“My Fan… Lady?” – Reflections and Resignation

Photo by Neil Ottenstein

Steven H. Wilson as Higgins, Chris Carothers as “Fan,” Christian Wilson as Elijah and Ethan Wilson as Pickering in “My Fan… Lady?” Photo by Neil Ottenstein

And when I say resignation, I mean it both in the sense of “The acceptance of something inevitable” as well as in the sense of “I quit.” But more on that second piece later, and don’t get too excited in either direction.

I’ve been writing and producing plays for the convention stage since 1987. I started out performing with a group called “The Not Ready for Paramount Players.” It was absorbed into “Cheap Treks.” Later, we called ourselves “The Usual Suspects.” The total output of this group, writing, directing, performing, producing, costuming, video-editing, scene-building–you name it, we did it!–is about 60 plays. One of these days I’ll share a list with you. I’ve written or co-written a good third of those.

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Age of Ultron – The ‘Bot Himself

Avengers-Age-of-Ultron-Official-TrailerI’ve read a couple of reviews of Age of Ultron which criticize the character of the villain, the murderous AI named Ultron. One called him “generic.” Another suggested that he wasn’t as clever a treatise on the dangers of artificial intelligence as some other film which was released recently.

Ultron, as is pretty clear from my last entry’s discussion of his “son,” the Vision, is, after all, only half a treatise on artificial intelligence. And the Vision, is not a treatise on its dangers, but on its wonderful potential. Dangers? Let’s be honest, everything that’s wrong with Ultron as an intellect is also wrong with a lot of humans. And that gets me to my refutation of that other accusation: that Ultron is generic. Ultron is, indeed, a deeply personal menace to the Avengers. For not only are his failings also theirs, he is, in fact, born of the hubris of one of their own. Tony Start believes he can enforce the perfect peace by building an AI, and he seizes on the technology behind Loki’s alien scepter to do that.

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Age of Ultron – Vision Quest

vision_AOUSo my favorite Marvel film has been taking a pounding this week, from the usual nay-sayers who wanted it to be Batman, or who wanted it to be just the first one again (suggestion – watch the first one again!) I’ve heard Ultron called a generic villain, and read that Evan Peters was a better Quicksilver in Days of Future Past.

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Age of Ultron – Who ARE These People? Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch

avengers_age_of_ultron_2015Okay, I’m not going to review this film. Because, if I were to review this film, you’d get about 1800 words, all of which were various combinations and permutations of these: “Oh”, “My”, “God”, “This”, “Film”, “F___ing”, and “Rocks.”

This is my favorite Marvel Studios film to date. None of them have been bad. A couple (Iron Man 2, Thor 2) were not what I wished they could have been. I’ll still watch them any day over, say, Ben Affleck in Daredevil or Man of Steel and any of its ill-begotten spawn. But Age of Ultron is my dream Avengers movie.

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