A Martian Odyssey This story was written in the 1930s and published in 1949. A Martian Odyssey Jarvis stretched himself as luxuriously as he could in the cramped general quarters of the Aries. "'Aire, you can breathe,' he exalted. "'It feels as thick as soup after the thin stuff out there.' He nodded at the Martian landscape stretching flat and desolate in the light of the nearer moon beyond the glass of the port. The other three stared at him sympathetically, puts the engineer, Leroy, the biologist, and Harrison, the astronomer and captain of the expedition. Dick Jarvis was the chemist of the famous crew, the Aries expedition, first human being to set foot on the mysterious neighbor of the earth, the planet Mars. This, of course, was in the old days, less than twenty years after the mad American Duhini perfected the atomic blast at the cost of his life, and only a decade after the equally mad Cordosa rode on it to the moon. They were true pioneers, these four of the Aries, except for a half-dozen moon expeditions and the ill-fated Delancey flight aimed at the seductive orb of Venus. They were the first men to feel other gravity than earth, and certainly the first successful crew to leave the earth-moon system. And they deserved that success when one considers the difficulties and discomforts, the months spent in acclimatization chambers back on earth, learning to breathe the air as tenuous as that of Mars, the challenging of the void in the tiny rocket driven by the cranky reaction motors of the twenty-first century, and mostly the facing of an absolutely unknown world. Jarvis stretched and fingered the raw and peeling tip of his frost-spitting nose. He sighed again, contentedly. Well, exploded Harrison abruptly, are we going to hear what happened? You set out all ship-shape in an auxiliary rocket.  Spill it, man! Spill, buried Leroy perplexedly, spill what? He means spill, explained Putz soberly. It is to tell. Jarvis met Harrison's amused glance, without the shadow of a smile. That's right, Carl, he said in grave agreement with Putz. It spills. He grunted comfortably, and began. Ha! According to orders, he said, I watched Carl here take off toward the north, and then I got into my flying sweat-box and headed south. You remember, Cap, we had orders not to land, but just scout out for points of interest. I set the two cameras clicking and buzzed along, riding pretty high, about two thousand feet, for a couple of reasons. First it gave the cameras a greater field, and second the underjets travel so far in this half-vacuum they call air here, that they stir up dust if you move low. We know all that from Putz, grunted Harrison. I wish you'd saved the films, though. They'd have paid the cost of this junket. Remember how the public mobbed the first moon-pictures? The films are safe, reported Jarvis. Well, he resumed, as I said. I buzzed along at a pretty good clip, just as we figured the wings haven't much lift in this air at less than a hundred miles per hour, and even then I had to use the underjets. So with the speed and the altitude and the blurring caused by the underjets, the seeing wasn't any too good. I could see enough, though, to distinguish that what I sailed over was just more of this grey plain that we've been examining the whole week since our landing, some blobby growths and the same eternal carpet of crawling little plant animals, or biopods, as Leroy calls them. So I sailed along, calling back my position every hour as instructed, and not knowing whether you heard me. I did, snapped Harrison. A hundred and fifty miles south continued Jarvis imperturbably. The surface changed to a sort of low plateau, nothing but desert and orange-tinted sand. I figured that we were right in our guess, then, that this grey plain we dropped on was really the Mare Sumerium, which would make my orange desert the region called Xanthus. If I were right, I ought to hit another grey plain, the Mare Cronium, in another couple of hundred miles, and then another orange desert, Thile I or Thile II. And so I did. Puts verified our position a week and a half ago, grumbled the captain. Let's get to the point. Coming, remarked Jarvis, twenty miles into Thile, believe it or not, I crossed a canal. Puts photographed a hundred. Let's hear something new. And did he also see a city? Twenty of them, if you call those heaps of mud cities. Well, observed Jarvis, from here on I'll be telling a few things Puts didn't see. He rubbed his tingly nose and continued. I knew that I had sixteen hours of daylight at this season, so eight hours, eight hundred miles from here I decided to turn back. I was still over Thile, whether one or two I'm not sure, not more than twenty-five miles into it, and right here, Puts's pet motor, quit. Quit? How? Puts was solicitous. The atomic blast got weak. I started losing altitude right away, and suddenly there I was, with a thump right in the middle of Thile. Smashed my nose on the wind or two. He rubbed the injured members ruefully. Did you maybe try washing their combustion chamber amid asexual furtick, inquired Puts? Sometimes the lead gives a secondary radiation. Nah, said Jarvis, disgustedly. I wouldn't try that, of course, not more than ten times. Besides the bump flattened the landing gear and busted off the underjets. Suppose I got the thing working within. Ten miles with the blast coming right out of the bottom, and I'd have melted the floor from under me. He rubbed his nose again. Lucky for me, a pound only weighs seven ounces here, or I'd have been mashed flat. I could have fixed. Ejaculated the engineer. I bet it was not serious. Probably not, agreed Jarvis sarcastically. Only it wouldn't fly.  Well, he concluded, I chose to walk. Just as much chance of being picked up and it kept me busy. We'd have found you, said Harrison. No doubt. Anyway, I rigged up a harness from some seat straps and put the water tank on my back, took a cartridge belt and revolver and some iron rations and started out. Water tank? exclaimed the little biologist Leroy. She weighs one quarter ton. Wasn't full. Weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds earth weight which is eighty-five here. Then besides, my own personal two hundred and ten pounds is only seventy on Mars, so tank and all I grossed a hundred and fifty-five, or fifty-five pounds less than my everyday earth weight. I figured on that when I undertook the forty-mile daily stroll. Oh, of course I took a thermoskin sleeping bag for these wintery Martian nights. Off I went, bouncing along pretty quickly. Eight hours of daylight, mint, twenty miles or more. It got tiresome, of course, plugging along over a soft sand desert with nothing to see, not even Leroy's crawling bipods. But an hour or so brought me to the canal, just a dry ditch about four hundred feet wide and straight as a railroad on its own company map. There had been water in it some time, though. The ditch was covered with what looked like a nice green lawn. Only as I approached, the lawn moved out of my way. "'A' said Leroy?" "'Yeah, it was relative of your bipods. I caught one, a little grass-blade about as long as my finger with two thin, stemmy legs.' "'He is where?' Leroy was eager. "'He is let go. I had to move, so I plowed along with the walking grass opening in front and closing behind. And then I was out on the orange desert of Thile again. I plugged steadily along, cussing the sand that made going so tiresome, and incidentally cussing that cranky motor of yours, Carl. It was just before twilight that I reached the edge of Thile and looked down over the gray Marais cronyum. And I knew there was seventy-five miles of that to be walked over, and then a couple of hundred miles of the Xanthus desert, and about as much more Marais cimmerium. Was I pleased? I started cussing you fellows for not picking me up." "'We were trying you sap,' said Harrison.' "'That didn't help. Well, I figured I might as well use what was left of daylight in getting down the cliff that bound to Thile. I found an easy place, and down I went. Marais cronyum was just the same sort of place as this.  I gave it a glance and hauled out my sleeping-bag. Up to that time, you know, I hadn't seen anything worth worrying about on this half-dead world. Nothing dangerous that is." "'Did you?' queried Harrison. "'Did I? You'll hear about it when I come to it.' "'Well, I was just about to turn in, when suddenly I heard the wildest sort of shenanigans. "'Was this shenanigans?' inquired Putz. "'He says je ne sais quoi,' explained Leroy. "'It is to say I don't know what.' "'That's right,' agreed Jarvis. "'I didn't know what. So I sneaked over to find out.  Whistles, crackles, coughs, trills, and what have you. I rounded a clump of stumps, and there was Tweedle.' "'Tweedle?' said Harrison. "'Deville,' said Leroy, and Putz. "'That freak Ostrich,' explained the narrator. "'At least Tweedle is as near as I can pronounce it without sputtering. He called it something like, Trill. What was he doing?' asked the captain. "'He was being eaten, and squealing, of course, as anyone would. "'Eaten by what?'  I wasn't going to interfere. Naturally if both creatures were dangerous I'd have one less to worry about.' But the bird-like thing was putting up a good battle dealing vicious blows with an eighteen-inch beak between screeches, and besides I caught a glimpse or two of what was on the end of those arms.' Jarvis shuddered. But the clincher was when I noticed a little black bag or case hung about the neck of the bird-thing. It was intelligent. That or tame, I assumed. Anyway, it clinched my decision. I pulled out my automatic and fired into what I could see of its antagonist. There was a flurry of tentacles and a spurt of black corruption, and then the thing, with a disgusting, sucking noise, pulled itself and its arms into a hold of the ground. The other let out a series of clacks, staggered around on legs about as thick as golf-sticks, and turned suddenly to face me. I held my weapon ready, and the two of us stared at each other. The Martian wasn't a bird, really. It wasn't even bird-like except just at first glance. It had a beak, all right, and a few feathery appendages, but the beak wasn't really a beak. It was somewhat flexible. I could see the tip bend slowly from side to side, and it was almost like a cross between a beak and a trunk. It had four towed feet and four fingered things, hands, you'd have to call them, and a little roundish body, and a long neck ending in a tiny head and that beak. It stood an inch or so taller than I, and—well, putt saw it. The engineer nodded. Yeah, I saw. Jarvis continued, so we stared at each other. Suddenly the creature went into a series of clackings and twitterings and held out his hands toward me empty. I took that as a gesture of friendship. Perhaps, suggested Harrison, it looked at that nose of yours and thought you were his brother—huh, you can be funny without talking. Anyway I put up my gun and said, ah, don't mention it, or something of the sort, and the thing came over and we were pals. By that time the sun was pretty low and I knew that I had better build a fire or get into my thermoskin. I decided on the fire. I picked a spot at the base of the file cliff where the rock could reflect a little heat on my back. I started breaking off chunks of this desiccated Martian vegetation, and my companion caught the idea and brought it in an armful. I reached for a match, but the Martian fished into his pouch and brought out something that looked like a glowing coal. One touch of it, and the fire was blazing.  And that bag of his, continued the narrator. That was a manufactured article, my friends. Press an end and she popped open. Press the middle and she sealed so perfectly you couldn't see the line better than zippers. Well we stared at the fire a while and I decided to attempt some sort of communication with the Martian. I pointed at myself and said, Dick. He caught the drift immediately, stretched a bony claw at me and repeated, Dick, Dick. Then I pointed at him and he gave a whistle I called Twheel. I can't imitate his accent. Things were going smoothly. To emphasize the names I repeated Dick and then pointed at him, Twheel. There we stuck. He gave some clacks that sounded negative and said something like Pupuprut. And that was just the beginning. I was always tick, but as for him, part of the time he was Twheel and part of the time he was Pupuprut and part of the time he was sixteen other noises. We just couldn't connect. I tried rock, I tried star and tree and fire, and Lord knows what else, and try as I would I couldn't get a single word. Nothing was the same for two successive minutes, and if that's the language I'm an alchemist. Finally I gave it up and called him Twheel and that seemed to do. But Twheel hung on to some of my words. He remembered a couple of them which I suppose is a great achievement if you're used to a language you have to make up as you go along. But I couldn't get the hang of his talk. Either I missed some subtle point or we just didn't think alike. And I rather believe the latter of you. I have other reasons for believing that. After a while I gave up the language business and tried mathematics. I scratched two plus two equals four on the ground and demonstrated it with pebbles. Again Twheel caught the idea and informed me that three plus three equals six. Once more we seemed to be getting somewhere. So knowing that Twheel had at least a grammar school education, I drew a circle for the sun pointing first at it, then at the last glow of the sun. Then I sketched in Mercury and Venus and Mother Earth and Mars, and finally, pointing to Mars I swept my hand around in a sort of inclusive gesture to indicate that Mars was our current environment. I was working up to putting over the idea that my home was on the earth. Twheel understood my diagram all right. He poked his beak at it, and with a great deal of trilling and clucking, he added demos and phobos to Mars, and then sketched in the earth's moon. Do you see what that proves? It proves that Twheel's race uses telescopes that they're civilized. Does not, snapped Harrison, the moon is visible from here as a fifth magnitude star. They could see its revolution with the naked eye. The moon, yes, said Jarvis. You've missed my point. Mercury isn't visible, and Twheel knew of Mercury because he placed the moon at the third planet, not the second. If he didn't know Mercury, he'd put the earth second and Mars third instead of fourth, see? Huh! said Harrison. Anyway, proceeded Jarvis. I went on with my lesson. Earths were going smoothly, and it looked as if I could put the idea over. I pointed at the earth on my diagram and then at myself, and then, to clinch it, I pointed to myself and then to the earth itself, shining bright green almost at the zenith. Twheel set up such an excited clacking that I was certain he understood. He jumped up and down, and suddenly he pointed at himself, and then at the sky, and then at himself, and at the sky again. He pointed at his middle, and then at Arcturus, at his head, and then at Spica, at his feet, and then at half a dozen stars, while I just gaped at him. Then all of a sudden he gave a tremendous leap, a man, what a hop! He shot straight up into the starlight, seventy-five feet of an inch. I saw him siloed it against the sky, saw him turn and come down at me headfirst, and land smack on his beak like a javelin. There he stuck, square in the center of my son's circle in the sand, a bullseye. Nuts, observed the captain, plain nuts. That's what I thought, too.  Then I figured he'd missed my point, and I went through the whole blame rigamarole again, and it ended up the same way, with Twheel on his nose in the middle of my picture. "'Maybe it's a religious right,' suggested Harrison. "'Maybe,' said Jarvis dubiously. "'Well, there we were. We could exchange ideas up to a certain point, and then, Louie. Something in us was different, unrelated. I don't doubt that Twheel thought me just as screwy as I thought him. Our minds simply looked at the world from different viewpoints, and perhaps his viewpoint is as true as ours. But we couldn't get together, that's all. But in spite of all difficulties, I liked Twheel, and I have a queer certainty that he liked me.' "'Nuts,' repeated the captain, just daffy. "'Yeah, wait and see. A couple of times I've thought that perhaps we,' he paused and then resumed his narrative. Anyway, I finally gave it up and got into my thermoskin to sleep.  Got stuffy five minutes after I closed myself in. I opened it a little and bingo! Some 80 below zero air hit my nose, and that's when I got this pleasant little frost spike to add to the bump I acquired during the crash of my rocket. I don't know what Twheel made of my sleeping. He sat around, but when I woke up he was gone. I had just crawled out of my bag, though, when I heard some twittering, and there he came, sailing down from that three-story tile-clift to a light on his beak beside me. I pointed to myself and toward the north, and he pointed at himself and toward the south. But when I looked up and started away, he came along. Man! How he traveled! A hundred and fifty feet at a jump, sailing through the air, stretched out like a spear, and landing on his beak. He seemed surprised at my plotting, but after a few moments he fell in beside me.  Then he'd come shooting back at me. It made me nervous at first to see that beak of his coming at me like a spear, but he always ended in the sand at my side. So the two of us plugged along across the Marae Cronium. Same sort of place as this, same crazy plants and some little green bipods growing in the sand, or crawling out of your way. We talked, not that we understood each other, you know, but just for company. I sang songs, and I suspect Twill did too. At least some of his trillings and twitterings had a subtle sort of rhythm. Then for a variety, Twill would display his smattering of English words. He'd point to an outcropping and say, rock, and point to a pebble and say it again. Or he'd touch my arm and say tick, and then repeat it. He seemed terrifically amused that the same word meant the same thing twice in succession, or that the same word could apply to two different objects. It set me wondering if perhaps his language wasn't like the primitive speech of some earth people, you know, captain, like the Negritos, for instance, who haven't any generic words, no word for food or water or man, words for good food and bad food or rainwater and seawater, or strong man and weak man, but no names for general classes. They're too primitive to understand that rainwater and seawater are just different aspects of the same thing. But that wasn't the case with Twill. It was just that we were somehow mysteriously different. Our minds were alien to each other, and yet we liked each other. Loni, that's all, remarked Harrison. That's why you two were so fond of each other. Well, I like you, contrary Jarvis wickedly. Anyway, he resumed, don't get the idea that there was anything screwy about Twill. In fact, I'm not so sure, but that he couldn't teach our highly praised human intelligence a trick or two. Oh, he wasn't an intellectual superman, I guess, but don't overlook the point that he managed to understand a little of my mental workings, and I never even got a glimmering of his, because he didn't have any, suggested the captain, while Putz and Leroy blinked attentively. "'You can judge of that when I'm through,' said Jarvis. Well, we plugged along across the Mare Chronium all that day and all the next. Mare Chronium, sea of time. Say, I was willing to agree with Shia Pirelli's name by the end of that march. Just that gray endless plain of weird plants, and never a sign of any other life. It was so monotonous that I was even glad to see the Desert of Zanthus towards the end of the second day. I was, fair worn out, but Twill seemed as fresh as ever for all I never saw him drink or eat. I think he could have crossed the Mare Chronium in a couple of hours with those block-long nose-dives of his, but he stuck along with me. I offered him some water once or twice, he took the cup from me and sucked the liquid into his beak, and then carefully squirted it all back into the cup and gravely returned it. Just as we sighted Zanthus, or the cliffs that bounded it, one of those nasty sand-clouds blew along, not as bad as the one we had here, but mean to travel against.   Huh? Why? He drank no water, he is adept for sandstorm. Brows nothing, there's not enough water to waste anywhere on this desiccated pill called Mars. We call all of it desert on earth, you know? He paused. Anyway, after the sandstorm blew over a little wind kept blowing in our faces, not strong enough to stir the sand. But suddenly things came drifting along from the Zanthus cliffs, small transparent spheres for all the world like glass tennis balls, but light. They were almost light enough to float even in this dead air. Empty, too. At least I cracked open a couple and nothing came out but a bad smell. I asked Twill about them, but all he said was, No, no, no, which I took to mean that he knew nothing about them. So they went bouncing by like tumbleweeds or like soap bubbles, and we plugged on towards the Zanthus. Twill pointed at one of the crystal balls once and said, Rock. But I was too tired to argue with him. Later I discovered what he meant. We came to the bottom of the Zanthus cliffs, finally, when there wasn't much daylight left. I decided to sleep on the plateau if possible, anything dangerous I reasoned, would be more likely to prowl through the vegetation of the Mare Chronium than the sand of Zanthus. Not that I'd seen a single sign of menace, except the rope-armed Black Thing that had trapped Twill, and apparently that didn't prowl at all but lowered its victims within reach. It couldn't lure me while I slept, especially as Twill didn't seem to sleep at all, but simply sat patiently around all night. I wondered how the creature had managed to trap Twill, but there wasn't any way of asking him. I found that out, too, later. It's devilish. However, we were ambling around the base of the Zanthus barrier, looking for an easy spot to climb—at least I was. Twill could have leaped it easily, for the cliffs were lower than Thile, perhaps sixty feet. I found a place and started up, swearing at the water-tank strapped to my back. It didn't bother me except when climbing, and suddenly I heard a sound that I thought I recognized. You know how deceptive sounds are in this thin air. A shot sounds like the pop of a cork. But this sound was the drone of a rocket, and sure enough, there went our second auxiliary about ten miles to westward between me and the sunset. Vazmi, said Putz, I hunt for you. Yeah, I knew that. But what good did it do me? I hung on to the cliff and yelled and waved with one hand. Twill saw it, too, and set up a trilling and twittering, leaping to the top of the barrier and then high into the air, and while I watched, the machine droned on into the shadows to the south. I scrambled to the top of the cliff. Twill was still pointing and trilling excitedly, shooting up toward the sky and coming down head-on to stick upside down on his beak in the sand. I pointed toward the south and at myself, and he said, Yes, yes, yes. But somehow I gathered that he thought the flying thing was a relative of mine, probably apparent. Perhaps I did his intellect and injustice. I think now that I did. I was bitterly disappointed by the failure to attract attention. I pulled out my thermoskin bag and crawled into it as the night chill was already apparent. Twill stuck his beak into the sand and drew up his legs and arms and looked for all the world like one of those leafless shrubs out there. I think he stayed that way all night. Protective Mimokri, ejaculated Leroy. See, he is a desert creature. In the morning, resumed Jarvis, we started off again. We hadn't gone a hundred yards into Xanthus when I saw something queer. This is one thing Putz didn't photograph. I'll wager. There was a line of little pyramids, tiny ones, not more than six inches high, stretching across Xanthus as far as I could see. Little buildings made of pygmy bricks they were, hollow inside and truncated, or at least broken at the top and empty. I pointed at them and said, What, to Quill? But he gave some negative twitters to indicate, I suppose, that he didn't know. So off we went, following the row of pyramids, because they ran north and I was going north. Man, we trailed that line for hours. After a while I noticed another queer thing. They were getting larger. Same number of bricks in each one, but the bricks were larger. By noon they were shoulder high. I looked into a couple, all just the same, broken at the top and empty. I examined a brick or two as well. They were silica and old as creation itself. How do you know? asked Leroy. They were weathered, edges rounded. Silica doesn't weather easily even on earth, and in this climate, how old do you think? Fifty thousand, a hundred thousand years? How can I tell? The little ones we saw in the morning were older, perhaps ten times as old, crumbling. How old would that make them, half a million years? Who knows? Jarvis paused a moment. Well, he resumed, we followed the line. Twill pointed at them and said, Rock, once or twice, but he'd done that many times before. Besides, he was more or less right about these. I tried questioning him. I pointed at a pyramid and asked, People, and indicated the two of us. He set up a negative sort of clucking and said, No, no, no, no, one, one, two, no, two, two, four. Meanwhile rubbing his stomach. I just stared at him and he went through the business again. No, one, one, two, no, two, two, four. I just gaped at him. That proves it, exclaimed Harrison, nuts. You think so? queried Jarvis sardonically. Well, I figured it out differently. No, one, one, two. You don't get it, of course, do you? Nope, nor do you. I think I do. Twill was using the few English words he knew to put over a very complex idea. What, let me ask, does mathematics make you think of? Why, of astronomy, or, or logic? That's it. Not one, one, two. Twill was telling me that the builders of the pyramids weren't people, or that they weren't intelligent, that they weren't reasoning creatures. Get it? Huh, I'll be damned. You probably will. Why, put in Leroy, he'll rub his belly. Why, because my dear biologist, that's where his brains are.  In his middle. Say impossible. Not on Mars, it isn't. This flora and fauna aren't earthly. Your biopods prove that. Jarvis grinned and took up his narrative. Anyway, we plugged along across Santhus and in about the middle of the afternoon, something else queer happened. The pyramids ended. Ended? Yeah, the queer part was at the last one, and now they were ten footers, was capped. See, whatever built it was still inside. We trailed them from their half-million-year-old origin to the present. Twill and I noticed it about the same time. I yanked out my automatic.  It was much like our weapons except that the grip was larger to accommodate his fore-talent hand, and we held our weapons ready while we sneaked up along the lines of empty pyramids. Twill saw the movement first. The top tears of bricks were heaving, shaking, and suddenly slid down the sides with a thin crash. And then something, something was coming out. A long silver-gray arm appeared, dragging after it an armored body.  The arm heaved the body out of the hole, the beast crashed to the sand.  And that's all. No other limbs, no eyes, ears, nose, nothing. The thing dragged itself a few yards, inserted its pointed tail in the sand, pushed itself upright, and just sat. Twill and I watched it for ten minutes before it moved. Then, with a creaking and rustling like, oh, like crumbling stiff paper, its arm moved to the mouth-hold, and out came a brick. The arm placed the brick carefully on the ground, and the thing was still again. Another ten minutes, another brick, just one of nature's brick layers. I was about to slip away and move on when Twill pointed at the thing and said, Rock. I went, huh? And he said it again. Then, to the accompaniment of some of his trilling, he said, no, no, and gave two or three whistling breaths. Well, I got his meaning for a wonder. I said, no breath? And demonstrated the word. Twill was ecstatic. He said, yes, yes, yes, no, no brief. Then he gave a leap, and sailed out to land on his nose about one pace from the monster. I was startled, you can imagine. The arm was going up for a brick, and I expected to see Twill caught and mangled, but nothing happened. Twill pounded on the creature, and the arm took the brick and placed it neatly beside the first. Twill wrapped on its body again and said, Rock. And I got up nerve enough to take a look myself. Twill was right again. The creature was Rock, and it didn't breathe. How do you know? snapped Leroy, his black-eyed, blazing interest. Because I'm a chemist. The beast was made of silica. There must have been pure silicone in the sand, and it lived on that, get it?  This thing lived by a different set of chemical reactions. It was silicone life. La vie silicus, shouted Leroy. I have suspected, now it is proof. I must go see. Il faut que je... All right, all right, said Jarvis, you can go see. Anyhow, there the thing was, alive and yet not alive, moving every ten minutes and then only to remove a brick. Those bricks were its waste matter. See, Frenchie? We're carbon, and our waste is carbon dioxide. And this thing is silicone, and its waste is silicone dioxide, silica. But silica is solid, hence the bricks. And it builds itself in, and when it is covered, it moves over to a fresh place to start over. No wonder he creaked.  How do you know how old? Leroy was frantic. We trailed its pyramids from the beginning, didn't we? If this weren't the original pyramid builder, the series would have ended somewhere before we found him, wouldn't it? Ended and started over with the small ones. That's simple enough, isn't it? But he reproduces, or tries to. Before the third brick came out, there was a little rustle and out popped a whole stream of those little crystal balls. There his spores, or eggs, or seeds, call them what you want. They went bouncing by across Santhus, just as they'd bounced by us back in the Marae Cronium. I have a hunch how they work, too. This is for your information, Leroy. I think the crystal shell of Silica is no more than a protective covering, like an eggshell, and that the active principle is the smell inside. It's some sort of gas that attacks silicone, and if the shell is broken near a supply of that element, some reaction starts that ultimately develops into a beast like that one. You should try, exclaimed the little Frenchman. We must break one to see. Yeah, well, I did. I smashed a couple against the sand.  You'd most likely be able to tell by that time. Jarvis paused and into a deep breath. Lord, that queer creature? Do you picture it? Blind, deaf, nervous, brainless? Just a mechanism, and yet immortal. Bound to go on making bricks, building pyramids, as long as silicone and oxygen exist, and even afterwards it'll just stop. It won't be dead. If the accidents of a million years bring it to its food again, there it'll be, ready to run again. While brains and civilizations are part of the past.  Yet I met a stranger one. If you did, it must have been in your dreams, growled Harrison. You're right, said Jarvis soberly. In a way, you're right. The dream beast. That's the best name for it, and it's the most fiendish, terrifying creation one could imagine.  Tell me, begged Leroy, I must go see. Not this devil, he paused again. Well, he resumed. Twill and I left the pyramid creature and plowed along through Xanthus. I was tired and a little disheartened by Putz's failure to pick me up, and Twill's trillion got on my nerves, as did his flying nosedives. So I just strode along without a word hour after hour across that monotonous desert. Toward mid-afternoon we came in sight of a low dark line on the horizon. I knew what it was. It was a canal. I'd crossed it in the rocket, and it meant that we were just one-third of the way across Xanthus. Pleasant thought, wasn't it? And still I was keeping up to schedule. We approached the canal slowly. I remember that this one was bordered by a wide range of vegetation, and that mud-heap city was on it. I was tired, as I said. I kept thinking of a good hot meal, and then from that I jumped to reflections of how nice and home-like even Borneo would seem after this crazy planet, and from that to the thoughts of little old New York. And then to thinking about a girl I knew there. Fancy long, know her? Vision entertainer, said Harrison. I've tuned her in. Nice blonde dances and sings on the Yorba Mate hour. That's her, said Jarvis ungrammatically. I know her pretty well, just friends, get me? Though she came down to see us off in the Aries. Well, I was thinking about her, feeling pretty lonesome, and all the time we were approaching that line of rubbery plants. And then I said, what in hell? And stared. And there she was, fancy long, standing plain as day under one of those cracked brain-trees, and smiling and waving just the way I remembered her when we left. Now you're nuts, too, observed the captain. Boy, I almost agree with you. I stared and pinched myself, and closed my eyes, and then stared again. And every time there was fancy long, smiling and waving. Twill saw something, too. He was trilling and clucking away, but I scarcely heard him. I was bounding toward her over the sand, too amazed even to ask myself questions. I wasn't twenty feet from her when Twill caught me with one of his flying leaps. He grabbed my arm, yelling, no, no, no, in his squeaky voice. I tried to shake him off. He was as light as if he were built of bamboo. But he dug his claws in and yelled. And finally some sort of sanity returned to me. And I stopped less than ten feet from her. There she stood, looking as solid as putz's head. What? said the engineer.  I knew it couldn't be real, yet there she was. Finally I said, fancy, fancy long. She just kept on smiling and waving, but looking as real as if I hadn't left her thirty-seven million miles away. Twill had his glass pistol out, pointing at her. I grabbed his arm, but he tried to push me away. He pointed at her and said, no, breathe, no, breathe. And I understood what he meant. That the fancy long thing wasn't alive. Man, my head was whirling. Still it gave me the jitter to see him pointing his weapon at her. I don't know why I stood there, watching him take careful aim, but I did. Then he squeezed the handle of his weapon. There was a little puff of steam. And fancy long was gone.  The dream-beast. I stood there dizzy, watching it die, while Twill treled and whistled. Finally he touched my arm, pointed at the twisting thing, and said, you, one, one, two. He, one, one, two. After he'd repeated it eight or ten times, I got it. Do any of you? We, shrilled Leroy, moi je le comprend. He mean you think of something, the beast he know, and you see it. A shen, a hungry dog, he would see the big bone with meat, or smell it, not? Right, said Jarvis. The dream-beast uses its victim's longings and desires to trap its prey. The bird at nesting season would see its mate. The fox, prowling for its own prey, would see a helpless rabbit. How he do! queried Leroy. How do I know? How does a snake back on earth charm a bird into its very jaws? And aren't there deep-sea fish that lure their victims into their mouths? Lord! Jarvis shuddered. Do you see how insidious the monster is? We're warned now, but henceforward we can't trust even our eyes. You might see me, I might see one of you, and back of it may be nothing but another of those black horrors. How'd your friend know? asked the captain abruptly. Twill, I wonder, perhaps he was thinking of something that couldn't possibly have interested me, and when I started to run he realized that I saw something different and was warned. Or perhaps the dream-beast can only project a single vision, and Twill saw what I saw, or nothing, I couldn't ask him. But it's just another proof that his intelligence is equal to ours, or greater. He's daffy, I tell you, said Harrison. What makes you think his intelligent ranks with the human? Plenty of things. First the Pyramid Beast. He hadn't seen one before. He said as much. Yet he recognized it as a dead, alive automaton of silicone. He could have heard of it, objected Harrison. He lives around here, you know. Well, how about the language? I couldn't pick up a single idea of his, and he learned six or seven words of mine. And do you realize what complex ideas he put over with no more than those six or seven words? The Pyramid Monster, the Dream Beast? In a single phrase, he told me that one was a harmless automaton, and the other a deadly hypnotist. What about that? Huh! said the captain. Huh! If you wish, could you have done it knowing only six words of English? Could you go even further, as Tweedle did, and tell me that another creature was of a sort of intelligence so different from ours that understanding was impossible, or even more impossible than that between Tweedle and me? Eh! What was that? Later, the point I'm making is that Tweedle and his race are worthy of our friendship. Somewhere on Mars, and you'll find I'm right, is a civilization and culture equal to ours, and may be more than equal, and communication is possible between them and us. Tweedle proves that. It may take years of patient trial, for their minds are alien, but less alien than the next minds we encountered if they are minds. The next ones? What next ones? The people of the mud cities along the canals. Jarvis frowned, then resumed his narrative. I thought the dream beast and the silicone monster were the strangest beings conceivable, but I was wrong. These creatures are still more alien, less understandable than either, and far less comprehensible than Tweedle, with whom friendship is possible, and even by patience and concentration the exchange of ideas. Well, he continued, we left the dream beast dying, dragging itself back into its hole, and we moved toward the canal. There was a carpet of that queer walking grass scampering out of our way, and when we reached the bank there was a yellow trickle of water flowing. The mound city I noticed from the rocket was a mile or so to the right, and I was curious enough to want to take a look at it. It had seemed deserted from my previous glimpse of it, and if any creatures were lurking in it, well, Tweedle and I were both armed. And, by the way, that crystal weapon of Tweedle's was an interesting device. I took a look at it after the dream beast episode. It fired a little glass splinter poisoned I suppose, and I guess it held at least a hundred of them to a load. The propellant was steam, just plain steam. Steam, echoed Putz, from Vatkom steam. From water, of course, you could see the water through the transparent handle, and about a gill of another liquid thick and yellowish. When Tweedle squeezed the handle, there was no trigger. A drop of water and a drop of the yellow stuff squirted into the firing chamber, and the water vaporized. Pop, just like that. It's not so difficult. I think we could develop the same principle. Concentrated sulfuric acid will heat water almost to boiling, and so will quick lime, and there's potassium and sodium. Of course, his weapon hadn't the range of mine, but it wasn't so bad in this thin air, and it did hold as many shots as a cowboy's gun in a western movie. It was effective, too, at least against Martian life. I tried it out, aiming at one of the crazy plants, and darned if the plant didn't wither up and fall apart. That's why I think the glass splinters were poisoned. Anyway, we trudged along toward the mud heap city, and I began to wonder whether the city builders dug the canals. I pointed to the city and then at the canal, and Tweedle said no, no, no, and gestured toward the south. I took it to me that some other race had created the canal system. Perhaps Tweedle's people. I don't know, maybe there's still another intelligent race on the planet, or a dozen others.  A hundred yards from the city we crossed a sort of road, just a hard packed mud trail, and then all of a sudden along came one of the mound builders. Man, talk about fantastic beings. It looked rather like a barrel trotting along on four legs, with four other arms or tentacles. It had no head, just body and members, and a row of eyes completely around it. The top end of the barrel body was a diaphragm stretched as tight as a drum head, and that was all.  It didn't even notice us, although I thought the eyes on my side shifted a little as it passed. A moment later another came along, pushing another empty cart. Same thing, it just scooted past us. Well, I wasn't going to be ignored by a bunch of barrels playing train, so when the third one approached, I planted myself in the way, ready to jump of course if the thing didn't stop. But it did. It stopped and set up a sort of drumming from the diaphragm on top. And I held out both hands and said, We are friends. And what do you suppose the thing did? Said please to meet you, I'll bet suggested Harrison. I couldn't have been more surprised if it had. It drummed on its diaphragm and then suddenly boomed out, We are friends. And gave its push cart a vicious poke at me. I jumped aside and away it went while I stared dumbly after it. A minute later another one came hurrying along. This one didn't pause, but simply drummed out, We are friends. And scurried by. How did it learn the phrase? Were all of the creatures in some sort of communication with each other? Were they all parts of some central organism? I don't know, though I think Twill does. Anyway, the creatures went sailing past us, everyone greeting us with the same statement. It got to be funny. I never thought to find so many friends on this God forsaken ball. Finally I made a puzzled gesture to Twill. I guess he understood for he said, One, one, two, yes. Two, two, four, no. Get it? Sure, said Harrison. It's the Martian nursery rhyme. Yeah, well I was getting used to Twill's symbolism and I figured it out this way. One, one, two, yes. The creatures were intelligent. Two, two, four, no. Their intelligent was not of our order, but something different and beyond the logic of two and two is four. Maybe I missed his meaning. Perhaps he meant that their minds were of low degree able to figure out the simple things. One, one, two, yes. But not more difficult things. Two, two, four, no. But I think from what we saw later that he meant the other. After a few moments the creatures came rushing back. First one, then another. Their push carts were full of stones, sand, chunks of rubbery plants and such rubbish as that. They droned out their friendly greeting which didn't really sound so friendly and dashed on. The third one I assumed to be my first acquaintance and I decided to have another chat with him. I stepped into his path again and waited.  I looked at him. Four or five of his eyes looked at me. He tried his password again and gave a shove of his cart, but I stood firm. And then the dashed creature reached out one of his arms and two finger-like nippers tweaked my nose. Rord Harrison, maybe the things have a sense of beauty. Laugh, grumble Jarvis. I'd already had a nasty bump and a mean frostbite on that nose. Anyway I yelled ouch and jumped aside, and the creature dashed away. But from then on the greeting was we are friends ouch, queer beast. Twill and I followed the road squarely up to the nearest mound. The creatures were coming and going, paying us not the slightest attention, fetching their loads of rubbish. The road simply dived into an opening and slanted down like an old mine, and in and out darted the barrel people greeting us with their eternal phrase. We looked in. There was a light somewhere below, and I was curious to see it. It didn't look like a flame or a torch, you understand, but more like a civilized light. And I thought that I might get some clue as to the creature's development. So I went in and Twill tagged along, not without a few trills and twitters, however. The light was curious. It sputtered and flared like an old orc light, but came from a single black rod set in the wall of the corridor. It was electric, beyond doubt. The creatures were fairly civilized, apparently. Then I saw another light shining on something that glittered, and I went on to look at that. But it was only a heap of shiny sand. I turned toward the entrance to leave, and the devil take me if it wasn't gone. I suppose the corridor had curved, or I had stepped into a side passage. Anyway, I walked back in that direction. I thought we'd come. And all I saw was more dim lit corridor. The place was a labyrinth. There was nothing but twisting passages running every way, lit by occasional lights, and now and then a creature running by, sometimes with a push-court, sometimes without. Well, I wasn't much worried at first. Twill and I had only come a few steps from the entrance. But every move we made after that seemed to get us in deeper. Finally I tried following one of the creatures with an empty court, thinking that he'd be going out for his rubbish. But he ran around aimlessly into one passage and out another. When he started dashing around a pillar like one of these Japanese walsy mice, I gave up, dumped my water tank on the floor, and sat down. Twill was as lost as I. I pointed up and he said, No, no, no, in a sort of helpless trill. And we couldn't get any help from the natives. They paid us no attention at all, except to assure us they were friends. Ouch! Lord, I don't know how many hours or days we wandered around there. I slept twice from sheer exhaustion. Twill never seemed to need sleep. We tried following only the upper corridors, but they'd run uphill a ways and then curve downwards. The temperature in that damned ant hill was constant. You couldn't tell night from day and after my first sleep I didn't know whether I'd slept one hour or thirteen, so I couldn't tell from my watch whether it was midnight or noon. We saw plenty of strange things. There were machines running in some of the corridors, but they didn't seem to be doing anything. Just wheels turning. And several times I saw two barrel beasts, with a little one growing between them, joined to both. Parthenogenesis, exalted Leroy. Parthenogenesis by budding like this to leap. If you say so, Frenchy, agreed Jarvis. The things never noticed us at all, except as I say to greet us with, We are friends. Ouch! They seemed to have no home life of any sort, but just scurried around with their push-carts, bringing in rubbish. And finally I discovered what they did with it. We had a little luck with a corridor, one that slanted upwards for a great distance. I was feeling that we ought to be close to the surface, when suddenly the passage devoted into a domed chamber the only one we'd seen, and, man, I felt like dancing when I saw what looked like daylight through a crevice in the roof. There was a sort of machine in the chamber, just an enormous wheel that turned slowly, and one of the creatures was in the act of dumping his rubbish below it. The wheel ground it with a crunch, sand, stones, plants, all into powder that sifted away somewhere. While we watched, others filed in, repeating the process, and that seemed to be all. No rhyme, no reason to the whole thing, but that's characteristic of this crazy planet, and there was another fact that's almost too bizarre to believe. One of the creatures, having dumped his load, pushed his cart aside with a crash, and calmly shoved himself under the wheel. I watched him being crushed, too stupefied to make a sound, and a moment later another followed him. They were perfectly methodical about it, too. One of the cartless creatures took the abandoned push cart. Quill didn't seem surprised. I pointed out the next suicide to him, and he just gave the most human-like shrug imaginable, as much as to say, what can I do about it? He must have known more or less about these creatures. Then I saw something else. There was something beyond the wheel, something shining on a sort of low pedestal. I walked over. There was a little crystal about the size of an egg florescing to beat Tofett. The light from it stung my hands and face, almost like a static discharge. And then I noticed another funny thing. Remember that wart I had on my left thumb? Look, Jarvis extended his hand. It dried up and fell off just like that. And my abused nose, say the pain went out of it like magic. The thing had the property of hard x-rays or gamma radiations only more so. It destroyed diseased tissue and left healthy tissue unharmed. I was thinking, what a present that would be to take back to Mother Earth when a lot of racket interrupted. We dashed back to the other side of the wheel in time to see one of the push carts ground up. Some suicide had been careless, it seems. Then suddenly the creatures were booming and drumming all around us and their noise was decidedly menacing. A crowd of them advanced toward us. We backed out of what I thought was the passage we'd entered by and they came rumbling after us, some pushing carts and some not. Crazy brutes, there was a whole chorus of, we are friends, ouch. I didn't like the ouch, it was rather suggestive. Twill had his glass gun out and I dumped my water tank for greater freedom and got mine. We backed up the corridor with the barrel beasts following about twenty of them. Queer thing, the ones coming in with loaded carts moved past us inches away without a sign. Twill must have noticed that. Suddenly he snatched out that glowing cold cigar lighter of his and touched a cartload of plant limbs. Puff, the whole load was burning and the crazy beast pushing it went right along without a change of pace. It created some disturbance among our vrens, however, and then I noticed a smoke eddying and swirling past us and, sure enough, there was the entrance. I grabbed Twill and out we dashed and after us our twenty pursuers. The daylight felt like heaven, though I saw at first glance that the sun was all but set. And that was bad since I couldn't live outside my thermoskin bag in a Martian night, at least without a fire. And things got worse in a hurry. They cornered us in an angle between two mounds and there we stood. I hadn't fired nor had Twill, there wasn't any use in irritating the brutes. They stopped a little distance away and began their booming about friendship and ouches. Then things got still worse. A barrel brute came out with a push cart and they all grabbed into it and came out with handfuls of foot-long copper darts, sharp-looking ones, and all of a sudden one sail past my ear, zing, and it would shoot or die then. We were doing pretty well for a while. We picked off the ones next to the push cart and managed to keep the darts at a minimum. But suddenly there was a thunderous booming of vrens and ouches and a whole army of them came out of their hole. Man, we were through and I knew it. Then I realized that Twill wasn't. He could have leaped the mound behind us as easily as not. He was staying for me. Say, I could have cried if there had been time. I'd like Twill from the first, but whether I've had gratitude to do what he was doing, suppose I had saved him from the first dream-beast. He'd done as much for me, hadn't he? I grabbed his arm and said, Twill, and punched it up, and he understood. He said, no, no, no, tick, and popped away with his glass pistol. What could I do? I'd be a goner anyway when the sun set, but I couldn't explain that to him. I said, thanks Twill, you're a man, and felt that I wasn't paying him any compliment at all. A man. There were mighty few men who'd do that. So I went bang with my gun and Twill went puff with his, and the barrels were throwing darts and getting ready to rush us and booming about being friends. I had given up hope. Then suddenly an angel dropped right down from heaven in the shape of putts, with his underjets blasting the barrels into very small pieces. Wow! I let out a yell and dash for the rocket. Putts opened the door, and in I went, laughing and crying and shouting. It was a moment or so before I remembered Twill. I looked around in time to see him rising in one of his nose-dyes over the mound in a way. I had a devil of a job arguing Putts into following.  We sailed out over the desert and put down once or twice. I yelled, Twill, and yelled at a hundred times, I guess. We couldn't find him. He could travel like the wind, and all I got, or else I imagined it, was a faint trilling and twittering drifting out of the south.  The four men of the Aries were silent. Even the sardonic Harrison. At last little Leroy broke the stillness. I should like to see, he murmured. Yeah, said Harrison, and the war cure. Too bad you missed that. It might be the cancer cure they've been hunting for a century and a half. Oh, that, muttered Jarvis gloomily. That's what started the fight. He drew a glistening object from his pocket. Here it is. End of A Martian Odyssey by Stanley Weinbaum


Welcome to the Adam does movies podcast. I'm Adam today. I want to talk about actors Specifically the importance of their roles and characters they play in films are the untouchable sometimes Do they need to be replaced in others? Can they be replaced in some? That's what I want to go over the writer's strike is of course going on and the actors strike is now happening What do we do next? We start building these people out of AI We start creating animated versions of them like they did with the new Indiana Jones film We have a spry young 80 year old Harrison Ford getting de-aged so that he's in his mid 30s or early 40s It's um, it's a weird time. It's a weird time to be alive It's a weird time to be an actor I suppose and to be a fan of movies in general because as I get older I start to see some of my favorite, you know on-screen heroes Start to age up a lot. I mean I my wife watches the Sylvester Stallone TV show. I guess it's not his It's his daughter's show, but he's in it a lot. I'm not sure what it's even called the Stallone's probably something Very uncreative like that.  It really does. That's that's Rambo That's Rocky Balboa who's carving a pumpkin with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Those guys used to be rivals back in the day They were fighting for roles. That's the Terminator showing them how to take seeds out of a a damn squash it's it's a sad and it's It's even more important to kind of look back on the roles that they were in and discuss What we do about the futures of these properties. Are we gonna see another Terminator in 10 years? That's going to be a reboot of the James Cameron masterpiece We're gonna get that back to the future remake Probably gonna be on Marty McFly's daughter or you know, whatever they end up doing. Well, Robert Semeckis and his buddy What is his name? I wrote it down here Rob Gale They still own the rights to this Robert Semeckis said over my dead body at one point and so Holly was just waiting there like we can wait We can wait, but we'll get there. We always get there Yeah, so I thought it would be fun to kind of look at specific characters Specific properties and talk about the actors involved and what a great job They did first of all and secondly how they made it almost an impossible task to do a new version I'll touch upon some movies as well but mainly I want to talk about the actors themselves because of what's going on right now and If you're wanting to wondering my opinion about the actor strike the writer strike I Leave it up to what I'm hearing and that is they're not being fairly compensated And of course a blue-collar worker or someone that works a lot of hours like myself Obviously, thanks. Well, they're making a ton of money. So I mean I maybe I should go on strike But it's not really the same thing is it if you're in an industry Primarily housed in a very expensive state and the higher-ups are taking Massive amounts of the revenue and you're working your butt off for very little compensation There needs to be fair play here and I don't know enough to you know, just like throw out a sign myself, but I will always stand for the workers So yeah in that sense absolutely, you know, get what you deserve writers get what you deserve actors And of course the cynical part of all of us will say well movies suck now They're not writing them like they used to they're they're half-assing these things and Sometimes yeah, that's true but I'm old enough to remember movies from the 80s and the 90s and There's a lot of bad movies and a lot of bad writing that came out of those eras too It's just dependent on a lot of different factors For instance, I just watched Alien 3 a few hours ago that movie sucks I know some people like it and I heard the assembly cuts better I'm gonna give that a chance But I don't like that film and the behind-the-scenes on that movie is absolutely stunning Rewrites up the wazoo fox was sending right rewrites on the day of shooting into production David Fincher who was brought on to try to fix this mess was writing scenes While they were filming other scenes just a complete nightmare scenario. So yeah, writing doesn't always translate from the first Draft to the final product. Sometimes there's 8,000 rewrites and it's even happening while the movie's being shot But let's focus Okay, there's a new Wonka trailer out right now Starring Timothy Chalamet. I said his name right. He's got a fancy name It's kind of the up-and-coming hotness. I guess with the ladies I haven't seen him in anything that I was too impressed with so far. He's in Dune That's about it that I know of I'm sure he's in some indie film that got a lot of praise that I didn't watch because You know, I just don't have time for everything, but he's gonna be Wonka Now we've had two other versions of Wonka and this is of course based on the novel from 1964 by Roland Dahl Roll Dahl, Rald Dahl, raw dog. I don't know how you say it. Rald Dahl, I think he's done some good books But I'm a movie guy. So I mispronounce movie characters and actors. That's that's my job Gene Wilder played this role of Willy Wonka so damn perfectly I think it's foolish for anyone else to try but try they are Then we had the version by Johnny Depp in that terrible Tim Burton film Some people said that it's closer to the book that Gene Wilder went a little off script off page Yeah, that might be so but man was that performance good. I like the movie I don't love the movie, but I love his performance in that film so damn much and it was heartbreaking to see him I don't know what year this was He was definitely on a very old side of things But he was interviewed about the Johnny Depp movie and he said he didn't really like Tim Burton films He likes Tim Burton, but not the movies that he does It's not his cup of tea and he was very down on Johnny Depp playing the character And I'm sure how could you not be if you're an actor and you're working a year two years maybe on a role You're gonna get intimate with that role You're gonna give it your all a lot of times unless you're Dwayne Johnson Then you just play yourself over and over again But a lot of actors will really get into character and when you see that in a decade or two decades later They're rebooting the whole thing. You've aged up a lot How are you gonna react other than?  I thought I kind of had this You know, I thought I thought I had this untouchable performance that couldn't be matched or replicated and so yeah, you take it personal and That's sometimes how I look at some of these characters even as I get older with them I brought up how it's sad seeing Stallone and Schwarzenegger working together on a damn pumpkin We got Cobra over here It's it's it's a little tough to watch But then I've tried to pull myself back and say well those movies will always exist and It's our jobs as we become parents or grandparents and Movie fans of course to introduce the new kids to the older flicks To those old Rocky movies When the new Rocky comes out in 30 years and he's fighting an alien in space We can look back and say hey kids This is a far cry for what we have from sliced alone Then they say who sliced alone and you smack them around a little bit like how dare you how dare you Petra? Names in the future are gonna be very weird. They're gonna be very different Someone listening is named Petra. I mean took huge offense to it. I apologize So I mentioned Indiana Jones Indiana bones as I like to say because Harrison Ford is old as dirt He's playing the character still That doesn't work for me now. This is kind of an interesting thing much like Rocky Indiana Jones is its own thing. It's it's a brand new character developed with George Lucas and Spielberg based on some other things that they loved growing up some pulpy Serialized shows and novels what not so this is a brand new character and they picked Harrison Ford for this dude So if they ever make a new Indiana Jones, they really are trying to replicate Harrison Ford's performance that is what they have that is the source material in that instance So whenever people say to me Adam, why did they do this? They should have been done and they should have recast with a younger guy Get a Chris Pratt or a Bradley Cooper or someone even younger to play a Harrison Ford's character I just say why? Indiana Jones doesn't need to keep being made Make something else This was a character created for Harrison Ford in mind He tried out for the role. He got the role and he did a perfect job. I mean he he couldn't screw it up, right? He made it his own. I Just think yeah, Bradley Cooper can be a totally different dude With a whip and a hat and a jacket and an attitude. It doesn't have to be called Indiana Jones Call it max You know powers or whatever so something Homer Simpson would come up with set it in the same type of style have him Sprelunky and have him taking treasure having punched Nazis. That's all fine and well even you could even put it in the Indiana Jones Universe I just don't see why you have to keep going with the name, but of course It's all about making money too, right You can't be that naive and the name Indiana Jones is the the property. That's what sells maybe not so much now I don't think the new one's doing that great, but again, I think that this type of character is a young man's game You know, you don't want to watch a 70 or 80 year old dude Whip in and jumping off things. It doesn't it doesn't have any believability And I know the character is pulpy larger than life over the top It is supposed to subvert, you know believability a little bit But I got to have something to connect to and an old guy in his boxers Kind of like telling the neighbors to keep it down That doesn't make me feel that energy that I look for in an Indiana Jones movie and where I land on that is Just leave it We had three amazing movies and then we had crystal skull and then we had the dial of destiny So we tried we tried keeping this guy going and with Ford and other actors of his ilk It really is a presence on screen that you can't replicate. We don't have the technology yet Even through CG. It's getting close though.  It's I mean, I'd say 80 85 percent there They will get it very very close to a scary degree And if they use shadows and stuff, right? I mean, it's it's gonna be more like 95 percent already if they play their lighting, right? My point is They keep dragging these guys out Rocky, you know, you have Sylvester Stallone in creed one and two even he made five rocky movies No, six rocky movies and then two creed movies before he was kind of ushered out unceremoniously at the end of Creed 2 but may Leave it alone Sometimes we have to let the art sit and that is the challenge for Hollywood and it's also a challenge for viewers Because even myself There's a part of me that gets excited when I hear that someone's coming back Because you have trained your brain to remember that character from a long time ago, of course We still have Tom Cruise out there doing it Mission impossible sevens out dead reckoning part one. So Tom Cruise is gonna do it again He's gonna put his life on the line for a couple spectacular stunts again, and this guy's he's in his 60s, right? He's no spring chicken still looks fantastic, of course He's still in great shape, but there is a breaking point for everyone Literally when it comes to the body, and I don't want to see the man Get killed because he tried to fight a bull or something ridiculous, you know, wherever he thinks he needs to go But then there's that part of me that does not the killing part But the fighting the bull or whatever he has to do to entertain us We want to keep seeing the heroes on screen do cool stuff bring us back to a time when we were at our best And a lot of people relate that they equate equate that to watching films. Oh Man, I remember when Neo was fighting agent Smith for the first time and how cool it was and how Keanu had such an awesome You know look to him with the shades and the jacket and then we fast-forward all these years later to matrix Whatever that regurgit regurgitations or whatever that terrible movie was called and it just hits you in the stomach Just hits you like a ton of bricks and that's the problem now Every time we unearth these bones and bring these guys back for one last ride. It's never the ride. We want it to be It's always so Disappointing Keaton got out of it pretty unscathed with the flash Lot of people. I mean, I shouldn't say a lot I think it was pretty split if you liked the movie or not But I think most people would say Keaton was still fantastic. His Batman was still awesome he didn't Kill himself in some ridiculous way or choose not to fight crime or subvert Expectations like we've seen some from other properties like Luke Skywalker for instance in The Last Jedi a movie that will forever Be buried into my soul as one of the worst movies I've seen one of the worst character Assassinations I've ever seen and again, there's people that like that film. That's perfectly fine. We have our reasons We have our justifications It's subjective artists objective. Obviously They set out to make a great movie with it and they failed in my eyes But that's just that's just how it goes when they keep trying to bring these guys back and treat and keep trying to Change things up and make things fresh again. It rarely ever works. So then you have to look. What do we do? Do we reboot? Do we get new characters? Do we get new actors to play these characters? Do we have a son or daughter take over the property? Which is a thing you often see now Look at Terminator dark fate fell on its face, of course It's suckered people into the movie by saying John Connor was gonna be in it And then they take him out just as fast and then it turns into a soft reboot. I Myself don't really care. I thought the movie was fine. I Was on board with more Terminator films because I'd already been soured by Terminator since number three The last three movies before dark fate were such trash that I was just looking for a decent action movie There's really only two good Terminator films and that's it. Everything else is just money being made Arnold even admitted that in Terminator 3. He just took the money. He got like a 30 million dollar paycheck Because James Cameron who wanted nothing to do with it told Arnold to do it for the money Because then he said like there's gonna be a point where this isn't gonna be so easy for you And what he means is of course what we're seeing Actors are getting older. They're aging out of roles except for Tom Cruise who will he'll live forever I guess and just keep just keep doing his thing which I'm okay with I Wrote down some other characters that are either based on a property that came up before like a book or a show or whatever Or they're their own brand new things just to give you something to think about We got Sigourney Weaver an alien She was in four alien films I believe and I think she recently came out and said she's done. She's not doing anymore She's getting too old the ship has sailed. She was gonna be in one a couple years back I think it was the director that did district nine was attached to one and it fell through and Then Ridley Scott wanted to take over his own property again. So Ripley is no more Would you like to see that redone? Would you like to see a new Ripley actress? I personally wouldn't I personally think aliens fantastic Alien and aliens and I don't mind some of the other sequels even But I just don't need to see any more of it. Leave it leave it as an old book That you put on a shelf an old blu-ray or whatever that you can look to dust off once in a while show the grandkids They may not appreciate it like you and that's perfectly fair These movies especially when it's sci-fi or special effects, they're gonna age And they're not gonna age well in almost every single instance They're shooting Deadpool 3 or they were it's been shut down now because of the strikes going on Hugh Jackman's back This is not a spoiler. That's how they announced this. It's gonna be a road trip type comedy. I Was torn and I think a lot of people were because Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart had a beautiful flawless send-off in Logan the final chapter for that character Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine for like three decades Over the span of I don't even know six seven eight films. He's shown up in here and there and Patrick Stewart just as many and So it kind of sucked seeing both of them Again, this is where I go back and forth part of me is like oh awesome I like those guys, but then in the other parts me like no what why it was so good It would just leave it Patrick Stewart showed up and as a cameo in Dr. Strange 2 and he's killed off Incredibly quickly. I hated that whole sequence because they put in all these fan favorites or casting choices and just destroyed it What was the point? It just didn't do anything other than make people bummed out. I thought I might be alone on that one But again, it takes away from the sacrifice made in Logan where we see these characters go It was a touching experience, but now because of the multiverse and all this bullshit. Oh, they can come back This is another version and I think that's what they're saying with Logan in Deadpool 3 He's not the same Wolverine that we've seen or he is but he's from the earlier timeline. I don't know I just it's gonna be a hard hard one for me to watch. I think and they have they have a lot to prove here doesn't mean they can't and Then people say well Hugh Jackman is Wolverine. You can't replace him. They will replace him. There's no question This is a character that's based on comics that spanned multiple shows collectible cards movies There's zero percent chance. We won't get a new version of Wolverine at one point I remember when Mel Gibson back in the day was supposed to play Wolverine Years before the Hugh Jackman thing and Mel Gibson is nuts. He would have been a freaking awesome Wolverine So it's not like there isn't other actors that I don't think can do it It again goes back to the Gene Wilder thing I think for me and others where it just feels almost like a gut punch Hugh Jackman did make that character his own. Yes, he was way too tall Yes, he was a lot calmer than the character from the the comics and the shows But that was his interpretation. That's what he brought to the table and it worked really damn well and To recast him so quickly it just seems it's just it's brutal, you know Give it some time. Let us let us let us more in the loss of Wolverine But then the other part of me thinks that's selfish. That's not fair There's not not everyone liked Hugh Jackman's interpretation not everyone thought that that was the gold standard So let them have their version, you know, we reboot Batman every four or five years It seems like we've done spider-man several times. We've had multiple supermans now Why is you know, why is Logan off the table? And it's more I think a testament to how much people cared about that character and how he was portrayed by Hugh Jackman than anything else and that's not to discredit, you know, Michael Keaton is Batman or Val Kilmer or Christian Bale or George Clooney, everybody loves George Clooney as Batman. I think that he was the the peak Okay, maybe not maybe not that one I brought up Stallone. Are we gonna get a Rocky reboot? Are we gonna get a Rambo reboot? Dear God? I hope not. I really do think some characters are sacred. I Really do think that some of them can just be left alone Bruce Willis diehard John McLean himself Obviously, he's incredibly, you know, he's got a disease now. It's not going well and that is awful So he's not gonna be coming back for one last ride.  They already Said they were maybe gonna do a diehard reboot and that was years ago when Fox was still a thing It wasn't bought by Disney. I was clenching hard. It's like, don't you dare do this Don't you recast John McLean as a younger dude? Why?  He's been through hard times in the world. He's kind of a blue-collar salt-of-the-earth guy He has a he has baggage with his wife. He's got two kids And he's just trying to make it through the day bad stuff happens and this every man has to get out of the Situation that's that's damn fun That's compelling stuff. That's interesting stuff to see a young buck John McLean going through like going through the The police academy and having to do his first job on the streets going down alleyways now I don't I don't want that. Please God. It's gonna be Timothy Chalamet who plays them Welcome to the party pal Huh, that's a good line. I should remember that wings at the camera yuck This doesn't just fall on action either. Look at comedies Jim Carrey as ace ventura Jim Carrey as the mask Why don't you say ventura ventura ventura? Why can't I remember how to say ace ventura? Yeah, ventura. Okay. Anyway, Jim Carrey is ace ventura Jim Carrey's ace ventura pet detective Jim Carrey is the mask they try doing a shitty sequel to the mask with jamie kennedy.  Anybody remember mask two? awful awful film Again the mask I don't believe started as a Jim Carrey vehicle I think that that is based on an older thing a novel or a comic or something. I really don't know about that one I do know this You're gonna be hard-pressed to find somebody does a better performance than Carrey himself ace ventura again Champions that he owns that role or these snl characters like Austin Powers based off some stuff and Mike Myers had Wayne's world We can get a Wayne's world down the road We will if hollywood looks at it and says there's money in these hills There's money with this property. How do we utilize it? Nostalgia is a is a tricky drug for people They claim they don't want it, but then they go out and see it Let's let's briefly wind down by some food for thought. I talked about actors I talked about possible solutions, which is to do the soft reboot if you really have to use the property's name Maybe just sunset the characters pass it on to the kids scream did that Halloween to an extent did that with jamie lee curtis Although I think that they just kind of wrapped it up nicely If you like that movie or not regardless jamie lee curtis had a a fitting end to our character Jurassic park The Jurassic world movies kind of blow the first one solid and they just get worse But they tied in the Jurassic park characters with it gave some of them conclusions as well even though we didn't need it So there's ways that they're doing these that kind of work are less insulting But for the most part they're they're pretty ham-fisted and pretty forced My suggestion though is leave some of these characters leave some of these properties alone They try doing a Han Solo spin-off solo with a different actor I didn't care for the movie that much. I didn't hate it But I have no desire to watch it and the guy was fine, but he was no Harrison Ford Regardless of what someone tells you he was no Harrison Ford Leave it leave the character alone. We have him. He's there. He's locked in place. He's in our memories We can choose to do with that what we will pass it down To generations or we just sit with it and grow old with it. And that's okay. Not everything needs to keep on going Uh Ghostbusters was another one where they tried to replicate it They tried to get that magic back But they swung a different direction. They said okay if the boys can do it Let's see if the ladies can do it again for a new generation They did not that movie is pretty awful And so then what did they do? They did the other thing on the other end of it. Okay. We tried going opposite Let's go back to nostalgia Ghostbusters afterlife.   He's back I didn't care for afterlife either by the way. I know people really like it and that's fine But I think a lot of it has to do with the emotional ending And it's not because of the character Egon. It's because of the actor being dead Harold Ramis and the the movie really Really pandered to that Really played that up and that felt like a disingenuous thing. It felt like something That was more about the actor and less about the character Godfather you want to see a godfather remake? I'm guessing most people shake their heads. No the shining based on a book Stephen King doesn't even like the movie It would it would be in his wheelhouse to remake it if he wanted I give myself a very hearty head shake. No on that one as well Jaws It probably will happen at some point And that would be that would be kind of sad to me because Jaws is That's like the playbook right there So many movies horrors thrillers whatever have not only mimicked The presentation of Jaws keeping the the villain in the shadows for the majority of the film But they period it they reference it It's a timeless movie Does that mean it has an age? Of course not But everything ages humans movies art it it all gets older Different mediums come along ways to improve things ways to enhance things But there's there there should be some respect given I think by the performances and by the films And that's where I stand don't remake these movies. They they just genuinely should not be touched And then of course the thing which they have remade which is the funny part The original thing came out in the I don't know the 40s or some shit And then you have the late 70s early 80s one with Kurt Russell, which is fan freaking tastic It's one of my favorite movies of all time. And then they did another version of the thing I didn't even see it. I haven't seen it. So I can't speak to the quality. I think it's a prequel The same name though because they like to do the bad naming in Hollywood as well Again, I didn't watch it. Maybe it's fine But why you know to what end does it serve? Okay, those are just a few examples of actors of movies And I was just kind of thinking about it all because of indiana jones because I saw that interview with gene wilder And and I just got to thinking about it like, you know, where is the line? Where do we draw it as fans of film? Where do we draw it as you know? appreciators of the art form as well What works for us doesn't work for everyone We'll probably get another version of the hunger games at one point We already know that harry potter is being rebooted for max With a new cast They'll probably dust off some of the old guys haven't come back as teachers or a glorified cameo They'll probably use the iconic music at some in some way To you know fuel that nostalgia, but at the same time they want to pretend This is a brand new thing they want they want to take it a different direction So they're going to marry the two things. That's my prediction. But who knows I'm not a big fan of that But I have to separate on this instance. I love the harry potter movies. There's people that don't they're avid book readers I've read the books. I love the books as well. I understand those differences But I don't get bothered by them. I think they work very well in the movie outside of the the last movie Which didn't really explain some of the stuff that was in it where you kind of had to read the book Like how we got the broken mirror, but I don't want to go into all of that Still love it Still one of my favorite franchises ever the fact that they were able to go from beginning to end with almost all the same cast Outside of ones that died and had to be replaced, which is depressing And the fact that the quality continued to stay consistently good or not great in most instances It's it's really a testament and they had different directors every time. I really should do a harry potter episode of this I think that would be fine. Maybe rank them and then talk about them or I'll do it on one of my I'll do it on one of my lives. That's kind of what I've been doing lately is I will do a ranking of a movie property Give you my best and worst give you a little breakdown of each of the films individually and chat with the the viewers As it's going the lives are on my youtube channel adam does movies Every tuesday and every friday night. I go at 10 30 p.m. Eastern standard time Usually runs an hour hour and a half whatever, you know, whatever we're into that night However frisky we feel we might go a little longer This goes up as as you know on mondays every single monday put out the adam does movies podcast It goes up on spotify and it goes up on itunes or apple I never know what it's an apple podcast. I say it wrong every single time at some point I'm gonna get it Wherever you listen to podcasts is probably gonna be goes up at nine in the morning I also do a live watch on youtube At around I don't know. I've been changing the times up. I think 11 o'clock works pretty well for everyone So I'll probably do 11 o'clock live if you're on youtube You're listening to me talk right now and you're looking and you're saying wow, it's 11 33 He wasn't joking this went live when he said it was going to all right That's the show if you like what i'm doing Keep in mind. This is a one-man operation. I have a full-time job. I have a family I am the john mclean every man right here of youtube. I do it all and I work my butt off So if you like the podcast if you like the channel in general if you like me A little bit maybe think about supporting the channel at adam does movies via patreon. So it's patreon.com slash adam does movies There's a couple different tier levels. There's a one dollar. There's a 10 a 30 Even goes up to 100 if you're really feeling generous and you get great perks along the way You can also do the same thing via the youtube join button get the same perks get some little emotes to put next to your name It's a good time. Everyone wins here. I think All right, that's the show Let me know if you're watching on youtube in the comments what you thought about this if you agree disagree Everything's up for grabs. Let's remake. Let's do more remakes less Let me know. I want to hear about it like the video Please subscribe to the podcast or right here on youtube to the channel tell everyone about it I like to grow like to get a bigger audience and only you can help me do that help me what we want Kenobi You're my only hope All right, take care