Aboriginal Science Fiction, Issues 57–58 — page 32: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THROUGH THE LENS eah, okay, so it’s sum- mer, and you know what that means: big bucks in the budget; long lines at the box office; and critics take the hindmost. I’ve long since stopped despairing over the shallowness of the summer releases; it’s just economics — studios couldn’t run gambles like L.A. Confidential if they didn’t have some beefed-up -adrenaline-thon paying for the execs’ swimming pools and pri- vate jets during the dog days (I only wish they’d gamble a little bit more in the cooler months). Nowadays all I ask is not to have my intelligence too grievously insulted and every now and then to see some glimmer of creativity. This year, the odds may be better than others. To wit ... Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin — those guys who perpe- trated Independence Day (Emmerich directing, Devlin pro- ducing, both writing) — have now come up with Godzilla for Tri- Star (or maybe Columbia, given the recent merging of these two production companies). I know the names of these guys are anathema to many SF fans, and I suppose nothing can excuse how they play fast and loose with sci- ence (Mac-compatible alien spaceships) and reality in gener- al (the strangely localized tecton- ic shift that managed to nudge the Empire State Building into the middle of Fifth Avenue before the beginning of JD4). Still, I can’t help looking forward to this Americanized version of Japan’s classic city-stomper. Stargate and [D4 may have been program- mers, but they were fun program- mers — it was clear Devlin and 32 Aboriginal Science Fiction — Summer 1998 In Defense of Emmerich and Devlin Emmerich were having a hoot creating them and were not reluctant to share their high spir- its with the audience. That’s an unusually expansive impulse in so cynical and greedy an industry — it should be treasured whenev- er it crops up. Given a giant, fire- breathing reptile to play with (and a budget that, for the first time in a Devlin/Emmerich pro- duction, easily jumps the $100 million barrier), I suspect these two will give us a better than decent ride. It appears they've got more than enough material to work with: born this time as the after- math of French nuclear testing, Godzilla will be given a sleeker, more anatomically sensible look (although apparently still with human-like knees), and will be allowed to go on a continent- spanning rampage in the U.S. before winding up in New York City to kick some asphalt butt and lay some sequel-worthy eggs. Yup, you heard right: Godzilla’s embraced family values. If Godzilla ...the original Big Foot Michael Jackson can have ’em, anybody can. More heresy: I can’t honestly say I feel as enthusiastic about The X-Files: Fight the Future. Yes, I’m a fan of the show. Yes, I’ve been following the “mythos” since season one. Problem is: I liked the show a lot more before producer Chris Carter started taking his P.R. so seriously. What many people fail to realize is that The X-Files was originally a joke; the reason the mythos seemed so impenetrable was because it was never supposed to make sense. Alien changelings, shape-shifting as-sassins, gov- ernment conspiracies, killer bees — these were so many random riffs off pop-culture paranoia, stitched together episode by episode. Carter’s original genius was to pretend there was a larger pattern to be found, if only we knew enough details. It was his genius, and his curse. It’s more than likely that, given the history of such prede- Copyright © 1998 by Dan Persons Gomicbooks: com