Warning: This post contains spoilers for the ending of Source Code. Since it’s release, I’ve listen to several different reviews of Source Code. Positive or negative, most reviewers seem to fixate on a specific aspect of the films’ ending. In the climactic scene Colleen Goodwin sends Colter Stevens back through the Source Code one last time, severs Stevens connection with the machine, and allows him to live out the rest of his life as Sean Fentress in the world in which he stops the bomb from ever exploding. In the last 2 minutes of the film, we then discover that in every trip Stevens took, an alternate reality was actually being created. What I’ve found is that most reviewers seem to share the common belief that Colter Stevens is killing Sean Fentress by taking his place in this alternate reality. I, however, see things a little bit differently.

You see, Stevens can’t kill Fentress in the new reality because Fentress’ consciousness never existed in that reality. Let me explain. I have a little different interpretation of how Source Code works and what condition the participants must be in, in order for the “temporary-consciousness-shifting-dimension-generation” to actually work. You don’t simply take two people who’ve died and swap their consciousnesses. That doesn’t make sense. If you just needed a dead person, why couldn’t they just pull a body off the train and use the civilian who died? I think the process requires 1) A person who has just died, and 2) Someone who WAS moments from death.

The way I interpreted the science was that upon death, a person’s brain caches the universe (or reality) in which it exists in. Saving it as sort of an afterglow (as described by the creator). Alternately, the closer a person is to death, the more in tune they become to pick up that afterglow. When the first person dies, their consciousness ceases to exist, leaving behind an empty vessel containing only the afterglow of that reality. The Source Code device is designed to do two things: 1) perpetually keep a person suspended in a near death state, and 2) temporarily shift that person’s consciousness into the empty vessel and allow them to relive the buffer of that afterglow.

The generation of a new reality is simply an unintended consequence of the process. Either way, I don’t believe Sean Fentress’ consciousness ever exists in the new reality to be “killed off”.

my name is Christopher Schnese
and this is my reel perspective

In The Adjustment Bureau David Norris (Matt Damon) discovers an organization of people devoted to controlling the destinies of the human race. The film follows Norris as he tries to thwart the organization and write his own path through the world. Given the subject matter of free will vs determinism, it’s easy to understand why viewers might interpret The Bureau (and it’s Chairman) as representing God within the context of the film. Not only do I believe this interpretation to be incorrect, but I believe that if you hold this opinion, you’ve missed the entire point of the film.

Yes, The Adjustment Bureau is essentially a group of all-seeing people who have the ability to affect change in our world using “power” beyond what the average person can wield. And yes, they’re governed by an omniscient “Chairman” who has written out a plan for every person on the planet. You’re right, that does sound a lot like a common depiction of God and Angels. However, you could also draw a lot of comparisons between Christ and Neo in the Matrix. Though, I bet you’d be hard pressed to find someone who actually believes that the character of Neo was intended by The Wachowski [siblings] to represent and be interpreted as Jesus Christ.

The truth of the matter is that this film never, at any point, attempts to assert that the Bureau has anything to do with God. In fact, there is actually a scene where Norris asks one of the bureau workers if he “is an angel”, to which he replies “We’ve been called that. We’re more like case officers…”. If you ask me, that line alone makes the God argument pretty null and void. But as I mentioned at the start, that revelation isn’t what the film is all about.

The Adjustment Bureau isn’t about the question of “who?”. It’s not even about the question of “why?”. It isn’t even an argument over whether our lives are governed by free will or determinism. No, The Adjustment Bureau is a thought experiment that proposes that even in a world where free will exists, outside forces can change circumstances or trigger events that, even for individuals operating of their own free will, can and do alter the course of lives and paths that we travel on.

I believe that The Adjustment Bureau is Science Fiction first, and Philosophy second. Whether you’re a believer, an atheist, or something in between, the film raises some interesting questions. None of which, are “is there a God?”. So before you judge the film based on the lenses through which you viewed it, take a look at the questions it’s really asking.

my name is Christopher Schnese
and this is my reel perspective

I know it’s a little cliché to use the phrase “back when I was a kid…” (and also a little absurd considering I’m only 27 years old), but back when I was a kid theaters opened at 9:30am and by 10:00am you could be watching the latest release to your little hearts content. I loved it, too. I’d be lined up outside the theater on opening day, get in and see the film before all the big crowds, and you could exit the theater knowing you still had a full day ahead of you. In fact, back when the first Matrix sequel came out, a coworker and I were able to squeeze in an opening day showing and still put in a full 8 hour day at the office (with the bosses permission of course). Back then, seeing a film didn’t mean sucking up the majority of the afternoon.

Unfortunately, the days of early showtimes are gone. At least that’s the case for pretty much every theater in my area. In fact, a quick look at my local theater’s showtimes listing and there isn’t a single showing starting before 1:10pm. That’s a full three hours later than what it used to be. Now I understand that for the theater this translates to three hours less wages needed for employees, three hours less utilities charges, and a bunch of other costs reductions, but they’ve got to realize that it also means a loss in ticket sales.

I refuse to believe that I’m the only person who likes to get up and see a film early in the morning. And even if I am in the minority, the fewer showings you have, the fewer people can see it, period. It’s not hard to understand. There are a lot of scheduling things that go into a person’s decision to head out and see a film in theaters. Limiting the number of showtimes available to them just lessens their options and increases the chance they’re just going to wait for the DVD release.

my name is Christopher Schnese
and this is my reel perspective

Now anyone who’s talked film with me knows that I’m a huge fan of PIXAR and all the amazing work they do. Also, if you’ve ever listened to my podcast, you’ve heard me talk about how much I support the use of [good] 3D in film. I truly believe that, when handled correctly 3D has the potential to add a sense of size and scale that simply cannot be achieved in normal 2D film. All that being said, I just can’t figure out why PIXAR is prepping a re-release of Ratatouille.

You’d think that I’d be excited about it. I love PIXAR. I love 3D. Ratatouille is arguably my favorite film of the PIXAR collection. It’s a CGI film, so making it 3D just involves rendering out a second camera’s viewpoint. The director Brad Bird is open for the idea of adjusting the composition of various shots to make them work better in a 3D presentation. Everything about the idea is good. So where does the issue lie for me?

PIXAR simply doesn’t have a good track record with 3D in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, they’re 3D technology isn’t “bad” (i.e. on par with Clash of the Titans, Alice in Wonderland, or The Last Airbender), but their policy has proven to be that 3D should be incredibly subtle. I saw both UP and Toy Story 3D in theaters and never once was I awed by a sense of depth or scale. In fact, there were times in both films where I would take my 3D glasses and continually flip between on and off just to see if I could tell what part of the scene was actually in 3D.

One film involved a man floating his house off it’s foundation with a million helium balloons and the other was a film about toys come to life. Both films have immense scale built in to their concept, yet PIXAR couldn’t communicate that in any meaningful way through the use of 3D. Why would I want to shell out $20 to re-watch a film in 3D that I could own on Blu-ray for the same cost? Especially if the 3D isn’t going to add to the experience.

my name is Christopher Schnese
and this is my reel perspective

I’ve known several people over the years who will discover something new and make the mistake of thinking they’re the first person in the world to do so. They latch on to it as if it is uniquely theirs and get very defensive when they hear others talk about liking the same thing. I’ve seen it done with bands, songs, television shows, and especially with film. I’ve always been annoyed by this behavior, but recently I experienced it from the other perspective. For probably the first time in my life, I felt protective over a film and had an adverse reaction to someone speaking positively about it.

Now to my credit (or maybe I’m just trying to justify it) I haven’t truly become what i’ve hated. What I really get annoyed at is individuals who’s only true rationale for being protective of a film is that they saw it before who ever they’re trying to protect it from. In my situation it has less to do with who saw it first, and everything to do with what the film meant to me.

Sometimes, a film isn’t just a film. Sometimes, a it represents the mirror image of an event or a situation you’ve gone through. Sometimes you identify with a character so much that you feel like you’re watching a film made about yourself. Sometimes you can feel exactly what the writer and the director were feeling in every single scene and every single shot. When this happens, you’re no longer just passively watching the story take place. Instead, you’re sharing an experience. An experience that, if you haven’t lived it, you can’t completely appreciate.

Earlier this year I saw a film (the name having been left off to protect the innocent) exactly of this type. It wasn’t just a film that I walked out loving, but one that I walked out living. The only difference between myself and the main character at the end of the film was that he had reached a greater level of understanding about his situation than I had.

Now I watched the film with two other people in a little theater with a pretty packed house. One of them really liked it, the other one hated it. The mood of the audience as we exited the theater led me to believe a majority of the audience felt pretty positively about the film. Maybe it was just because I was still processing it myself, or maybe it was just that I was confident in level of experience in my party. Either way, I didn’t feel protective of the film as we headed out to dinner and discussed what the three of us had watched.

Recently though, I decided to revisit this film that I hold so dear. I pulled out my copy, slapped it in my computer, and proceeded to love it just as much as I had the first couple times. A few days later I was talking to a friend and the film came up during the conversation. This friend seemed excitedly pleased with the film and for some reason this fact was off-putting to me. I originally saw the film in a theater full of other people. I even recommended it to several other of my friends. Yet for some reason my initial reaction to my friend’s praise of the film was a feeling that they didn’t ‘deserve’ to feel that way.

It was a strange feeling. I guess I hadn’t really felt that way before. I mean sure, I know some people who don’t really like to look past the surface and I might question their ability to catch the deeper meaning of a film, but this was different. It’s almost like I felt, at least on some level, that I thought this friend’s life experience (or lack their of) made them ill-equipped to really appreciate the film on the level that I connected with it. They were telling me they loved it, but I knew they hadn’t lived it. They couldn’t possibly love the film the way that I did.

It was in that moment that I had an epiphany. Because of the subjective nature of film, I can never know the effect or emotion a film will bring out in a viewer. To me a film could be just a fun little ride, yet to someone else it could mean the entire world. Because of this, I can’t just assume that someone being protective over a film is doing so just because they saw it first. Maybe there’s something a little more to it. Maybe there’s something there worth protecting.

my name is Christopher Schnese
and this is my reel perspective.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year or so, you’ve at least heard of a little James Cameron film called AVATAR. We’re nearly a week away and the hype train is chugging along at full speed. It seems like every day there is more news, photos, trailers, TV spots, interviews, first-look reviews, and the like cropping up all over the internet. Cameron has supposedly had this project fully underway for about 4 years and in conception for about 13. Recent estimations put the current budge at well over $500 million. By all standards, this film is an insane undertaking. And as if he weren’t crazy enough, Cameron has apparently intended the film as a Trilogy.

According to an interview Sam Worthington gave to Total Film, “[they've] signed for three pictures”. No word on exactly who ‘they’ is, but it at least shows crazy ambition on the part of James Cameron. He is either extremely brilliant, or extremely stupid. He has to know how big of a risk he’s taking with this project. I mean, let’s just talk numbers for a second here. If the rumors of the $500 million budget are correct, then even if the film grosses over $500 million at the box office, it will have been considered a financial failure. If you need a little perspective, just take a look at last years big summer blockbuster The Dark Knight. This Christopher Nolan breakout hit currently holds the rank of highest grossing opening weekend of all time, was based on a previously established and widely loved franchise, had a built in audience from being a sequel, and still took 45 days to break $500 million world wide. It had everything going for it and it was still a surprising success.

If AVATAR is going to turn a profit at all, let alone make enough to justify 2 sequels, it’s going to have to do gangbusters in theaters. Even with the inflated ticket prices from the IMAX 3D presentation, I don’t think it has the chance to pull in the record numbers it’s going to need to succeed. Yes, the film is getting huge hype, but Sci-Fi films don’t historically do all that well in general. Even Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day, the highest grossing Sci-Fi film of all time, has only grossed $817 million since it’s release in 1996 (only about $300 million in the states). I just don’t see AVATAR pulling in enough money to convince any studio that they wanna take on a sequel. But then again, this is all speculation on my part. Who knows, maybe all the effects and hard work that Cameron and crew have put in will pay off next week when it hits theaters.

my name is Christopher Schnese
and this is my real perspective

Lets face it, the film industry is sort of hurting right now. They’re desperately searching for anything with a preestablished audience to turn into a crap film that millions of people are going to see regardless of it’s quality. They’re doing it with novels, older movies, comic books, and even video games. Now history has taught us that video games make really bad films (i.e. the Street Fighters, Mortal Kombats, Super Mario Brothers, Double Dragon, Resident Evil, Doom, etc). Recently, however, we’ve begun to hear of some video game to film adaptations that actually stand a chance of being decent (if not brilliant) films. If these films continue to crop up and do well at the box office, we could actually see an improvement in the quality of video games in general as companies shoot for film adaptations.

The problem with most video game films is that most video games aren’t very deep. The gameplay is built around some gimmick and the story is under developed. There are a small number of game developers, however, who actually care about story. Developers like Naughty Dog, who gave us Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, go out of their way to make their games as cinematic as possible. They concentrate on the characters, their personalities, their motivations, and they’re interactions with each other. The gameplay, while still incredibly good, is just a means to an end. An end that leaves you emotionally invested in your characters and their fates.

If games of this type begin to get recognized and picked up by film studios, we may begin to see an rise in video game films that are actually good. Additionally, if some of these films begin to pull in huge box office numbers, other game developers may begin to take notice themselves. Seeing the potential for a film adaptation, studios who currently turn out games with mediocre characters and story may begin to make an honest effort to churn out more cinematic games. Theoretically, as the cycle continued, we’d eventually arrive at the point where a video game film could compete on the level of a film like The Dark Knight.

my name is Christopher Schnese
and this is my reel perspective

This past week I saw Shane Acker’s latest film 9, a full-length reimagining of his 2005 short film (of the same name). Without a doubt the film is stunningly gorgeous. The miniaturized characters in their destroyed, post-apocalyptic world completely worked aesthetically for me. Unfortunately, there was still something missing. The entire film I just kept wondering why it wasn’t in 3D.

Sure, it was only two posts ago that I complained about the usage of 3D in the Avatar trailer. And I’ve also seen it used as a complete gimmick (that’s right, I’m talking to you, The Final Destination). 9 actually could have used it though. Just about every single shot in the film screamed to be brought into the third dimension.

From what I’ve heard, 3D conversion isn’t even that complicated when dealing with a completely CG film. If all the chatter I’ve heard regarding PIXAR’s conversion of Toy Story 1 & 2 are accurate, there is no new animation or work required for the conversion. You literally just add a second camera to create a stereoscopic view, and re-render every shot.

If it’s really that simple? Why should we ever see another CG film presented in 2D again? If the technology is there, why not leverage it? As long as directors can resist the urge to attempt to bombard the viewer with objects flying off the screen, the 3D will simply add a depth and beauty to the film. Then a film like 9 could really show off what it’s bringing to the table.

My name is Christopher Schnese
and this has been my reel perspective

One of the big new stories coming out of E3 this year was Microsoft’s announcement of Project Natal; a stereoscopic camera input system for the Xbox 360 that provides gamers complete 1-to-1 full-body control over their in game characters. This past weekend, Lionsgate brought us the Film Gamer; a science fiction film set in a future where a game called Slayers gives it’s players control of another human being in full scale combat. Being that the film version of the game is control through gesticulation, it would be perfect for Project Natal.

If Microsoft hasn’t already scooped up the video game rights to this franchise, they’re missing the boat. A game based off the film Gamer could potentially be the first film-to-video-game adaptation that didn’t suck (you could argue that Enter the Matrix was a faithful adaptation, but the gameplay sucked so lets not go there). The main genius of the Game is that the control system is story based and not a gimmick.

There are two huge problems with the Wii and with motion control systems in general:

1) The control a user has is never truly 1-to-1. Sure, the motion you’re making with the Wii-mote may be completely accurate, but you can just waggle your wrist instead of swinging your whole arm to hit a golf-ball.

2) ALL GAMES ARE MORE RESPONSIVE AND HAVE FINER CONTROL WITH A REGULAR CONTROLLER, WHICH MAKES BEING FORCED TO USE THE MOTION CONTROL SETTINGS FEEL LIKE A GIMMICK!

Because of the technology behind Project Natal, you eliminate the 1-to-1 problem. Additionally, because in the film Simon (the player) controls Kable (his in game-human counterpart) with hand gestures while standing in front of a digital representation of the battlefield, the game has potential to not feel like a complete gimmick.

Would it be a perfect game? Likely not. Does it have huge potential? I believe so. The bottom line is that I have absolutely no interest in the games I already love switching to a Natal control scheme. However, a game set in a universe where Natal is real and not just a game… well, that’s something I might be able to get behind.

My name is Christopher Schnese
and this has been my reel perspective

If you’ve been to a theater in the last week or so, or if you pay attention to any of the chatter surrounding the film industry, you’ve probably heard about the James Cameron Sci-Fi epic, Avatar. This film has been promising to be the greatest demonstration of both CGI and 3D technology in any film ever and if you read any of the reports from people who have been lucky enough to see footage, it’s going to deliver on that promise. This weekend, however, I got my first glance of the trailer in 3D (attached to The Final Destination 3D) and I have some concerns about the quality of what Cameron will be bringing to the table.

Let me first say that the CGI is absolutely everything that everyone has been saying it is. The full CG environments look amazing, the CG Avatars look like people wearing prosthetics, and everything just looks incredible. Even though I know very little about the story, I’m still really excited to experience the world that has been created for us. Unfortunately, the “3D-ness” I saw in the trailer has me a little less excited.

Now don’t get me wrong, the 3D isn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination. It is, for the most part, very good. I just don’t think it’s better than anything that has come before it and, more significantly , not on par with what I saw when I watched Henry Selick’s Coraline in theaters.

Coraline only ever uses the 3D to create depth and constant’y gives you the feeling that you’re actually in the environment. Never does it feel like elements of the frame were artificially stacked on top of one another. Avatar, on the other hand, had several shots in the trailer where it felt like elements in the frame had been lifted or composited on top of the scene.

Every time I’d see a shot like this, it would bring me out of the trailer and remind me that what I was watching was all built inside of a computer. Obviously, in a film that is supposed to transport me to the planet of Pandora and make me believe that what I’m seeing is real, this isn’t a good thing.

My name is Christopher Schnese
and this has been my reel perspective