Post by Just Lorek on Dec 5, 2012 10:20:19 GMT -5
Skyfall was good, mostly, and I enjoyed it. The price of admission was worth the beautiful establishing shots alone (I'd totally buy a Blu-Ray of just location establishing shots from the Bond films). Enjoyable.
Except the hacking. Computer hacking, that is. Hackers almost always seem to be portrayed as some kind of sorcerer, and are somehow always one step ahead of those pursuing them. With a constant supply of electronic Deus Ex Machina viruses (or whatever), they seem to be able to escape from any jam.
I can understand the temptation for writers. Modern, "serious" fiction does not allow magic, but the sorcerer/magician archetype is suddenly made available again in the guise of a hacker. The problem is that there is no place for such an archetype in a modern setting.
The tools that we use in modern fiction are increasingly high-tech, and provide easy tools for the sorcerer to subvert and use for his own purposes. It's up to a low-tech person (Bond, Agent Booth from Bones, etc) to bring down the sorcerer, adopting the role of the swordsman (again, out of place in a modern setting, with the possible exception of Bond and other assassins; definitely not in law enforcement).
The problem is that sorcerers have power that no one else can seem to understand or effectively counter. In high fantasy, the solution to a sorcerer problem is to simply kill the sorcerer (ignoring all the crazy resurrection stuff). This usually does not seem to be an option in the modern usage of sorcerers, and leads to artificially convoluted plots.
So, no real point to this post. Just expressing some thoughts on the genre.
Except the hacking. Computer hacking, that is. Hackers almost always seem to be portrayed as some kind of sorcerer, and are somehow always one step ahead of those pursuing them. With a constant supply of electronic Deus Ex Machina viruses (or whatever), they seem to be able to escape from any jam.
I can understand the temptation for writers. Modern, "serious" fiction does not allow magic, but the sorcerer/magician archetype is suddenly made available again in the guise of a hacker. The problem is that there is no place for such an archetype in a modern setting.
The tools that we use in modern fiction are increasingly high-tech, and provide easy tools for the sorcerer to subvert and use for his own purposes. It's up to a low-tech person (Bond, Agent Booth from Bones, etc) to bring down the sorcerer, adopting the role of the swordsman (again, out of place in a modern setting, with the possible exception of Bond and other assassins; definitely not in law enforcement).
The problem is that sorcerers have power that no one else can seem to understand or effectively counter. In high fantasy, the solution to a sorcerer problem is to simply kill the sorcerer (ignoring all the crazy resurrection stuff). This usually does not seem to be an option in the modern usage of sorcerers, and leads to artificially convoluted plots.
So, no real point to this post. Just expressing some thoughts on the genre.
