the entire series because it’s the only time someone tells Rick how it is without restraint or remorse. In a different show it would be the big moment where Rick finally gets it. In his case though, he knows all of that already but he doesn’t care because his life is already meaningless so he wanders the multiverse filing his time with cheap joys until it eventually kills him. His tendency to build suicide devices and then whimp out at the last moment, and his constant drinking, are unhealthy coping mechanisms he’s built up because he knows he’ll never really escape those feelings, emotional epiphany or no, so he doesn’t bother. He will always miss his wife and child but he also has the power to see what might have been and that hurts him more than anything, because that will never be him. It will always be another Rick living the better life. All that talk of the “Rockest Rick” is ego inflation. The Rickest Rick is the one where that guy never showed up at his house with the portal gun. And yet even that isn’t bad enough; there’s a Rick out there that’s living that life for all he knows, but instead it’s a simulation being used to take the essence of that, simplify it down into an edible form, and made into pieces of food. In a world where you can do anything and nothing truly matters, why do anything at all?

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Indiana Jones and the Golden Compass Review

A review of The Dial of Destiny

The Good:

The cinematography was well done. The CG was almost convincing. The acting was good. The directing was decent though Teddy could have used a bit more direction of when to be serious.

The bad:

The basic premise was absurd. The plot revolves around this artifact referred to as the Antikythera mechanism. In the context of the film it’s a machine to keep track of time included when time fissures would appear allowing one to cross into a different time period. It is said to have been made by Archimedes. As someone who’s fascinated by history just about everything historical in the movie was extremely cringe because it was wrong to inexcusable levels. How does a project this big not have at least one decent amateur archeologist on the team that’s actually listened to?

The Antikythera mechanism, which is the dial referred to in the title, is a real historical artifact but it looks nothing like what’s presented to us in the film. The real one is just a handy device to keep track of various stellar configurations and the like. It’s an amazing piece of craftsmanship and we don’t see anything else before or since equally as intricate until much more modern times. It’s a fascinating piece of history in and of itself. It feels cheapened by the movie version which they keep insisting was made by Archimedes which is just not the case. We don’t know who built it but picking Archimedes and forcing it to fit was a bit of a weird choice.

Given this is the mcguffin the plot is built around it’s not surprising in the least to know that the rest of the take on history is a whole mess.

The movie itself is way too fastly paced and yet paradoxically at the same time way too slow. There was a lot of high octane action sequences. This in and of itself is not a problem. My favorite film is Shot Em Up, which is almost entirely a long action scene. My problem isn’t that, it’s the pacing and the writing, or lack thereof. There was a car chase and they were going down small streets in a old city and I constantly lost track of who’s where and who’s chasing who etc. There were far too many shots inside the car or outside the car but without seeing the rest of the set and it made it really hard to follow. That kind of third person angle is great for this kind of thing. Don’t be afraid to have multiple establishing shots as they get into different parts of the city..

The writing is where the real problems start. It’s clear the writer procrastinated until the last minute and ran to Wikipedia to figure out stuff to include or reference without a real understanding of what they actually entails. I’ll share you the list of everything that was wrong. Suffice to say it was a lot.

The villain made no sense whatsoever. His motivations are vague and underdeveloped at best. He seems to have been written with “he’s a Nazi” and let that on its own be his justification. While yes being a Nazi in and of itself is horrible., human beings still are human. Make no mistake I’m not looking for something to turn him into some kind of anti-hero or wherever. I’m not interested in that. I’m just saying that villains in general are more interesting characters when they’re fully fleshed out rather than a walking stereotype.

Indiana’s personality leaves a lot to be desired as well as he feels too flat and clean. He’s supposed to be gruff and manly yet compassionate and thoughtful, sure but also he has to have flaws or he’s just a power fantasy and nothing more. ||At the end he gains a family and moves forward with his life in a positive way such that I don’t anticipate any more films being made with him being the focus. Not just because it ends on the perfect note, but also simply the age Harrison Ford has gotten to. I could see them making a reboot with a different actor though.

While there were a few comedic moments, there was really not enough comedy in the film. It takes itself way too seriously for its own good all that action needs to give way to humor or it gets too much and hard to keep paying attention to.

Overall I have to say don’t waste your time. It’s not a bad movie but it isn’t a good movie either. It’s somewhere in between.