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Thinking about the Bronev family again, I hope this is coherent-
(Cw non graphic mentions of child death, Azran Legacy spoilers ahead)
Leon Bronev, a man who was likely once a good ordinary man gets kidnapped along with his wife, leaving behind their two young children because he’d found something big about the Azran (did that make it his fault? Did he blame himself?). He loses his wife while there (I’m partial to the headcanon that it wasn’t just a normal sickness) and endures who knows what other hells while stuck in that cult for decades, ending up with nothing left but the Azran.
He turns down darker and darker paths going on some twisted version of a sunk cost fallacy (he’s gone this far already, why not go further?) until he either knowingly or unknowingly orders the murder of his granddaughter and daughter in law. Then he does it, he completes his goal, he solves the last puzzle of the Azran only for all of it to have been for nothing. Then he dies for it, but is revived with the rest and thus being unable to pay with his life. He’s arrested, likely too old at this point to hold out any hope of making amends or fixing what he’s done.
Hershel Bronev, still a young child when his parents are stolen from him and he’s left with caring for his younger brother. Then they get news that he’s going to be adopted alone, that he’d have to leave Theodore behind. Instead of that, he gives up this better life and his name, giving it all to his little brother who he wouldn’t see again for decades. He becomes Desmond Sycamore
He grows up devouring his father’s archeology books, to find a way to get some kind of revenge on the ones who stole his family from him. Instead he finds peace, he finds a new family, people who love him and people he loves the same. But it doesn’t last. Targent comes again to steal his family away, this time with his own Father at the head. Desmond Sycamore dies and he becomes Jean Descole.
But despite now loathing Targent, hating his father, he follows in their footsteps. Threatening loved ones, manipulating people, even attempting to kill a child (Luke was only 10 the first time Descole had tried to kill him), all so he could be the one to uncover the Azran. He becomes like his father in more than just appearance, but does he even realise this?
He’s put on many different faces before, but he pulls Desmond from his grave to use as a mask for what should be his final trick. He meets his brother again, but he’s the only one who knows it. Throughout their journey, he almost finds that peace again, but he knows it won’t last, he won’t be tricked again. He goes forth with his plan, revealing himself attempting to claim the sanctuary for himself.
But then he jumps in front of a laser for Luke, sacrificing himself for the boy he’d attempted to kill on more than one occasion (Maybe Desmond Sycamore still existed somewhere inside him…) On what would be his deathbed, he tells his rival of their connection, of them being blood. Then they leave to confront Bronev, he should have died but he couldn’t, not yet. He drags himself to final chamber, dying and being revived with the rest of them before disappearing, leaving loose ends untied. Now Descole has no reason to exist either. Who is he?
Then There’s Theodore Bronev, but that wasn’t his name anymore. He was given his brothers first name, given his new parents’ last name, he was Hershel Layton, he has been for most of his life.
He endures tragedy after tragedy, not even remembering the first, but he doesn’t let that change him. He loses his best friend (loses the rest of the Stansbury gang), his partner (then a month in a coma) and even when he remembers his lost family, he stays a good man, a true gentleman.
I don’t know how to end this, just wish I could add a section on Rachel but we know so little about her ugh
#Professor Layton#Hershel Layton#desmond sycamore#Leon bronev#Jean Descole#Azran Legacy Spoilers#maybe I’m just biased because I like Leon but I don’t think he knew Desmond was his son at least not until after he’d given the order#doesn’t make it much better but it does give an extra layer of angst to think of Leon learning after that he’d ordered the death of his-#granddaughter and daughter in law#this is why my How Things Change and second chances Aus exist I need to give them a happy ending where none of the bad stuff happened#(or at least less of the bad stuff happened)#I admit Leon isn’t well written but people know that his dead wife isn’t his only motivation right?#people realise he was trapped in a cult for decades right?#Yknow vigilate decole au also counts as an au where the Bronev family get to have a happy ending I need to look back into that at some poin
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Leech Lord - HC dump
Been a while!
Siren wings aren't physical -mostly-, they have no heft or real weight to them and aren't "real" objects that exist within the same space as their owners. The wings are more manifestations of power, the visualisation of the Siren's concentrated energy. They don't fly with them, they aren't actually doing anything generally, any movement a Siren performs while their wings are visible is due to expending their power - hovering, levitating etc, it's not the wings displacing air.
To the touch they'd feel like... the warm static on front of an old TV screen, a tingling buzz of resistance you can pass through but feel like you shouldn't. They feel very off, other, it would be hard to experience one brush through your body and not carry some kind of creeping dread for a few hours after that part of it was still inside your chest cavity somewhere.
The forms they take on aren't related to their Siren Powers at all, the great sources don't care or even know when their powers are being used by a host, they aren't making decisions over things as removed from their sphere of concern as fucking wings, Siren wings are extensions of self. They represent how that Siren see's who they really are, in one way or another.
Amara hardens hers into solid fists, powerful muscle shaped into a protective cage or battering onslaught. They flex and posture in a display of raw physical power behind her back.
Lilith's burn everything she touches, friends, enemies, they destroy and warp reality around them. They don't belong anywhere, and they do more harm than good.
Troy's twitchy, skeletal right wing that's stunted and bent in on itself isn't related to his body damage at all... it's how he sees his form. The vile eyes rolling in their sockets and glaring hatred at everything around him that bulge from the pinions of his left aren't being created by The Leech, it's his extension of self, how he understands and translates its power, how he experiences it. He doesn’t know this though, and it's one of the reasons he's disgusted by his wings.
Tyreen is wretchedly proud of her own, the horrific tentacles of energy that rip through her back, but she doesn't understand those aren't the same as other Sirens. Those aren't wings at all, it's The Leech physically manifesting, not a symbol of her own power and control.
If she ever did leech Troy in LL hers would be the stunted, barely visible purple static ones from canon, because Tyreen has barely any sense of self left. There is so little of who she actually is, that her psyche forms... nothing. Sad, pathetic silhouettes that pale in comparison to the memory of her brother's breathtaking wingspan.
The twins don't like leaving Pandora in general, Troy seeing it as a nuisance, and Tyreen not dealing well with traveling on what she considers "cramped" transport vessels. There is also a major element of danger, cosmic space witches don't hold as much weight when the skirmish is outside a planet's atmosphere, and a hull breach doesn't care if you've got magic powers.
Her claustrophobia and issues with feeling caged are one of the reasons Ty leaves so much of the cult's off world business and faction schmoozing to Troy, he's far more comfortable warping in Sanctum with a small escort fleet than she would be knowing she can't leave her ship for 24 hours.
They won't make trips longer than a short jump to a border planet in anything smaller than their flagship, the danger of being swarmed by an ambush is a tad too real, and the COV's main transport is a -massive- cruiser class warship kept in orbit around Pandora. It doesn't have a name, it doesn't need one. Its city dwarfing silhouette of jutting spires and eye burning floodlights that beam from the building sized sockets of skulls scrapped together from the wreckage of enemy ships do more than enough to announce who's vessel this is.
It can transport an army comfortably, and while devoid of Psychos, is filled with rotating shifts of Bandit and engineering crew. It's iconic visuals are due to tireless work of acolytes and pious worshippers who cover the surface while it's resting in orbit, painting neon COV iconography in teams that can take days to finish a single building sized piece, welding spines, blades, screaming rusted skulls and fluorescent light tubes across the massive breadth of its hull.
The thing is a fucking monster in the dark of space, and if it's ripping through a planet's atmosphere alongside thousands of escort gunships decorated in its honor, the surface inhabitants know exactly who has come to claim their fealty.
The lower crewpeople call it "Vae Victus" with some mix of adoration and fear, Troy doesn't like that. Doesn't think things like his warship should have a name, it's beautiful as it is - free and nightmarish, it doesn't need to be described as anything other than the ship.
Tyreen doesn't feel physical attraction to people anymore, and hasn't really realised this. Shes not asexual, the feeling just isn't there, another symptom of The Leech consuming her piece by piece. She gets fiercely, painfully envious of Troy's "time" with willing followers, of the way he doesn't even really react to eager touches along his skin as he lounges sprawled across his throne while they sit in boredom and listen to whatever bullshit the queues forming all the way out of the Cathedral have come to confess, but it's how used to it he is that irks her. How much he takes for granted something she can't have. Tyreen doesn't like not being able to have things. There's a reminder there that she doesn't have the real control she seeks so desperately.
She has extreme issues with feeling trapped in every way, physical, in her environment, in her decision making etc, it's one of the reasons she can't stand being told she's wrong, or that she has to do something, and it all stems from The Leech rather than her.
Troy heals much faster than anyone would expect from someone with so many complex physical issues. He doesn't spend any time thinking about this and genuinely doesn't notice it's a factor, but the man has very few scars. A severe injury that would leave a horrific gash on someone else just seals for him, always has. He pulled a bayonet out of his abdomen just before he crushed that heretic's head in his maw's reveal, and didn't even react. Within a couple of weeks that was just another slight silvery line across the warmth of his ochre skin, and it wouldn't take much longer till it vanished entirely.
It's likely one of the little reasons he's so uncomfortable about the paper thin coverage of the major scarring on his empty right that never healed, it's such a horrible clash against his otherwise unmarred skin to look at, and Troy finds himself often letting his eyes rest absentmindedly on other people's scars, subconsciously comparing against his own, trying to understand if he's as abnormal visually as he believes.
He has a few, scratch marks across his knees from falling a lot as a kid, the indent cuts along the sides of his spine for his rig attachments, but they aren't that noticeable. His throat scars later, they don't heal great. They show for, well, forever, and it takes him a couple of decades to realise that's how it had always worked, that he chose what to keep and what to let heal all along.
He still.. falls a lot as an adult. He stumbles, he has severe moments of weakness that can make him trip to the side and rock down to his knees before he manages to get a hand under himself, and it’s never his right even though he usually falls to that side. He always tries to steady himself with his left, even after years.
For all her bullshittery about being well traveled and street-smart and blah blah blah, Seifa can be shockingly innocent at times with things she's not much experience of. Ven taking her to a track race? Wow. Where do they sit? How do you know when it starts. What happens if that shit goes on fire? Oh VEN that shit IS ON FIRE!! Is it meant to be? Oh whoah. OHHHH.
She's grabby, she's a super tactile person who tries to not touch too much and respect people's boundaries but if she's excited or scared or can see a close friend is hurting, she tends to give in. She'd be hanging off his arm, bouncing in her seat and screaming as the racers roared by, and she'll go back home and talk to JK about it like she's some kind of expert who's been attending them years.
When they do -eventually- stop doing a terrible job of pretending things haven't shifted for them to their friends, her playful nastiness towards Troy only increases. The sparkle in her eye does too though, and you'd have to not know either of them to think it wasn't intensely affectionate. Yeah she rips into him right in front of a chuckling Eli or JK, but he knows the things she whispers tenderly against his throat as she's falling asleep. He knows what it's like to wake up with her fingers loosely entwined in his, knowing she'd taken his hand in the night. He knows how gentle and soft she actually is, so he'll let her make the little digs. It's a good deal, and he's spent enough time around the little shit to know how to spot those.
(Genuinely awful job of hiding things. Ven pointing accusingly at the Troy sized mound and messy black hair desperately trying to hide itself under her duvet she's accidentally let him catch a glimpse of as she INSISTS everything's fine and she just needs five minutes to get her makeup on hey why doesn't he turn on the TV she'll just be a sec yeah she just has to close the bedroom door no don't worry about it pal yeah bye back in a minute etc)
Troy wears his prosthetic so much in public and has had to practice gestures with it so many times, that very rarely he tries to perform a learned gesture while not wearing it and shit goes to hell.
A huffy God King mid argument trying to cross his arms and just... going nowhere with the left as it swings towards the empty bracer, then pretending he did it on purpose while progressively getting redder and closer to a tantrum as the friend he's talking to desperately tries not to laugh.
It's almost all gestures it happens with, his regular movements and functionality are from a lifetime of not having the prosthetic so he's not going to run into any trouble there. He doesn't reach for things with an empty bracer because he automatically always uses his left, but the things he had to learn since Pandora and practice daily so he could look like he was a natural with it?
Those pop into his movements sometimes when he's only in the bracer and are usually a combination of frustrating and very funny.
Things like his physical threat, that's not something that was part of his life before the God King, how to hold himself and twist the massive arm forward while letting the shoulder blades spread for the viewers are things he had to practice and learn. If he's angry and not wearing it he'll sometimes shift into trying to perform the same actions and just looking confused for a second as his side shakes before he blushes and storms away.
If he's sitting lost in a story Ven is telling and starts absent mindedly playing with what's in his hand, he'll sometimes toss it to catch with the right, something he purposefully does in the background of streams to display finesse and strength subtly... cept in Sanctum that means just yeeting the fucking beer can sideways across the room and everyone stopping conversation for a second while he blanches.
Smarmy, stoned Troy getting into a insults chicken match with JK or Sei, grinning ear to ear and flashing a practiced cocky grin before leaning to rest arrogantly against a door frame and just falling into the wall.
It only happens when he's repeating something he's practiced for a persona, so it's a lot less hurtful than it could be for his esteem, but it's still embarrassing and he usually launches straight into being a huffy little asshole directly afterwards ( even if the genuine laughter feels nice in a way)
#borderlands#borderlands 3#bl3#tyreen calypso#troy calypso#calypso twins#leech lord#seifa#ven#jak-knife#my hcs#my writing
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Living the dream
This piece is about how men think. If you are a woman and think it ought to have been about you too, I am sorry but I just don’t feel qualified to speculate about what goes through your mind when faced with the life of Jeffrey Epstein and others of his kind.
Not that I am particularly qualified to speculate about how men think, either. I only truly know about myself (or think I do) and though I have listened to a lot of men’s conversations, I haven’t undertaken any proper field studies to gauge how good a match I am for the generality of my sex. I am on a hiding to nothing. If what I am about to say was at all flattering to males, I might well be accused of arrogance by associating myself with it. As it is, I expect I will be roundly criticised, told I am atypical (and unpleasant, to boot) by a chorus of “not in my name” men.
So be it. I come neither to bury Epstein nor to praise him, but to expose a flaw in the way we have been brought up that seems to me to allow Epsteins to flourish and makes us – us men - at the least inadequately resolute in the face of the harm they do.
All I am seeking to do here is to put forward a thought that may provoke a discussion. I am doing so in the hope that the discussion might help us understand our ambivalence a little better. And perhaps that might in turn help us change our way of looking at things. And maybe that might eventually help prevent another Epstein from having his entitled way.
It’s a simple question. Why, when we encounter allegations of gross affronts to human standards of decency made against privileged males, instead of simply being able to condemn such behaviour wholeheartedly and throw our weight behind rooting it out, do we men find ourselves in a dilemma. We should not be in a dilemma. But we are.
We should respond with horror and disgust, of course. Some of us have no trouble with that, though some do so with such gusto that one finds oneself echoing Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” (in this context perhaps that should be “the laddie”).
Some of us, however, take the other public highway, openly and vociferously defending the accused. Few in Western societies will claim outright that he had the right, ceded by his wealth, his position or simply his manhood, to behave as he did. But we are prepared to turn on his victims (okay, to be strictly accurate, his alleged victims), accusing them of lying, of bandwagon jumping, of money-grubbing, of blackmail, of “asking for it”, even of having willingly engaged in prostitution.
Why do we do that? The vast majority of us will have no personal knowledge of the situation, just the sensationalising reports of the media. Why do we feel the need to take up the cudgels in favour of someone with whom we have no bonds of allegiance, and no apparent common cause, against someone about whom we know little more than that they have accused a man of egregious behaviour? We know, as men, that lust is real and that sexual abuse up to and including rape and sexually motivated murder does occur. We have no rational grievance against the accusers and they are not attacking us. And as to their veracity, we have no evidential basis for doubt.
Those of us who do this do great damage, making it hard to retain the level of objectivity that the criminal law needs in these circumstances. That very word “objectivity” will raise hackles in this context but I will not apologise for it. The accusations are of vile conduct. The consequences of them being proved to be true will (unless, like Epstein, living as he did in a very corrupt country, you can afford to buy your way out of them) be loss of liberty and ignominy. To deal justly with them, the law rightly requires proof to a high standard. But that no more justifies us in vilifying the accusers and witnesses than it justifies assuming the accused man’s guilt without examining the evidence. The two assumptions polarise the situation, limiting our chances of reaching an informed judgment, limiting, in the wider context, our chances of uncovering behaviour that dishonours us all. And in the process they leave genuine victims of abuse stranded and unaided, insult heaped upon injury.
So it is this question that bugs me: in tabloid terms, the question why we feel so vehemently defensive of the super-rich playboy and his decadent lifestyle.
One possibility is that the allegations trigger fear that the same fate could await us. I don’t buy that. Okay, the phenomenon of “copycat” offending is well-documented: that a particularly lurid or exciting crime will provoke a spate of similar crimes by those anxious for public notoriety. There is even some evidence of copycat victimhood: that a desperate need to belong and to be afforded public sympathy will lead someone to cling to the coattails of an accusation with unfounded claims to have suffered the same.
But if you are living an ordinary, basically decent life of the kind we mostly do, one in which the women around you are also decent and not known to be predatory or vindictive, why would you be triggered by accusations made against a man whose life bears little or no resemblance to yours into believing that there but for the grace of God (or the Devil) go you? That requires more than empathy. It requires paranoia.
The real answer to the dilemma phenomenon is, I believe, cultural. Not one overarching culture but two.
In some older cultures, men have had instilled in them from an early age that they are not simply entitled to lord it over women, entitled to a woman’s subservience to the satisfaction of their drives, but duty bound to do so. From what I have observed, these are cultures mainly governed by religion. It may seem paradoxical that religion, supposedly that which keeps us on the moral strait and narrow, invites and even dictates the entirely immoral subjugation of one half of the human species but that appears to be the case and from an atheistic standpoint it is not surprising that one form of irrationality should spawn another.
Even within these oppressive cults, there will be many men who privately do not like this edict, who have grown up to respect their female associates, friends and partners. But religion is a powerful force and a deadly enemy to make. And so these men will acquiesce, publicly at least.
But in the West, the noisy lunacy of American “Christian” fundamentalism apart, we have become mostly secular. We do not have the excuse for mistreating women that it is God’s will.
What we do have, however, is a very powerful secular religion. It is called Consumerism and we have been brought up to worship at its altar since midway through the 20thCentury.
Other religions may extol virtuous behaviour. Consumerism has only one commandment: envy. In its name thou shalt indeed covet thy neighbour’s ox. And his lawnmower, flat screen TV, stupidly large and expensive 4x4 and, while thou art about it, his wife and kids. Envy breeds dissatisfaction with one’s lot. Dissatisfaction can be harnessed to fuel buying. Buying makes profits for those who are selling.
Consumerism would fail if we were all satisfied with what we had. So it has to ensure that we are never satisfied.
But it can’t be left to chance. It can’t depend on us looking longingly over the fence at our neighbours’ meagre piles and wanting to be like them (or to have what will make them want what we have). It needs to be constantly feeding us the image of a life that is “better” than ours - richer, more fun, more free. A life with all the trimmings and trappings. A life designed to make our own feel mundane but a life that also is desirable and, importantly, purchasable. We have to be able to dream that this could be us if we spend enough.
Advertising is the answer. But not just the gaudy billboard or the 30 second shout out that this washing powder washes whiter. We have to be shown the life and the people leading it, shown that they are having a great time. That is what the cult of celebrity is designed to do. That is what Hollywood and TV are designed to do. That is what they have been doing – doing to us – for decades. Rich, “handsome” men have been getting off with “beautiful” women in luxury hotels and apartments and driving off to expensive meals or glittering casinos in shiny limousines and phallic sports cars, wearing tuxes and long, revealing gowns, Rolexes and jewels before our eyes. In flickering celluloid, and more recently in glorious HD, pretty young women have been raised from shop girl and chorus girl to luxurious, ornamental indolence. And we have lapped it up not realising that this escapism is simply escape to a land of longing and disenchantment.
“… all the pretty people
They're all drinking, thinking that they've got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts”
Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone (1965)
But then it spills out into real life and turns really ugly. Branson with his island made of our money. Bezos with his $165m mansion bought with a small part of the fortune he made by crushing the lives of his employees. The squat, portly figure of Sir Philip Green waddling around his £100m yacht paid for by exploiting working people while selling them cheap take-offs of the clothes celebrities wear. An over-cooked turkey on stubby human legs, nobody surely could find him attractive except the assumedly bought trophy tottie that seem always to surround him. Weinstein. Epstein...
We see people like these and we tell ourselves they are “living the dream”. If we had any judgment we might be saying, “No, they are living a decadent and empty fantasy at our expense”, and some of us do, only, ironically, to be told that we are the ones engaging in the politics of envy. Because who wouldn’t want to be them if he or she had the chance. We have been brought up to aspire to their way of life and, if, as most of us have no chance of doing, we cannot emulate it, to envy, rather than deprecate, it.
But there is an even darker side to this. The old Hollywood of glitteringly empty lives was for a while quite prim. Fred Astaire just wanted to dance in a top hat and tails with Ginger Rodgers. Cary Grant just wanted to win back Kathryn Hepburn. Rock Hudson charmingly conspired to win over Doris Day. But then some bright soul realised that sex sells. Most of us live fairly restrained lives in terms of the satisfaction of appetites. But that is not because we have small appetites. And someone worked out that this was a very potent motherlode of repressed envy just waiting to be added to Consumerism’s engine. Look, they said, if you are very, ostentatiously, rich, women will actually want to let you do sex on them.
Think for a moment about the term “playboy”. What a clever euphemism, the association of “play” – harmless, fun activity - and “boy” - a young and carefree male. It sounds like something you would want to be. In reality, it describes a wealthy male who leads a debauched life centred around the careless demeaning and objectifying of women. What a good marketing effort the creation of that word was. By dint of it, and all the drooling publicity they get, we see Epstein and Weinstein and their like and feel not distaste but that frisson of envy for all that they have, not just the baubles but the bodies too. Our cynically stimulated frustrations want what they are having. We do not want to know that their way of life is actually shot through with depravity.
And that is my answer to the question I posed: “… why we feel defensive of the super-rich playboy and his decadent lifestyle…”. It is because Consumerism has instilled it into us. we have been brain-washed into believing that this conspicuous consumption, of property and people, is what we really, really want for ourselves. And that in challenging him, in holding him to account, a killjoy society is tearing down our own hopes and dreams. Because that is what we have come to believe they are. We would rather deny the reality and keep the dream, even if it costs his victims their happiness, their peace of mind, their reputations and in some cases their lives.
If only we could open our eyes and see that, so far from “living the dream”, the super-rich playboy is perpetuating our own nightmare.
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Hello and welcome to part 11 of my Journey into Science-Fiction. Last time I looked at Twelve Monkeys 1995. But what links The Man Who Fell to Earth 1976 with Terry Gilliam’s dystopian film? If you would like to find out, then click on the link below.
Twelve Monkeys, 1995: Baby it’s Cold and Uninhabitable Outside.
David Bowie is the very first artist I remember as a child. If I remember correctly, it was his album, Aladdin Sane that first caught my attention. There was something so strange about that album compared to the others in my mum’s collection, something that still stands out to me today. I enjoy a lot of his music and films but never really took a deep dive into his world. I was just waiting for that time, and that has come in the last year or so. So finding myself with the opportunity to look at his work on my site, was a welcome one but not surprising with science-fiction heavily sprinkled throughout his stellar career.
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Directed by Nicolas Roeg and written by Paul Mayersberg, The Man Who Fell to Earth was based on a book by the same name by Walter Tevis. The film still receives critical acclaim and is described as a cult classic. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it 2nd in the best sci-fi movies of the 1970s and Empire and it was ranked 42 in the top 100 best British films.
Thomas Jerome Newton David Bowie is the man who fell to Earth, his mission is to take home water to his drought-ridden planet. Newton has a plan to help make that mission a success which includes gathering as much wealth as possible to help build a ship to return to his planet and save his family. That wealth becomes available almost instantly as he uses advanced technologies we have never seen before on Earth. All this comes under the business name of World Enterprises Corporation and phase one of his plan is up and running. Newton meets Mary-Lou Candy Clark who really starts to introduce him to a way of life he might not have found on his own.
Newton also strikes up a friendship with another person, Dr. Nathan Bryce Rip Torn. Bryce deceives Newton and secretly gathers evidence to prove that Newton is an alien. Newton, realising that the truth about him may become known, decides to show Mary-Lou his true self. Mary-Lou is shocked beyond imagination and leaves him. Anyway, back to the plan and Newton’s ship is ready for launch, enabling him to complete his mission. Newton leaves to take his flight, that is until the government steps in to halt all proceedings, Dr Bryce has exposed him and he is taken away for medical testing.
Years later and Newton’s mission has all but failed, he is also still been held and undergoing scientific study. He is visited by Mary-Lou who is looking older by now, after a game of table tennis they decide they don’t love each other anymore. Mary-Lou leaves and Newton realises he is longer held captive anymore and is free again. Newton decides the only thing he can do now is to try and send a message to his family, that comes in the shape of an album. Bryce recognises this is the work of Newton and tracks him down. Newton looks down, depressed and given up hope of ever getting back to his home.
I hope you are still reading because that description I can only say at best is clinical and this film is anything but. This film is completely enriched with all the trappings of a rock star in the 70s. I think this is why I found it so hard to describe those elements into the plot of the film as I kept referring back to that as I tried to write it. It is well known that Bowie was deep into his cocaine addiction when this film was made, and it shows. Literally, after reading a few reviews about the making of this film online, he wasn’t the only one. I really loved watching Newton drinking water from the lake and it looks almost beautiful, and later it shows you him living a life of decadence and becoming miserable, more human perhaps? Alcohol plays a pretty big part in this film as I’m sure I must have seen at least 100 bottles of Beefeater Gin on display, I actually felt like I had a hangover myself watching it. I like Art but I felt that some artistic aspects in the film took me away from the original story. The scene where Newton shown himself to Mary-Lou was quite terrifying, but was ruined by people flying through the air in splashes of water, reminiscent of a music video.
Music? Well, I was really disappointed that it was not David Bowie himself that had created the soundtrack to this film as it might have sat better with me. John Phillips did a decent job, but throughout the film, there was a country-style theme going on, turning it nto a comedy situation. I was half expecting Dolly Parton to turn up. There is meant to be a Bowie soundtrack recorded in an archive somewhere, I certainly hope that is released someday.
Don’t get me wrong though, this film has some really great visuals and looked amazing and for 1976, that’s some achievement. Basically, I thought this film had such a wonderful story to work with, but decided to show us people playing naked table tennis, unneeded sex scenes and a lot of art house imagery that was a bit over my head. I totally understand people love that, but it’s just not for me. I have just realised this film also reminds me of the book Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, a book that didn’t fill with as much joy as some of his other books either. I really enjoyed the scenes showing his family and that is the kind of science-fiction I love. Okay, I admit, I did giggle when his family are on screen as it reminded me of Mac and Me. There is a great film in there somewhere, so I did enjoy it. If only the director would have concentrated on the plot a lot more. I am glad I have finally watched it, but I guess it might have succumbed to the passage of time quite badly.
So where next for my Journey into Science-Fiction? Well, I really love that this film was made by British Lion Films and was hoping something caught my attention from their other productions. I was also pleased to learn that Michael Deeley also produced one of my favourite films, The Deer Hunter, but not exactly sci-fi. I must admit, it’s been pretty hard to find any kind of link to my next film, but alas, a wonderful moment has arrived. Thank you, Rip Torn, who played Dr Nathan Bryce, his resume is quite incredible and he has starred in some great films. One that really caught my eye though is the Robocop franchise as he played a CEO in those movies. So next I will be looking at Robocop 1987 and I’m really looking forward to that, it’s been a while. Thank you for reading and please come back for Part 12 of my Journey into Science-Fiction.
What are your thoughts on The Man Who Fell to Earth? Do think my take on the film is wrong, or right? I would really like to hear from you. Let me know in the comments section below.
The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1976: Water, Water Everywhere. Hello and welcome to part 11 of my Journey into Science-Fiction. Last time I looked at Twelve Monkeys 1995.
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