Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Ryan Sheely, and Jordan Stokes to overthink James Cameron’s Avatar, from the visuals to the narrative to the cat boobies to the political message.

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Download Episode 77 (MP3)

R&B singer Chris Brown has been something of a pariah since the Rihanna assault incident earlier this year. He’s back with a new album, and if you take a look at the cover, it will come as no surprise to our readers that it caught my attention:

Yup, that’s Chris Brown with what appears to be a Terminator-esque metal endo-skeletal hand, not to mention the liquid metal T-1000 spelling the name of the album in the lower right hand corner.

But this Chris Brown/Terminator connection is only the beginning. Some investigation revealed more strange connections in the world of romantically connected R&B singers and science fiction movies with robots. Behold, a Venn Diagram:

See how it all comes together, after the jump:

[CORRECTION: The original edition of this article confused John Von Neumann with Werner Von Braun, and very unjustifiably referred to Von Neumann as an “Evil Nazi.” Von Neumann was neither Nazi nor Evil. We hear he was a pretty cool guy, and we wish A Beautiful Mind had been made about him instead. OTI very much regrets the error.]

Great heroes are often defined by their villains. Luke Skywalker had Darth Vader. He-Man had Skeletor. U.S. Grant had Robert E. Lee.

But some heroes aren’t defined by their villains, they’re defined by their shiny, brushable hair, their many collectible colors, or their gracefully molded haunches.

Designing villains for heroes that go around saving planets or slaying dragons is easy — some good ideas might begin with a dragon or something that could destroy a planet, not necessarily in that order.

But in the maddening crush to narrativize, syndicate and cross-market every collectible under creation, every once in a while, somebody, somewhere has to confront the one of the most daunting challenges a character designer can face.

How do you make a villain for a hero who doesn’t do anything? Maybe you start with something like this:

Today, we discuss one of the most compelling answers anyone came up with for that question: The Smooze, the sentient Grey Goo that terrorizes the prancing protagonists of 1986’s My Little Pony: The Movie –

The continued critical acclaim and box office success of District 9 proves that audiences are comfortable with aliens as metaphor for apartheid. So the Overthinkers tackle other cultural artifacts that have used aliens as metaphor for something in the human condition. For only by stepping outside of ourselves … can we see ourselves … as we are.

Which is your favorite “aliens as metaphor” piece of pop culture? And did we miss one of the classics? Sound off in the comments!

What, does no one smile in season four? Cheer up, guys!

Hey, folks!  I’m back and ready to Lost-ify.  Special thanks to Ryan Sheely for holding the fort until I returned.  I haven’t read his article yet—he warned me it was not only primarily spoilers, but in fact only spoilers—but my mother ensures me that it is an enchanting piece of work.  If you haven’t read it yet, please do so—but only if you’ve seen all of Lost season five.

I, however, am way back in the land of the fourth season, and I’d like to talk about time.  Time is… confusing.  To say the least.  (I know this because I saw The Time Traveler’s Wife last night.  My one-word review of the film: Mehhhhhh.)

We humans tend to think of time as a straight line pointing forward—but is it, really?  Lost’s writers certainly don’t think so.  That would be too simple, and, as we well know, Lost doesn’t like simple.

Plot-wise, Lost’s fourth season was exciting and somewhat overwhelming.  A staggering number of important events occurred over the course of just twelve episodes.  Because there was so much plot, it was hard for me to tell if there was an overarching theme tying everything together.  But if I had to pinpoint one main theme of this season, it would definitely have something to do with the nature of time.  Over the years, science-fiction writers have used time travel and paradoxes to explore many different themes: the inability of humans to escape the deterministic nature of the universe, the joint themes of regret and revenge, love’s ability to transcend time and space.  So this week, I’ll try to answer this question: when Lost starts talking about time machines and psychic flashes and trick flashforwards, what is it really talking about? What is time a metaphor for?  At heart, what is season four of Lost about?

But first, let’s recap the episodes I watched over the past two weeks:

I was planning on writing some long article about some Lost-related topic of my choosing, but your comments re: last week’s article were so good and so full of ripe questions that I couldn’t pass up doing another Q & A week.  This week we’ll tackle the mythology of Lost, the possible whereabouts of Michael and WAAALT!, the paradoxical character of Mr. John Locke and the less-paradoxical character of Mr. Eko, and issues of literary form.  Plus did you know Kate tastes like strawberries?  The things you learn from Lost, season three.

As usual, before we get to the nitty gritty—yeah, I don’t really know what that term means, either—let me remind you all of what happened in these eight episodes.

[This week’s edition of Overthinking Lost covers all of season one and nothing else.]

I once read that every genre of literature has, at its core, a question.  In a romance novel, for instance, the question is, “Will the protagonist find her happiness with her true love?”  It doesn’t matter that we know going into it that the answer is, and always will be, “yes.”  More important is how the question is answered.  Other genres have other overarching questions.  A mystery, at its core, will always ask, “Why did this murder occur?”  A fantasy novel will often (but not always) ask, “Will good triumph against evil?”  A children’s book will tend to ask something along the lines of, “How will this child grow up?”  These questions will not always be asked explicitly, nor will the answers always be pat and obvious.  But they are there.

Lost does not fall under any of these genres.  So, then, what genre is it?  I think we have two options.  Option one is: Lost is a postmodern ontological mystery (much like, say, Sartre’s No Exit).  Option two is: Lost is a work of science-fiction.  Or, I suppose there’s always option three: Lost is both.

So far, we have more proof that Lost is an ontological mystery.  An ontological mystery is a mystery that asks not, “Why was this person murdered?” but, “Where the hell are we?  What is this place the author set up?”  This question came up explicitly in Lost’s pilot.  Charlie said, “Guys.  Where are we?”  That is the main question of season one.  I will get to the answer, or lack thereof, to that question in a moment.

The other option, which some of you suggested in your comments on my earlier entries of this series, is that Lost is a work of science-fiction.  The strange metallic sounds mixed in with the roars coming from the island’s Monster in the season finale strongly suggests there’s sci-fi afoot.  (Yes, I’m crossing my fingers for robots.  Didn’t you read that comment I made on ShadowBanker’s zombie article?)  The major question a work of science-fiction tends to ask is, “Based on where we are now, where are we, as a species, going?”

Let’s consider the “where are we?” question first.  So, where are we?  What is the island?  Why are the characters there?  What’s the point?

Still doomed, quite probably.

It’s been weeks now since I first sounded off about Dollhouse. In my first post, I was pretty hard on the show, claiming that it was unpleasant to watch, and would probably be cancelled no sooner than it deserved.  My main complaint was the lack of likable characters who liked each other, which I still maintain is Joss Whedon’s main (only?) strength as a creator.  I speculated that the show’s heady premise—a house full of brainwashed supermodels who, for a price, can be programmed with any personality and skill set—would preclude the development of any lasting relationships between characters.

The season finale of Dollhouse aired on Friday, and while the fan base waits eagerly to find out if it’s been canceled or not, I thought it might be nice to revisit the series.

Sorry to once again be the (late) bearer of bad news, but the (late) Bard of Brachiosaurs, Michael Crichton, has died. Barring a mosquito that drank his blood on a beach vacation, then rested on a tree only to be stuck in the sap, trapped in amber, and preserved for millions of years until his DNA is extracted and cloned by intelligent lizard-scientists, the author of Jurassic Park will not give us any more books.

This news came as a surprise — Crichton apparently kept his cancer pretty secret, and he was only 66, but even though he’s a pretty major figure in our culture (at least I think so), he’s not really a celebrity, so I guess the surprise that he had been gravely ill and was no more was in itself not especially surprising.

I mean, everybody’s gotta go sometime, right? And if you’re going to go, better to go, you know, after your medical practice and after your big basketful of bestselling novels have pretty much all been made into generally classy movies of a variety of success ranging from “meh” to (somewhat briefly) “highest grossing movie ever.”

What I’m saying is that he had a good run, and I wish we could all do as much for people as Michael Crichton did.

If I may indulge, a few personal thoughts on Mr. Crichton’s achievements, what he’s meant to me, and why I’m sad to see him go…

[We at Overthinking It are pleased to welcome David Shechner as the newest member of our dysfunctional blogging family. Dave is a scientician (biochemist), cartoonist, and saxophone colossus (anyone? anyone?) and today weighs in on the death of Arthur C. Clarke. —Ed.]

With the jarring loss of Dubba-G behind us, most of us in the Anne McCaffrey reading community had only recently reached some sense of closure, and returned to our daily lives this week. Pi day helped (Look ma! I DO go out on Friday nights! Yeah, it was to a math lecture…). Again, however, our comfortable little worlds were rocked like Alderaan, when we learned this morning of the passing of another great Sage of dorkdom: Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

Excuse me if my typing seems a bit cramped but this is being written – as per my usual idiom – from within the confines of my locker, into which I’ve been unceremoniously stuffed. Frankly, I’d hoped that such treatments would see their conclusion when I graduated from High School. Twelve years ago.

Stupid Chuck Peterson, thinks he’s so great.