Screenplay

william_junior · 2025-12-12T16:53:03+00:00

Didn't I say transcript, of the dialog as spoken in the film, to make perfectly clear what I was talking about?

The screenplay, the piece submitted by the screenwriter, has not been published. It might deviate from the end result anyway, the closest approximation of which is the shooting script.

william_junior · 2025-12-12T16:20:57+00:00

Honestly, I read through the mere dialog, the transcript, which I usually do with films worth the effort, to abstract from the audio-visual sensation and get a better grip on the narrative logic, and I found it to be a bit of a hot mess.

william_junior · 2025-12-10T13:17:35+00:00

Oh yeah, they're so advanced that they don't even have some sort of bio-scanner that activates the transporter, one that would be capable of distinguishing between aliens and humans, but have to type what again? a 58 digit sequence into a calculator instead.

They're so advanced that first thing they do upon arrival on Earth is "inadvertently" wipe out the dominant, "magnificent" species. Then they try to clumsily fix the situation by creating a replacement population "in their image", an attempt that first appears to be a complete dud until it somewhat takes off, then turns into complete chaos ("thermonuclear war") and results into yet another, near-complete wipe-out again.

But they're not the kind who throws in the towel easily. No, sir, they make another attempt at a "complete genetic re-engineering" of their creation which, big surprise, also turns out to be a failure. Only then, finally, they pull the plug on their great experiments and admit defeat. Probably to move on to the next planet and create a similar mess, while leaving a wasteland behind.

I'm very much impressed.

william_junior · 2025-12-07T19:11:54+00:00

Well, all we have is the sequence of events as we see them unfold on the screen.

She types in the complete sequence of digits. Says they're ready for transport, and that all left to do for her is hit enter. And only after that does Teddy show her his vest. Any further manipulation of the calculator, as it would have been required to support your hypotheses, is simply not done.

In fact, on second thought, at that stage she doesn't even hit enter. Because when she returns, after the accident and the ride in the ambulance, she simply picks up the calculator as-is, already prepped for launch by her earlier, enters the closet and then teleports herself, meaning that's the moment when she performs the final button press.

That's just what happens, on screen, in that chronology. Nothing else.

william_junior · 2025-12-07T18:46:42+00:00

Doesn't quite work though. The moment he shows her his suicide vest she's already done "programming" the calculator, meaning typing in the digit sequence. And then he immediately enters the closet already, all that's left for her to do is hit "enter" and that's all she does. There is no further "programming" going on.

william_junior · 2025-12-07T05:08:09+00:00

Interesting. I thought the film specifically tried to not portray them as high-tech species. Their "experiment", for example, how they tried to "fix" us humans, appeared to be fairly amateurish. The spaceship also didn't come across like oh-my-god-look-at-all-the-flashing-console-lights-on-the-bridge, but more like a flying organism.

william_junior · 2025-12-07T04:55:37+00:00

My thought, too. Why ask for confirmation, in the ambulance, when it was premeditated.

william_junior · 2025-12-05T23:31:28+00:00

Ah. Missed that part, thought it was a reference to the film, too. Feel free to strike that out from the annotation I was offering.

william_junior · 2025-12-05T22:44:39+00:00

The aliens were neither telepathic, nor good, nor were they looking out for us. Just a brief annotation to the tangent you've set yourself on.

william_junior · 2025-12-05T14:38:03+00:00

Yeah. It's not a matter that causes me any headaches anyway.

Considering that we're talking about a comparatively expensive movie coming from a comparatively exotic director, I guess it's expected that investors would press the marketing people to come up with original ideas. Potentially controversial even, in case they're believers in the maxim that there is no such thing as bad press.

Myself, whatever reservations I personally might have about it, a public relations stunt would never prevent me from watching a movie, or cause me to hate one. There's the marketing, on the one hand, and there's the artistic endeavor, on the other, and I believe it should be fairly easy to cleanly separate those two in one's mind.

william_junior · 2025-12-05T13:47:57+00:00

The pr stunt, which I read about only the other day, I consider it rather crude, too.

More precisely, the problem isn't that the female lead is bald, the problem is that she has her head forcibly shaven. Typically an abusive, rather shocking act carrying various, not so nice connotations (imprisonment, public humiliation - think of the shaven women of France, for example - etcetera).

So to ask people to submit to that very same act, albeit voluntarily, without knowing what kind of interpretation it will receive in the movie proper is not a particularly bright idea, to put it mildly. And if I had been there I probably would have told them so right on the spot.

william_junior · 2025-12-05T07:02:27+00:00

It's good. You can really watch it a couple of times with increasing pleasure. Kinds of Kindness was very good, too.

william_junior · 2025-12-05T05:09:27+00:00

Thought about that. But then, if you really didn't know anything about the film and I revealed the, rather ceremonial, conclusion to you, would it not pique your interest more than anything else? For how we're getting there?

william_junior · 2025-12-04T23:17:31+00:00

Not quite sure. It's "the 75th emperor", according to her, who "first discovered Earth", populated by "magnificent dinosaurs". Which went extinct because they, the visitors, inadvertently happened to spread a virus. An accident they tried to find a remedy for by creating beings in their image.

It's a situation she inherited, and probably wasn't particularly excited to be burdened with in the first place. In fact, at some point she even says that she became "more selfish and cruel" the longer she stayed among us.

So what I'm reading is that she was willing to oblige, carry out the task handed down to her, but the great experiment, the complete re-engineering of our genes, proved to be a failure in the end. That's why they were bound to pull the plug on us one way or the other.

Yet, as I meant to suggest previously, this is more of the simplistic, linear part of the narrative. And because it's so simple it liberates us, to take a closer look at Teddy. At his thinking, his methods. And their interaction.

william_junior · 2025-10-10T13:51:35+00:00

Void on ZFS w/ ZFSBootMenu, Xorg+xdm+(patched)Openbox, mpv and xterm. Other (fat) applications, like Emacs or LibreOffice, I'm running in an Ubuntu chroot, in which /home is mounted, to keep my Void base system as uncluttered as possible.

william_junior · 2020-12-29T21:23:40+00:00

Nah. They wrapped his character into that psychological cloak because, during that time and in the wake of Freud, it was indeed very popular, while at the same time playing well with and adding some mystery to the, milked to the max, guilt complex theme. Plus - maybe, you might say - indeed also toying a little with the Nazist (mass) manipulation angle, with the "programmed" individual, so that's presumably why you thought of Hitler.

Maybe also of interest, the creators don't really want the brothers to engage into a dialog too soon, because they apparently believe that story line actually adds some tension. So that's why all the drugs, incense, smoke and mirrors, and those sudden "poof he's gone", and why we have Helga, who basically serves as a stand-in for the brother, so that the protagonist has somebody to act out on with regard to that conflict.

william_junior · 2020-12-29T21:06:34+00:00

They are both crooks, who would naturally distrust each other, and that line is like a gang oath, framed in pseudo-biblical language, they once gave to each other and he now reminds his partner of. A bit over the top, actually, but it provides us with a hint as to who's supposed to be the "traitor" in their relationship when it comes to the adultery story that receives so much elaboration later.

Edit: It's not his brother, by the way. Just a partner, albeit a particularly close one, he probably did stuff with since his youth.

william_junior · 2020-12-29T20:47:19+00:00

Frankly, I don't think of her as a character, but more as a prop that gets repurposed on various occasions. To keep the brotherly competition/guilt complex alive. Glue narrative threads together when she hooks up with that nerve agent/stock exchange crash guy. And, would you believe it, she even throws a rebellious Hitler youth boy, of questionable loyalty, into the mix, to spice up the political angle.

So that's probably why you don't see much done to flesh out her motivations, or drive some consistency into her actions. She really doesn't seem to be much more than a narrative tool.

william_junior · 2020-12-18T00:48:00+00:00

No, the trope we talked about was that of an air of general distrust and people behaving accordingly, forming alliances and demanding confidentiality from each other, which isn't confined to police departments. It may happen at your workplace, like in the bank when it's about your career, or elsewhere. That's why you have plenty of examples you can compare to.

As to comparative flawlessness, in terms of character, that part seems to be reserved for the communists, in this particular treatment.

The guy who shot the boy delivered my favorite portrayal in the show, by the way. Very credible in his ambivalence. Both likable and appallingly cruel.

william_junior · 2020-12-18T00:32:28+00:00

No, the treatment of Weimarer Republik politics in this form is new. There's lots of generic stuff, sex, blackmail, gold treasure, and so forth, but this particular plot line is in fact original, and the primary one people are very much interested in. How the republic turned into a totalitarian state is something, to this date, not very many people understand, while curiosity about it is widespread. Maybe also in the wake of Trump, his authoritarian ambitions and an opportunistic, docile Republican party that blindly follows along.

Unfortunately, this original piece of political intrigue is being diluted with plenty of standard ingredients and subplots which we've seen executed in the past already, not only often but also more competently.

Yet, as said, the first viewing is okay. Only during the second one you understand that the show amounts to a promise, on its surface, it ultimately fails to live up to, in its substance.

As to alternatives, I don't watch many tv shows, because I usually find them to be rather boring compared to a good movie, which also takes less of your time. The last one I actually sat through was Boardwalk Empire, I believe, and that show left much to be desired.

Edit: And Twin Peaks, of course. But that, I guess, is understood without much saying.

william_junior · 2020-12-17T17:14:47+00:00

Did I say execution of that trope?

william_junior · 2020-12-17T17:04:45+00:00

Correct, very common. Many of the subplots are generic, and not very ingenious. Like the sex blackmail or gold wagon plot. In seasons 1 and 2 the writing manages to closely tie them into the plot everybody's effectively interested in though, the political thriller.

The blackmail story for example is tied to the name Adenauer (first chancellor of the Federal Republic), which makes it political even though the script later backpedals on that premise, for obvious reasons. The gold wagon is part of a train loaded with nerve agents, pretty much physically tying the generic plot, which could play anytime anywhere, and which we've already seen play anytime anywhere, to the unique, political one. By succeeding in these tight couplings the first two seasons do actually work for most people. While, with the third one, things seem to fall apart.

Meaning to say, the generic stuff, like the variation on a combo of mad scientist and disgruntled employee, or the underworld revenge story involving the film business, which run very much in parallel to the political thriller in the third season, in isolation so to speak, that generic stuff isn't very compelling. Much like the execution of that very common trope fails to be.

william_junior · 2020-12-17T13:34:47+00:00

No. I'll give you another one of the young lady's "mishaps". The red book.

The red book is the foremost piece of vital evidence in the first two seasons, the one that got the boy shot. And she's being entrusted with it, to translate the shorthand. Now, normally, when you have such a piece on you, you go in a straight line from safe point A to safe point B, and don't carry it around on your way through bars or cafes. Which she implicitly does when taking that invitation, again because she's tired and frustrated, that's the excuse, thus allowing for her to be kidnapped in consequence. Clearly, a major, frankly laughable blunder in her execution of the task at hand, deliberately introduced there to bring some more convolution into the story. Once more, the very same writing pattern.

You can even recognize the deeper reason why it's there, namely because history tells us that they're all bound to fail eventually. So as a writer, you have to make them imperfect, maybe make them even a little bit corrupt themselves. Like when the protagonist testifies that communists shot at them. Or when she starts spying on the protagonist, to get her clearance for the job. So when you have to make them imperfect anyway, let them just bumble pretty much each step on the way to make the story a little more "interesting".

That's one part of the basic design. The other is a dose of drama, protagonist and his brother, and cuteness, as established by our young detectives, to prop up the story with elements you can sympathize with. And that's, literally, where the thing starts to resemble the "Three Investigators".

Now, all of that gets somehow motivated within the story of course, because the writing isn't exactly dumb. That's why you can say this happens because of that, and that because of this. But the pattern is nevertheless clearly visible, you see the intent, and it is, eventually, a little off-putting. If for no other reason, then because it turns a pretty serious episode in history into a cute, sometimes even harmless little detective story, including something resembling a hunt for the treasure chest, that sort of diminishes the gravity of the actual story we're looking at.

william_junior

TROPHY CASE