My friend Urian gave Nami a little Silver Surfer plush toy after Comic Con this summer… Which lead to many questions about who and what the Surfer was… After a few attempted explanations, we watched a clip from the recent Silver Surfer cartoon, and then Nami decided it would be a good idea to do a “thank you movie” for the gift.
This is the result:
The only way it could be meaningfully better, is if they used James Cameron to shoot it in 3D.
(Even Gold Cylons love Enthiran!)
A lot of the humor may come off as very antiquated/cliché, but it fits. Enthiran is essentially a great 80s US action film melded with a great 80s Hong Kong action film. That it’s also a drama, and a romantic comedy, and a retelling of Frankenstein, and about 5 more whole movies (oh, and a multi-tiered dance competition) layered on top is just a bonus. 😉
(It’s also the story of an aspiring medical student, looking very studious here.)
It’s a great film, to be sure… Those who dislike or don’t understand the Bollywood style may disagree. It’s easily the best Indian film I’ve seen, in terms of easy crossover to just about any other world market/mainstream US audience.
(Guns and Leather. Come on, what could be better or more universal?!?)
Avatar, by contrast, is Dances in Wolves in Space. The universe created and referred to is amazing if you think deeply about it, but the actual film/plot on screen pales beside the special effects.
(Okay, blewbs. Blewbs might just be better.)
Neither film wastes a second of screen time being just plain beautiful to look at, but Enthiran excels at keeping your brain exploding with twists, turns, and completely unexpected characters and events constantly added into the plot throughout the film, at times seeming completely non-sensical, but in a way that somehow adds to the whole.
(This reminds me: everyone who saw Bicentennial Man deserves a refund.)
If you haven’t seen either, see both. If you’re trying to decide which to watch again, I’d suggest Enthiran, especially for home viewing – the constant jumps between settings make bathroom/kitchen breaks much easier to manage.
This answer originally appeared on Quora: Is the Bollywood film Enthiran better than James Cameron’s Avatar?
For one thing, the protagonist is no longer trying to kill himself.
(Not until after the holidays, and reality sets in, anyway…)
That said, the main reason the film is not seen as depressing by modern viewers is that it wasn’t filmed more recently. A color version with the current field of acting talent would produce either a much more truthful/depressing version of the film, or one seen as far less entertaining in it’s sugar-coating of current economic realities, presumably on behalf of the wealthy elites still trying to push the message that “hard work and good hearts still win the day”, rather than being horribly crushed by big business folks and the politicians who work for them.
(Your gong-fu may be strong, Jimmy. Goldman-Sachs will still pwn you.)
Thus, by being an older film, in black and white, and calling to mind a more innocent era of the American dream, viewers tend to distance the film from more direct analysis, or “what ifs”, and simply enjoy the nostalgic Christmas-y goodness.
(Nothing, however, can change the fact that your daughter’s name is Zuzu.)
This answer originally appeared on Quora: Why isn’t the film “It’s a Wonderful Life” seen as being more depressing than it is?
It depends on the type of clone.
In television, books, and the movies, the popular conception of a clone is a “fully formed copy” of the original, with the same memories, skills, physical attributes, etc.
In the hard science of the real world, cloning is already happening, but mostly at the “genetic coding” level – the resulting organisms, while “copies of the original blueprints”, are “constructed in different locations/climes”, and in a way “from different materials”… Think of it like buying the same size plank of the same variety of wood from Home Depot each week – every one will be just a little bit different, though they’ll all “measure up” equally in their specification.
At least in the sense that our memories and experiences make us who we are, such clones would be lacking. That said, there’s no reason why cloning as a process could not be advanced to the point where these additional aspects were also recorded, copied and implanted into the clone(s).
Thus, to answer your question, such an outcome may someday be possible, but for now, the best you can hope for is (after 9-odd months) a newborn sibling who may or may not resemble you throughout its maturation, who will grow up in a world vastly different from your own childhood (no matter how hard you try to replicate your own childhood, the food chain, global warming, and Facebook are all working hard to make that a near impossibility.
As such, your clone will likely bear little resemblance to you now when it reaches your current age. Still, you probably won’t be able to find a better donor when you need a kidney/heart/lung/retina/bone marrow replacement down the line…
For that reason alone, I can imagine a near-future where Hollywood celebs “adopt their own clones” rather than third world refugee babies.
This answer originally appeared on Quora: If there were a clone of me, would the clone think and act like I do? Why?
Showing us how someone got super powers? Boring.
Showing us what they do with those powers, and showing (not telling) us why? THE HOTNESS.
In short, all Superhero movies need to do to dramatically improve in quality and performance is pretty simple: stop treating the superpower as the main character.
They don’t need to explode bigger stuff. They don’t even need to win. Just present us with a damn good explanation for why Sue Storm isn’t the world’s richest paparazzi(*), and we’ll be happy.
M. Night Shyamalan gets a bad rap, because, er, most of his movies are terrible. But, he actually made a really great superhero epic no one really thinks about anymore, Unbreakable. All he did was make a superhero movie about real people, where the powers were very much secondary to the story. We need more movies like that.
Superhero movies are still movies. Powers are props and plot points, you still need an actual story, and identifiable characters. Even in cases where the overall story is very well known (Superman), there’s a ton of room for insights that delight and surprise twists that keep us wondering…
(* Despite the extensive grassroots petitioning, however, we really don’t need an explanation why her boyfriend doesn’t work in porn.)
This answer originally appeared on Quora: Why aren’t more superhero movies better?
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