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Times That Try Men's Souls

© John Lovett

I have received several e-mails over the last two weeks or so asking me if I was still alive. Ah, yes I am. I have extremely busy over the past four weeks. Working on a new motion picture? I wish. Actually, what I have been doing is putting the finishing touches on a screenplay that is currently in production by Merrick Productions ( http://www.gbnwork.com/gbn_communication... ), negotiating with my agent on a Civil War drama, writing a new screenplay, and re - vamping the Hollywood Military Advisor web site ( http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/7... ). By the way, if you have ever wondered what I look like, go to the Pictures page at the CATHY MORGAN site. Yes, that's me sitting in the pilot's seat of a 1947 Aercoupe.

Here's some stray voltage I would like to share with you. If you remember from my articles about Stars Wars, I mentioned that I found it interesting that motion pictures often represent a technical advanced military as being bone stupid when it calls for that technology being implemented in any meaningful way. The example of Star Wars fits that observation. In the first three films, you observe the various Stormtroopers getting their collective wherewithal stomped by various low technology resistance fighters. In the latest offering, THE PHANTOM MENACE, you observe the planet Naboo being invaded by high technology warrior robots that are defeated by low technology amphibians.

An observation I would like to make is that a technologically inept civilization cannot exhibit signs of being both technologically advanced and technologically stupid. Notice I did not say technologically backward. You can have a society that is technologically advanced and backward at the same time. The filmmaker must chose one route or another. He cannot have it both ways. I mention this phenomena because of the movie THE THIRTEEN WARRIOR. Based on the excellent Michael Chrichton book Eaters of the Dead, the film involves an Arab poet by the name of Ahmahd ibn Fahdalan that is chosen to be the thirteenth member of a group of Nordic warriors traveling to help a village being attacked by the Flesh Eaters.

Understand this, Chrichton's book explains who he thinks the Flesh Eaters were and why they did what they did and what happened to them. The movie does none of those things. In the process of this movie, we find out the Flesh Eaters are CHUDS (cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers - all right I stole that name from a truly terrible science fiction movie, but I think the title fits). For effect, they wear bear capes and attack with stealth and strategy. They also ride horses.