Shang-Chi: The Legend of the Ten Rings

 I finally got around to seeing Shang-Chi, the... I guess not latest, because of Eternals, but the recent Marvel movie.

A somewhat more obscure comic books character, Shang-Chi is a master martial artist, but when we meet him, he is living a very mundane life - he's a valet driver in San Francisco (I don't know how a valet driver affords to live in San Francisco, but hey, fantasy!) who has very little ambition, just hanging out with his best friend Katy, whom he works with. (That their relationship is fully platonic is refreshing.)

Living as "Shaun," Shang-Chi is assaulted on the bus by members of the Ten Rings - which, as it turns out, is the secret underworld army that his father founded a thousand years ago.

The movie's real ringer is Tony Leung, the legend of Hong Kong cinema who has been a giant movie star since the 1980s. I first became aware of him I believe when I saw In the Mood for Love when I was in college, and then came to realize he was in basically every Chinese movie that I ever seemed to watch (he's the buddy-cop to Chow Yun Fat's Tequila in Hardboiled, which, if you haven't seen it, is maybe the greatest over-the-top action movie ever made). We'll get to the fantastic contribution he makes to the movie in a bit.

In the comics, Shang Chi's father is actually Fu Manchu, a character originating in a novel from 1913 and is... well, basically an amalgamation of racist stereotypes. There was another character, The Mandarin, who served as sort of the archnemesis of Iron Man in the comics, who also had a somewhat problematic characterization. When Iron Man 3 came out, it very controversially portrayed the Mandarin as actually a fiction created by Aldrich Killian (who I believe was a rather minor character in the comics).

I think this was probably one of those Tilda Swinton moments, when Marvel made a call to try not to be offensive but landed on the option that cost an Asian actor a job. After Iron Man 3 came out, they released a short film that showed Ben Kingsley's Trevor Slattery (the Liverpudlian actor who had been hired to play "The Mandarin") get taken out of prison by the real Mandarin.

Here, we see that the real Ten Rings has been around for a thousand years, and Killian just stole the concept and came up with a name for its leader. In fact, the leader is a man named Xu Wenwu, who discovered ten magical (or maybe alien technology) rings (more like bracelets, to be honest) that made him invincible on the battlefield, and he used this as the basis to build a hidden empire.

It all changes when, seeking a source of magical power, he meets a woman and falls in love, and then fathers two children, the elder of whom is Shang-Chi. But after tragedy strikes, Wenwu returns to his brutal ways, and Shang-Chi is turned into a living weapon to be used against Wenwu's enemies - until he decides to escape.

That's where we meet "Shaun," living the normal, peaceful life he craved. But when Wenwu returns to his children's lives, Shang-Chi and his sister Xialing (who has had somewhat more of a grimy life, owning an illegal fighting ring in Macau) are brought back into the Ten Rings, where Wenwu's obsession with his lost wife threatens the very world.

Marvel's movies certainly have mined the "complicated paternal relationship" trope before, even making the protagonist's dad the big bad in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. II. While Kurt Russel did an excellent job as the deadbeat dad who only shows up when he needs a new kidney, Tony Leung hits a really interesting note in his performance as Wenwu. We can see that he genuinely thought that his family represented his chance to be a better person, and the evil that he commits in this is mostly based on the false impression that he might be able to have that again.

I don't know that I would say this really deviates much from the Marvel formula, but I also think that complaints about said formula are about as tired as their claims that the formula is. The movie introduces a charming and fun protagonist, has a good villain (remember when we all used to complain about Marvel's villains, and then we got Killmonger, Hela, Thanos, Ego, Agatha Harkness, The Vulture, Mysterio, and now Wenwu?)

Shang-Chi has definitely been set up to join the Avengers or whatever Avengers-like team-up we'll be getting next, and I think he's a fun addition to the team. And he comes with a Katy, which is a lot of fun!

The Wheel of Time

 Despite being an avowed fantasy fan, I think I'm actually far more exposed to the genre through games than I am through books. I've read the Lord of the Rings (and the Hobbit - actually first) and of course Stephen King's Dark Tower series. But there are a few staples of the genre that have eluded me. I've never read the Narnia books (somehow as a kid I was bored by The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but not Lord of the Rings) or the Earthsea books. And I've never read The Wheel of Time.

So, poser than I am (I say that mostly ironically) I've now watched the first three episodes of Amazon's adaptation of the series.

As a review in the AV Club noted, the Wheel of Time is a sort of pre-deconstruction fantasy story. Today, we're awash in darker, subversive takes on the genre like Game of Thrones or the Witcher. So, my impression of the Wheel of Time is that it's obviously a post-Tolkien fantasy story (I believe the first book came out in 1984 - the 80s actually being quite the era for fantasy films and thus the genre as a whole) but from an era in which no one would roll their eyes at the big bad being called The Dark One.

Which is to say that there's some unabashed nerdery going on in this show, which I count as a point in its favor.

Not knowing the books, I cannot say how accurate the show is in plot and in tone, but I have heard that many viewers familiar with the books think it's highly faithful.

A quick summary:

There's an idyllic town in the mountain called The Two Rivers, and it's here that a group of young adults live in a little rustic utopia - well, perhaps not quite utopia, as there are still issues with alcoholism and adultery, and a religious order that seems to demand celibacy among its female Wisdoms.

Things get turned upside down when Moraine, an "Aes Sedai," which is some kind of wizard-like spellcaster, shows up in town. She, and her Warder Al'lan (yes, this is old-school fantasy, so get ready for a lot of apostrophes) show up looking for the reincarnation of The Dragon, a figure of monumental importance, who could be the savior of the world.

The title of the series refers to the notion that this world exists in an endless cycle. And in each of these cycles, the Dragon arises and, I believe, fights the Dark One, but also the Dragon is potentially really scary, so... I'm waiting on more clarification. Souls return to the world, reincarnated, and civilizations rise and fall. There's a shot early on that I think (unless I was misinterpreting what I saw) even implies that this massive valley full of karsts is actually filled with ruined skyscrapers - I'm not sure if this is meant to be our distant future (or distant past) but it's an interesting note.

In town, we are introduced to our adventuring party. Rand is an upstanding kid who lives with his widowed father (played by the guy who played Roose Bolton - it's nice to see him playing a way more sympathetic character) and is in love with Egwene. Egwene has just been initiated to train as a Wisdom - and it's here that we learn that it seems only women have the potential to use magic (or at least, only women are allowed to). Egwene is torn between this path - to become the kind of mystical healer of the town, or at least apprentice under the current one (who is only like 6 years older than she is, so it'll likely be a long apprenticeship). Mat, then, is the somewhat desperate... shall we say "rogue" of the group, who, it turns out, is the one who has to take care of his little sisters given that his dad spends his time sleeping around while his mother (or maybe step mother) is perpetually inebriated. Finally, Perrin is the town blacksmith, who works alongside his wife Laila, and we'll see how his angst develops in the next paragraph.

Each of these four, Moraine has identified as possibly being the Dragon reborn, and so she wants to take them to the White Tower, where her order are headquartered. But, with zero warning whatsoever, The Two Rivers is suddenly attacked by trollocs. Trollocs are, it seems, the rough equivalent of orcs. They're big horned humanoid monsters with goat-like legs and follow the orders of a "Fade," which is an insanely creepy shrouded figure with a lamprey-like mouth and no eyes. The trollocs massacre townsfolk while a panic sets in. Amidst the carnage, a couple of them break into the blacksmith shop, and Perrin and Laila fight them off. But after he has just killed one trolloc in a blind panic, Perrin accidentally swings the axe around and hits his wife in the abdomen, killing her.

Moraine and Al'lan show up and fend off the trollocs, with one spell eventually pulling the stones from the town's tavern to hurl at the beasts - which does drive them off, but also sees what was clearly a centerpiece of the town destroyed.

Moraine reveals that the trollocs came for the four potential Dragons, and so she convinces them that they need to come with her in order to keep the town from being attacked again. Thus, we strike out on a grand adventure!

There have already been some cool set-pieces. Though we don't stay there very long, the utterly uninhabited "ruin" (except all the buildings are intact - just empty) of Shadar Logoth is super cool-looking (and honestly looks a lot like a location in a Dark Souls game).

Pretty early on, the group gets split up, which I think is an opportunity for us to get a little more time to get to know our various characters. Of the main four, I think Mat has the clearest personality and motivations, though he's also the token "hey, this adventure is stupid and we should go home" member at this point. Perrin also has some stuff going on involving a wound on his leg and some kind of strange connection to wolves, but I find myself shocked that there hasn't been more time spent on people comforting him over the loss of his wife - he clearly feels insanely guilty for killing her, and I can understand why he hasn't told anyone - allowing everyone to think it was just one of the trollocs that got her, but unless the mystical awakening that may or may not be happening with him is tied to that, I sort of want to... you know, at least acknowledge and deal with the fact.

It's funny, there's a moment when we see (and I guess this is a spoiler, so beware) that Nynaeve (the town's Wisdom) was dragged off by one of the trollocs during the attack and he takes her to what appears to be another wounded trolloc. There was a moment where I thought that it wanted her to use her healing abilities to help the other trolloc, which was going to add a really interesting wrinkle to this situation, but then the one that had taken her started eating the wounded one's intestines, so... not so much. I think these are the kind of "no-guilt kill-on-sight" monster bad guys.

Anyway, I'm enjoying it, and will be continuing to watch it. After kind of getting burned out on Foundation (I wonder if I'd enjoy the show more had I not actually read the books) I'm happy to have another epic genre show to get into.

With Foundation Nearing its Season Finale, What Does it All Mean?

 Taking liberties with the story was necessary to adapt Foundation. The original stories nailed one aspect of science fiction - namely coming up with a really cool hypothetical concept - but in terms of human drama, they were just decent enough to convey the former. I guess I ought to re-read the thing.

The series on Apple TV is... well, here's the thing:

Adaptation is not translation. In order to convert a story from one medium to another, you need to make changes. One thing I've been very happy to see is the diversification of the cast - turning male characters like Salvor, Gaal, and Demerzel into women has worked perfectly for the show. And pure inventions, like the "genetic dynasty" that, among other things, allows us to have Lee Pace continue playing different iterations of "Brother Day" over the course of the series, have been pretty interesting.

But at some point, the deviations start to make you question if the writers are actually all that interested in the original story.

This first season has had a couple characters emerge as "chosen one" type entities. But Asimov's thesis for the story was a rejection of the "Great Men of History" theory - he believed, as many historians do, that our methodology for analyzing history tends to place too much focus on individuals, and thus buries the underlying social forces and pressures that lead to such people gaining and exercising power.

Thus, it was sort of radical to pull the rug out from under the protagonists of each era and show that, as much as they fought hard to change the nature of the Foundation and ensure its survival, the whole process was inevitable.

Now, perhaps we're just awaiting a similar reveal. But the way that Hari Seldon has been characterized, he seems to have a much more impossibly fine control over the development of the Foundation - it's less the result of this new form of study than a massively complex Rube Goldberg device.

Let's move on to Demerzel.

Demerzel is not revealed until past the original Foundation trilogy. It was a later decision by Asimov to link his Foundation series with his Robot stories, but Demerzel is eventually revealed to be R. Daneel Olivaw, a character introduced as the very first robot with a positronic brain - essentially the first sentient robot. Olivaw is shown to have orchestrated the creation of the Empire and also subtly pushes Seldon into developing psychohistory. He's the ultimate puppet master, but a benevolent one.

One of Asimov's most enduring concepts is the Three Laws of Robotics.

Asimov had grown tired of every story involving artificial intelligence ultimately just becoming a rehash of Frankenstein - in which the act of creating an artificial mind was invariably hubristic and would be punished by the robot going homicidal. In an effort to do away with that trope, he came up with the Three Laws - rules that, in his fictional universe, were hardwired into the programming of every AI. The rules are (and I paraphrase here):

1. A robot must never harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the instructions of humans, except when doing so would violate the first law.

3. A robot must not do itself any harm, except when doing so would violate the first or second laws.

Obviously, the biggest challenge from a modern perspective would be to create an AI smart enough to understand its own behavior well enough to ensure that it was following those laws. But the nuances of those laws actually proved to be very fertile ground for dramatic conflict. For example: suppose a robot witnesses one human holding a gun to another human's head. They cannot harm the one with the gun, as that would be a 1st law violation, but they also can't just let the hostage be shot, as that would also violate the first law.

What grows out of this, then, in discussions between R. Daneel Olivaw and another robot, is an implied corollary: the "through inaction" clause to the first law becomes extremely tricky when you consider what, ultimately, the greatest harm would be. Is a robot in violation of the law, for example, if they don't put all their efforts to finding a way to reverse aging? After all, on a long enough timeline, humans ultimately die when they get too old.

But even beyond that: if robots must protect humans as their absolute, core, fundamental reason for being, what does that mean for humanity as a whole?

And thus, the so-called "Zeroth Law" arises: a higher priority than the protection and preservation of individual humans becomes the preservation of humanity as a whole. The Greater Good, essentially, becomes the robots' top priority. And that supersedes even the first law - meaning, in theory, if a human needed to die in order to save humanity as a whole, the robot would be capable of violating that law.

So far, the characterization of Demerzel in the Foundation series has been one of subservience. There's a strong emphasis on that second law - Demerzel is the undying, ageless servant of the emperor(s).

And indeed, there are times when Demerzel's age and wisdom does seem to suggest she is the true power of the throne. The Emperor's life is so scripted and sheltered that in many ways, the show demonstrates that he barely has any power over his own life - what power, then, could he have over the galactic empire?

Demerzel functions, thus, first as a mother, and then as a kind of trusted confidante, and finally as the daughter that ushers the emperors into their twilight (and disintegration).

And yet, in the last few episodes, Demerzel has seemed to truly be subservient to the emperor. Most glaringly, after Brother Dawn treks through the Spiral to the Mother's Womb in an effort to placate the Luminist religion, he orders Demerzel to murder Halima, the high-level cleric who had been undermining his legitimacy as emperor by suggesting that clones don't have souls. Demerzel performs this deed, though it seems to cause her much stress.

But here, it's not just a conflict of emotion, but a conflict with the foundational (pun unintended) concepts behind Asimov's fictional universe. Unless we find that this is actually some long game based on the Zeroth Law, it seems like she is just unable to disobey an order from the emperor. Sure, she's fulfilling the second law, but this is a blatant violation of the first.

We have one episode to go, and I would love to discover that the show is actually respecting the Laws of Robotics - I mean, why even introduce Demerzel if you didn't want to engage with those? But the show hasn't done a lot to generate good will in those viewers who actually think there are some really interesting philosophical concepts in those books.

And look, I hate to be the nerd pushing his metaphorical glasses back onto his nose while saying "um, actually" (though the College Humor gameshow of the same name and tone is very entertaining) but for a show that clearly has experts of their craft pouring a ton of love into it, I don't want this to be using Asimov's work as just a vague inspiration for what is ultimately a different story.

The show is done no favors by the recent release of Denis Villeneuve's Dune - while that film obviously leaves some parts out (and only covers the first half of the book,) it feels very much like an attempt to adapt that story, and not just some vaguely related story, to the big screen.