We started off with Serenity, because L’s family have bought a new tv and he wants to show off his blu-rays. It was a positive start to the evening. My favourite moment is still Mal railing against the idea that you can “make people better”. Probably because that was such a theme in the sci-fi I read as a kid: that your society would constrict you and guide you to be how it wanted, and to prevent that is something worth dying for.
Okay, so the results of the Miranda experiment are a little more fatal than those in the books I’m thinking of, but they stem from the same desire.
While I am speaking of abominations, we followed up Serenity with Transformers. People who watched this as a child think of it with a fondness I cannot understand. They also rave about the soundtrack. Which I suppose was okay, but really, as far as I can tell the movie was simply an excuse to kill all the old Transformers and replace them with new ones. It is action scene after action scene, and it is utterly boring.
It is no wonder L has no respect for the personhood of robots, having grown up on this. He did comment that you would never see this kind of violence in a kids’ movie about people.
The Descent, on the other hand, I liked a lot. Horror movies often don’t do much to freak me out: it turns out what you do is stick in some spelunking and scenes that hit my fear of heights and I’m ready to jump. This wasn’t true for everyone.
It was kind of sad that this was a horror movie, because (though the horror is signposted) the first half is very much an adventure, focusing on the six women, their physical strength, competence and determination. The women think they’re exploring one cave system, but the leader, Juno, has taken them to another, unmapped and unnamed. So when a tunnel caves in behind them, they don’t know if there’s any way out. I would have been quite happy if it had stayed an adventure story; I enjoyed it as a horror, but it didn’t feel as fresh.
Juno, the one who got them into trouble, is my favourite character, because she’s so recklessly ambitious.* She hasn’t told them where they’re going, and their rescue plan has been filed for the wrong location, but they are experienced and prepared. Even with the cave in, the accidents, there’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t have got out alive except for spoilers!