Round Two: Rise to Vote, Sir posted by Martin

I could write more, but I decided to keep this one clipped. If we disagree, then we’ll see how we can bend and twist them.

Burley Grymz has made his choice.

Again, this is gonna be tough stuff for me (look at those ranks!). However, while I feel like I put up a good battle last time, this time I think I might let Burley take the lead on this one. Unless he says something stupid, like “genre is for marketers”. Then I’ll get angry. He wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

REMINDER: I’ve written the following without looking at Burley’s comments first. That’s gonna be the way I roll for the remainder of the first two rounds of each remaining match-up.

La Commune Planet

In a world constructed for the pleasure of the ultra-rich, every vice can be had — for a price. But beneath the smiling exterior of the friendly staff, there lurks a growing resentment. When a group of ascetics destroy access to the planet’s hidden interdimensional gateway, the employees sieze the chance to declare independence from the governement and its backers. But as they take the profits and the pleasures for themselves, pressures and conflicting desires threaten to blow the planet to smithereens.

Pro:

A pleasure planet, huh? That could be interesting to build. Especially if we try to think of what a future society finds pleasurable — with body and gene modifications, it could get really weird really fast. And how does one go about hiring, firing, and training a staff for this kind of thing? Are they all slaves, whether literally or by-any-other-name? Or do they volunteer for this work because the pay is awesome? (For some reason, Gosford Park is coming to mind.) Regardless, it’s not hard to imagine the kind of resentments that could boil over in that kind of atmosphere.

Con:

I feel like I’m seeing the arc of this one too early (yeah, I know, I wrote the frickin’ thing) and it aint really doin’ it for me. Right now, it seems like we know that the rich are probably pretty disgusting but probably don’t deserve their fate, and we know that the poor staff are probably decent people but some will revert to a more bestial nature when the opportunity presents itself. Actually, what this is reminding me of (and La Commune Planet doesn’t really benefit from the comparison) is Hotel Rwanda. But that had an interesting protagonist — like a lot of these ideas, I’m not sure whose eyes we’re going to see it from (and it could be many, a la Altman) or why that perspective is interesting. (And usually when there’s a problem of “who’s the protag and what’s the perspective?”, its usually the originator of the idea that can get past that and see something valuable there — not so this time!)

So right now, for this one to proceed, I’m going to need more: an idea of a protagonist, an idea of perspective, and I’d like to see where this story could go if, for example, the above synopsis only accounts for, say, the first 30 minutes of a 120 minute story.

Robots in Love

In a World where robots are immature, but can easily pass the Turing test, one young android idolizes a slightly older movie star, and tries everything in his power to become like his idol. As part of his transformation, the robot works at becoming quite the ladies man, but his game is called when he meets a girl that actually likes him and that he doesn’t have to chase. She would certainly never sleep with him if she knew he was an android, but being an android he is physically incapable of sleeping with her. Will truth ruin love, or can the technology-crossed-lovers find a way to remain together?

Pro:

I’ll admit, part of my attraction to this is that it reminds me of the 10 minute sequence that introduces Jude Law’s character in A.I., which, if separated from the movie, is one of the great short films of the new century. I’d watch an entire movie about Gigolo Joe, no problem. Also, I like robots. I mean, hell, I liked I, Robot. Give a machine a personality and it’s amazing how much mileage you can get out of it.

Love stories are great. And I don’t know why I say that, really. It’s not a genre I watch very often. But I like the challenge of it. They’re so prevalent, the clichés are so ingrained our culture, that it becomes a challenge to do something new with it. And making one of the lovers a robot, while not original, is still a great way of looking at the form, and finding ways of highlighting and undermining its rote, ritualistic motions. One of those is the “misunderstanding” scene, and if I understand correctly, a possibility for this story is that she wants to get into his pants, but he’s got nothing there, and if she finds out, she’ll dump him. (Is that how you intended that?) That’s interesting — I like that. There’s an underlying truth to the metaphor of the situation that I think works.

And of course, building this world means thinking about why these robots exist, what they’re for, how they’re regulated. Tough work, yes, but I like that kind of thing. (i.e., it doesn’t sound too hard :-)

Con:
Well, this is obvious, innit? Where’s the Prison Planet? I’m not going to be so pedantic to demand that there be some kind of prison planet — I’ve suggested that the Prison Planet be metaphorical in nature — but I’m not quite sure how it works here. Their love is like a prison planet? Ummm… no.

And while I like the idea of working on a love story, especially one that crosses biological boundaries, I’m not really feeling it. I wanna know what these two see in each other. Does she like him because he’s so much like his matinee idol? And what does he get out of this relationship? Why is there such a stigma on human-robot relations? If it’s wrong (or simply unfortunate) for a robot to fall in love, why the hell are they programmed for that possibility?

So there are some definite conceptual problems that need to be worked out, and it’s possible that they can’t be reconciled.

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