Always fool

April 1st is my least favourite
I'm not difficult to fool on any day, it don't need a special fools you day
the universe is far too inherently implausible for it to be particularly amusing that a specific story slips past the plausibility threshold

samurai

This morning I watched a samurai movie.
... I got really bored. And then I forgot to watch it enough to read it so I had to keep skipping back to see what they just said. Doesn't usually happen.
I have deleted it and now I forget what it was even called. Oops.

It was about a samurai who was being taught how to use guns and artillery and to march and run and obey orders like an English soldier. Samurai in the film were not good at any of those things. You think running is the same everywhere, but nooooo.

Seems to me a lot of martial arts films are about that moment where traditional swords and muscle meets new technology, guns, and the rules change. It's not just about technology, it's people changing their whole social organisation in the face of technology. Instead of individual honour and challenge there's group marching and volley fire. Seems like it's always about the down side of that though, and tangling it up with losing respect for individuals and no more keeping promises. And there was some shocking injury, bits getting blown off people, not sliced off but waiting for the guns to do the mass damage. People vs technology and technology leeches the good out of people. The proposed solution seems to be watch samurai movies go back to the old ways and hide. This doesn't seem like it's going to work.

It's a match for some of the concerns of science fiction movies though. It's the same problem with cybermen or terminators, only, er, much more so. And while it's easy to set up fights where technology is overwhelming I'm sure it's also possible to set up opportunities for martial arts to win through against opponents overly dependent on technology.

It's worrying though because I actually quite like technology. It's how I do most of my interacting. And surely a world that can record everything makes it easier to hold people to their promises?

So I could do a space martial arts movie... but I'm not sure I want to be on that side. Especially the 'go back to old ways' part - old ways have some pretty massive drawbacks.