Monday, October 22, 2007

"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility"

I have made fun of this quotation a lot. It sounds so cheesy.

The first time I read it, I did not understand it. A first enlightenment came while (out of all things) learning Object-Oriented (OO) programming. (In OO programming, the more "power" you have to access the attributes of an object, the more you have to be responsible/careful in using them.) Only two weeks ago, I had a second enlightenment. This time, it's as real-world a scenario as it gets.

Google vs. Evil: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/google_pr.html

It is an old article in Wired.com; but still an interesting read. Google's is a unique story that resembles a superhero beginning/origin/year one story. Two university students with the ambition to do good for mankind by providing a usable, fair search engine. And then they got a super power. Real super power. I cannot even begin to imagine how it feels to have such power that countries feel the need to talk to you, a mere individual. Even more, you have the power to impact so many people's life.

Anyway, with such a slogan as "Don't be Evil", I wonder why it took me so long to link a comic book quotation to Google.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Films

These days I feel like thinking somewhat coherently on whether or not I like a film and why.

Let's start with the film I just saw, Hulk (2003).
I don't like this film; it is a bad good film I think. My reasons:
  • I don't relate to Bruce Banner, the main character, at all. I usually relate to characters because they have their problems (or some interesting trait, ability, or charm) and I appreciate this problem (or trait or ability or charm). Sure Bruce had an unhappy childhood; but he doesn't seem to mind that at all, so that doesn't seem to be a problem. Sure he has difficulty in progressing with his research; but again, this is not shown to bother him at all. (Compare this with how we are presented with Peter Parker's multiple problems in Spider-man films.)
  • I don't see a natural confrontation; all conflicts seem to be forced to me. Examples:
    • Why did David Banner blew up the military lab? Sure he is angry, but do angry scientists have the heart to blow up his own lab (even if it is actually owned by some other, uncaring entity)?
    • What was the point of Hulk fighting the 3 dogs? (More specifically, if you send 3 assassins to terminate a target, would you go about calling people and tell them that you just sent 3 assassins?)
    • Why was Bruce so angry when he found out about his genetics that he turned into Hulk for the first time? He didn't seem to be bothered about anything at all thus far (he was even happy after the gamma radiation accident), why finding out that his genetics were altered bothered him so much?
  • The final conflict between David and Bruce (which was probably intended to be the climax) is simply rubbish. I don't understand why David Banner turned to be so evil and I certainly don't understand why they decided to make him into some elemental being (even in a Marvel universe, there is such a thing as absurdity).
  • (This final point is the result of reading Wikipedia.) There is no humor at all; the film takes itself too seriously.
To me, the best moments of the film is when Hulk fought the military in the desert. It was a classic Hulk moment of being misunderstood and abused. People are afraid of him so they treat him like a monster; which only feeds his anger and in turn increases the people's fear and so on and on the spiral goes.
They should have written the script to make that moment to be the climax of the film.

(Edited on 5 March 2015)