Heinlein's 'All You Zombies' Now a Sci-Fi Movie Head Trip 254
HughPickens.com writes: Sara Stewart reports at the NY Post that the new sci-fi movie Predestination, opening January 9, is "loopier than Spielberg's [Minority Report]; its plot twists and turns 'like a snake eating its tail,' one character remarks, until you're not sure whether its developments are even plausible in a fictional universe." It's based on Robert A. Heinlein's science fiction classic All You Zombies, first published in 1959. The story involves a number of paradoxes caused by time travel, further developing themes explored by Heinlein in a previous work, By His Bootstraps, published some 18 years earlier. Predestination's plot concerns the intersection of a time-traveling assassin and an androgynous young writer
Link to the story (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Link to the story (Score:4, Interesting)
I was just realizing that when this was published, Heinlein would have been expecting the work to be in the public domain by now..
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Can Zombies go away like Pirates and Ninjas! (Score:1)
I am getting sick of Zombies. They are the most boring medium for horror.
Re:Can Zombies go away like Pirates and Ninjas! (Score:5, Informative)
FYI: There are no zombies in this movie. (Or, at least, there were none in the original story, and it doesn't look like they randomly added any to the movie.)
It's just straight-up scifi time travel.
Intersex and time travel (Score:3)
In the novel in the end practically all protagonist are the same persons on different point of the time line, in a very paradoxical way (e.g. , the main protagonist his himself, herself before the sex change, and her own daughter).
Re:Intersex and time travel (Score:5, Insightful)
Ditto (Score:2)
Best time travel story I've read recently, The Revisionists, by Thomas Mullen (while comparisons are odious as Voltaire once opined, his writing style is a combination of Robert Silverberg, John Varley on his best day, and Graham Greene).
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Loved that story (and not for the obvious reasons). Heinlein tackled themes decades before they were mainstream, never mind acceptable. I guess that's one of the reasons his stories stand the test of time.
Little did he know his idle speculations would turn into a bona fide fetish, with a named category on porn sites.
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Re: Intersex and time travel (Score:1)
Somehow this little gem slipped past me in my youth, I was occasionally frustrated by it, wanting "but,but"... Until the end, it was twisty and thought provoking and in some measure after running the permutations for a few days, it was ok in a world of shitty scifi releases
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Friday wasn't intersex. Maybe you are confusing it with I will fear no evil. Friday was solid cyberpunk though.
Re: Friday (Score:2)
Friday was a genetically engineered semi-super-woman, not born the conventional way. Kinda like a pod-person if I remember correctly...
Great book though.
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She was more like a test-tube baby.
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Considering the original story was written long before Looper (and Heinlein did a lot of time travel stories) - and the story line itself looks at things in a different way/different point of the timeline.. I'd disagree.
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It's one of those movies that can easily go either way. Lots of people will hate it and lots will love it. At least it's not the same old shit.
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Time travel is the weakest of all science fiction plot devices. It is what authors use when they are completely out of ideas. Stories involving time travel always involve stupid logical contradictions or odd plot contrivances to try and resolve the contradictions...but when thought through fall apart in some way.
I personally think time travel belongs in the domain of fantasy rather than science fiction. It, like the force, is basically magic rather than science. And it makes as much sense as magic, too.
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Maybe the novelization might (Score:2)
Looper wasn't bad as they used multiple actors for the different ages. Is showing the audience that this person is the older/ younger version of themselves.
I often find time travel loops in movies are hard to sort out which character is from which reality/time.
Books it is easier.
Predestination is an incredibly unsatisfying movie (Score:4, Interesting)
Most movies involving time travel generally try avoid paradoxes or major plot holes, but with Predistination actively embraces time travel paradoxes, taking them to the extreme.
Maybe someone thought it would make for a "deep" and clever plot, and I had no problem following it, but as I understand it completely, I just felt frustrated with it in the end, because, the science fiction of time travel aside, it's an impossible scenario with no logical resolution.
Anyway, without posting major spoilers I won't say anything more.
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I watched this film and and followed the plot fine, but was left feeling very unsatisfied at the end of it.
Which might just be the intent, it's been decades since I read the short story but I do recall a similar feeling after reading it.
Re:Predestination is an incredibly unsatisfying mo (Score:5, Interesting)
But then I realized something very simple - his story is at heart all of our stories, only much LESS complicated.
The heart of the question about him is 'where did he come from and why does he exist?"
And the honest truth is we don't know where ANYONE comes from or why ANYTHING exists.
Consider the case of a cyclical universe. Many physicists believe that the multi-verse constantly spews out big bangs, that spew out more big bangs, in an endless cycle.
That model of the universe is at heart identical to his existence, just on a much larger scale.
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I'm not sure if the original story did something to draw the readers attention to this analogy with the existence of the universe, but I don't recall that happening in the movie, had the screenplay writers done so, I may have been feeling more thoughtful afterwards, rather than mostly frustrated.
Donnie Darko for example was weird and arguably paradoxical, but the way it was done left me feeling very thoughtful at the end, which
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"I know where I came from, but where did all you zombies come from?
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Perpendoxes, not paradoxes. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Yes, I've thought about this too much [homeunix.net].)
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gurps_npc's comment [slashdot.org] does brings a minor amount of redemption to the plot, if that was indeed the intent of the story.
I still feel somewhat frustrated that it is a nevertheless impossible to have arrived at scenario, but yes, the existence of the universe is no less of a conundrum.
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Saw the movie also, left unsatisfied at the end too.
But I will say this, you need to be intelligent for this movie. The movie is like a very good bottle of wine, it weaves something and you can almost grab it.
The people I was with, well they were rating it about 65 out of 100, I was near 85 out of 100. It's a thinking persons movie.
I would also advise seeing the movie "the drop" again a thinking persons movie. Very nicely crafted.
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Check out TimeCrimes http://www.imdb.com/title/tt04... [imdb.com] it's pretty fun. It's not great sci-fi epic, the action stays in a small area, which makes it a lot more satisfying IMO
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"Predistination actively embraces time travel paradoxes, taking them to the extreme"
"it's an impossible scenario with no logical resolution"
That's the point. I guess you're not used to smart movies? Not trying to offend. Just asking. It's cool. I know a couple of people smarter than me who aren't into "smart" music, movies or literature.
All You Zombies... (Score:2)
All You Zombies was a great short story to read, but I don't know how it will translate to the big screen. They've definitely expanded from the original story to make a movie out of it (the entire terrorist plot was added), and I'm hoping it's going to work. I've always had a soft spot for a well-made time travel movie, and there really hasn't been a good one in years.
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It's not exactly out of character for the short story - the main character works for a time traveling police agency, so a time traveling terrorist would be a viable nemesis. The real question is if it makes sense, and how well it meshes with the rest of the story.
Re:All You Zombies... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever read "The House in November", by Keith Laumer? Kind of the same thing, but more story to it. "All You Zombies" was short, sweet, and to the point.
I loved that story (Score:3)
Basically, he exists because he exists. Which when you come right down to it, is the same as the rest of us, only his existence is a lot less complicated.
Please be good... (Score:1)
Heinlein is one of the greatest SF writers, but after the mess they made of starship troopers I am not very optimistic.
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Re:Please be good... (Score:5, Interesting)
Starship Troopers was directed by Paul Verhoeven, who likes to push action movies just over the edge of campiness. Action movies that don't fit either the comedy or drama genre fall flat, because frankly, shoot-run-shoot-chase-shoot is tedious. You need to either care deeply about the characters portrayed, or be entertained by laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Verhoeven emphasizes the absurd, which makes scenes like the one where Clancy Brown throws the dagger through Jake Busey's hand during training ( then yells "Medic!") hilarious.
Before I saw it, there was a part of me that wanted Starship Troopers to be a serious movie worthy of the title of Sci Fi, and I remember being initially disappointed that it wasn't. But because he turned it into a "fun" movie, I came to appreciate it as entertainment.
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You seem to have missed the enormous heaping pile of political commentary in Verhoeven's movie. [cracked.com] The movie was practically saturated with it. That you didn't recognize it ought to prompt serious self-examination. He had them wearing nazi uniforms for chrissakes.
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And what makes you think I missed it? Heinlein was a strong advocate for a military-based society; Verhoeven camped it up to its absurd extreme.
It's camp. It's entertainment. Laugh. But if you are concerned that people are learning social structures from it, then you've probably been watching too much Fox News.
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Did you hear of reductio ad absurdum? That's what Verhoeven did. Very cleverly. Just like PT Anderson with Boogie Nights.
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The whole "only veterans are citizens" concept was central to the book. That pretty much defines a military-based society.
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Re:Please be good... (Score:5, Funny)
Dammit. (Score:2)
I'm sorry -- I tried to give you a "funny," but it clicked "overrated" just under it. And -- stupid Slashdot -- there's no "undo." Except... by way of commenting, which, at least in theory, undoes all my mods in this story thread. Here goes...
Odd choices of Heinlein stories to make into movie (Score:3)
Starship Troopers was always controversial for its martial philosophy, and All You Zombies is wacky. Why not pick one of his more straightforward books?
Re:Odd choices of Heinlein stories to make into mo (Score:5, Insightful)
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I love stranger in a strange land, truly one of my favorite books, but I don't think it would make a good movie. The whole idea of aliens on mars seems played out.
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Re:Odd choices of Heinlein stories to make into mo (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, Glory Road would be my choice. Hell, Clooney would be good as Old Scar.
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Heinlein wrote a lot of stuff I wouldn't want to see in a movie, mostly because the themes are the same and outdated now, and would make about as good a movie as Atlas Shrugged. Though I suppose some inventive film maker could probably make an entertaining parody of them that might be more meaningful than the books themselves.
That said, I agree that I would like to see Stranger in a Strange Land into a movie, it was one of his better ones I think.
Another one that I think would probably make a good movie, al
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Stranger in a Strange land as a movie... I would see it, and I think it could fit into a 90's time idea or maybe push it to 2025ish as the starting point.
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"Lost" sort of did Ubik badly.
Re:Odd choices of Heinlein stories to make into mo (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress would be great as a movie...
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Genuinely funny!
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Not me. There is nobody in Hoolywood that I would trust with any of those stories.
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Their are two main reason bad movies get made from books:
1) Work is old and out of copyright (See John Carter of Mars for a prime example).
2) Poor authors sell yearly option to make his book into a movie. Most of them expire unused - which is what the author hopes for. But this encourages the option buyer to sell his 'movie idea' quick and cheap. Writers can make a good 10k a year for no work doing thi
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I have read practically everything by Heinlein and "I Will Fear No Evil" is without doubt the worst load of crap he ever wrote, and he wrote a lot of crap towards the end. In fact, after "Stranger" only "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Friday" are worth bothering with. To be fair, he was ill when he wrote it and the publisher wouldn't wait for him to recover enough to fix it up. OTOH it may not have been salvageable. The premise has already been used in at least one movie anyway.
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A juvie, updated, eg Red Planet or Farmer in the Sky.
Yet another Heinlein story turned into dreck. (Score:2)
When the political and social commentary is written out of film adaptations, it leaves only some common characters and the story title. The rest is garbage.
Don't expect any hollywood studio to ever produce an actual Heinlein film. It's not going to happen. You'll just have to settle for filmed drivel sharing a title with a good book.
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All or none.
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So, you're a perfect human? If not, you must be planning your suicide, right?
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I watched this movie recently, and I had all but forgotten "All You Zombies" -- while watching it I realized the story seemed very familiar, and when one character uses the phrase "All You Zombies" it all came crashing back. (I last read it 35 years ago)
It is easily the best film treatment of any Heinlein work I've seen -- not that this sets the bar all that high -- but it was a good movie -- IMDB rates it at 7.5, and I'd agree with that.
The acting is *very* good, particularly from Sarah Snook.
The story its
Wrong time line (Score:1)
I must be in a wrong time line. In my universe, this movie came out last year, not tomorrow. Spoiler alert (from the future, apparently) it isn't very good.
If you can't follow the loops you are asleep (Score:4, Interesting)
The Space Corps stuff is a good bit of background scenery to the main story and is the main thing that tells you it's in Heinlein's idea of the 1970s and a good way to tell the viewer that you don't have to worry about events in the film that never happened in the 1970s.
Very good casting, good plot, good acting (some people will hate the accent of one character but I think it fits) - maybe a bit slow in parts but that could be so that the viewer can keep track of the time loops while half asleep or drunk.
So how did I see it? I'm in the future (international date line), and it had a limited release in Australia a few months ago.
Not bad. (Score:2)
I watched it several weeks ago. (news for nerds?)
It's not bad but if you read the story it ruins it somewhat for you.
Should have mixed it with Primer. (Score:3)
IMO, Primer sets the bar for time-travel movies, even though it's deliberately ambiguous. It seems that really, the only 'next step' is to bring out many more of the complex paradoxes that something like Primer begins to address.
For instance, what would happen (not used, but implied, in Primer) if one put an (unoccupied) running box (IIRC Primer only uses collapsed boxes) inside a running box? My guess is that it would allow for arbitrary backward time travel (with the Primer provisio that it would be a branched universe)..
Re:Should have mixed it with Primer. (Score:5, Interesting)
But I would remark that the original story All You Zombies, predates it by decades, and as such deserves a bit of credit. The people that wrote Primer, read All you Zombies, or I'd have already eaten my great grand sons' hat.
Moreover, this movie is far more understandable. As such, it can be considered superior, in at least one aspect.
Basically, it depends on how you judge a movie
You are judging all time travel movies by the same rules. I don't that that's appropriate, anymore than judging all cowboy movies by comparing them to Blazing Saddles.
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Primer is definitely the best paradoxical time travel movie ever made. I've seen it twice now, and I'm still uncertain as to who is doing what to who at which point.
Pretty thin story to base a movie on (Score:2, Funny)
This does sound better (Score:2)
Considering some of the scifi crap that's been pushed out there over the past few years this may be something to see.
I got it... (Score:3)
I watched the movie... and, to be honest, I had no idea what it was about before I started. But I'm into relativity and that sort of thing so I found it interesting.
I'll try not to give too much away but if you read on you might get some slight spoilers... so read at your own risk.
The gist of it is "Time cop" meets The NSA but less lame. And the premise is that the universe follows the "May worlds" theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
The film uses Many Worlds to try and resolve the "Boot strap paradox": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org] and/or the "Predestination Paradox": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Now, when you start watching it the movie kind of harms itself in that, it doesn't explain this at all... there are no convenient scientists around to explain possible scientific ways out of what we would generally consider not possible even in science fiction. I think it would have been helped by such a device. It wasn't until after I watched it, saw the ending, and then thought on it for a couple of days that I really understood what they were trying to get across.
***More spoilers, dont read if you don't want them!***
I think that the primary characters in the film were in a "Many worlds" universe and as such I think that the dance you see has been played out infinitely in many other versions of the universe. Furthermore what I think the film suggests is that these universes can interact and that the actors are not just traveling in time, they are also traversing these realities. So the events in the film may be in a closed loop, but that loop was started by the characters arriving from other "Worlds" etc... Perhaps this world existed all along, but the paradox they created collapsed "The past", etc...
The film does not explain this well at all, and I'd not take anyone that wasn't really into hardcore scifi to see this. I barely grasped it and I read the hardest hardcore scfi available every day. As far as film goes this is about as mind bending as it gets. The acting was good... but the device revolving around the main characters gender was very very clunky. I did not like that at all, and it was Rocky Horror picture show silly in its presentation. I'm not sure how else they could have pulled that off, but they should have tried a lot harder.
Re:I got it... (Score:5, Informative)
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You didn't get it. One world. One timeline.
Almost, but not quite, I think:
"March 1975. He keeps changing the day."
That suggests the history is meant to be at least partially mutable.
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You didn't get it. One world. One timeline. A human that wasn't descended from the standard strain of humanity. It's a fulfillment "paradox" in that it's a paradox only if the main character would make different choices. But the character doesn't because the character didn't and the character won't. It can be argued that the character can't make different choices any more than George Washington can make different choices about what is already set in history. Once you accept the concept of time travel and reject the concept of "many worlds", all of history throughout time is set in stone. Predestination.
Which is why I mentioned the Bootstrap paradox. He was his own mother and father. There's no way that can exist in One Timeline, at all. And, in fact it can't exist in many worlds either... because at some point he would have had to have existed prior to his having existed... Unless, travel between worlds is possible, and the him that is in this universe is the decedent of many other hims through the infinite multiverse that have some ancestor that is descended from elsewhere.
I suppose that it's possible th
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I suppose that it's possible the movies writers just don't understand causality, but there's no possible way to have a causality loop in a single world universe. There would be no way for the loop to start in the first place.
Sure there is. There is no start. He/she will always be his/her own parents because he/she has always been his/her own parents.
If that bothers you, consider any circle. Where is the beginning of the arc?
I've seen it and... (Score:3)
Been wou a while.... (Score:3)
Anyway, I watched it and it is worth watching. The story is mostly all dialogue which makes one think it would make a horrible movie without much action or scenery. Especially since the text is mostly cerebral. However, the movie adds some interesting aspects to the film. In the story, the temporal agent is charged of preventing disaster (terrorists?) and recruiting other temporal agents. One of the disasters mentioned in the story is the Fizzle War. The writers of the screenplay, Spierig brothers(?), did a really good job of taking the twisted timeline of the protagonist and incorporating the events of the Fizzle war to make the movie even more interesting, and thought provoking.
I'm sure Heinlein would approve of the movie. I'll probably go watch it in the theater.
It may be better than Primer... Now there is a good Timey-wimey film.
Time Travel, what's it good for! (Score:2)
Assassination apparently. So it was in Looper and every Terminator movie anyway. I'm sure there are others...
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Non assassination movies -
Millennium - Roughly speaking, the future screwed up. DNA damage is too bad, they can't reproduce, etc... So they're using time travel to rescue people from the past who would have died in plane crashes(and such), replacing them with realistic dummy bodies. The people are then sent on into the future to repopulate.
There's a couple where humanity is going to an ancient past/alternate earth, during the time of the dinosaurs.
Some books where it's not used for assassination, but for
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Don't forget 12 Monkeys. Post apocalyptic world, sending a traveller back in time to find ground zero and remove it.
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Red Dwarf did it! (Score:2)
"Lister begins to try and come to terms with the fact that he is his own father, and Kochanski is not only his ex-girlfriend but also his mother, before realizing he needs to get the tube back from Kochanski."
Its a new release? (Score:2)
I got it from a torrent a week ago and it was no cam. Lol I tought it came out months ago.
Good movie... Would have paid $5 for a To Own download with no OS restrictions.
Two points (Score:2)
First, "MInority Report" wasn't really very loopy or complex, so that's a weird comparison to make. Second, yet another zombie movie? No thanks. I'm zombied out for the next decade or two.
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It isn't a zombie movie. It's a pretty good time travel flick.
Limited Release? (Score:1)
The Long Watch (Score:2)
The only problem is it's a short story. They would have to punch up the beginning a bit with background information.
Still, it has a great ending, assuming someone doesn't get all stupid and think it's a sad ending, just because the hero dies.
The Long Watch formed my opinion about what a hero really is, rather than a musician or celebrity.
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Only it already WAS filmed as such, and made for a relatively entertaining movie from a certain point of view.
Oh and it also fives a more literal meaning to "fuck yourself" swear.