AG Monday
This week: 1974's Zardoz.
ZARDOZ IS PLEASED YOU ARE LISTENING TO THIS EPISODE! When John Boorman’s movie Deliverance became a smash hit, Hollywood gave him $1.5 million to make any movie he wanted. The result? Sean Connery in a red leather thong, a giant stone head, and immortals who want to die. It’s transhumanism, 1970s British style! Join us as we explore the dystopian, far future world of Zardoz. Was this as weird as people say? Or as bad? Listen to this episode to find out.
Crystals! A lot of Connery’s chest hair! An eternity of doing household chores! Nudity! Guns! Mutants! A small English village! Catatonia! It’s all here.
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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For some reason the ep wouldn’t download this morning…
I’ve heard of this movie, but have never seen it. I’ve the impression it ranks as pretty bad. I did see Deliverance, which I regret as a waste of time.
Parts of Zardoz were parodied in an ep of Rick & Morty.
@Kathy:
It certainly has some oddly named actors. Niall Buggy? Bosco Hogan??
@Kathy: I watched it back in the days of VHS tape. It holds up about as well as — VHS tape. A sad contribution to Sean Connery’s legacy.
@Rob1:
I read the plot synopsis in Wikipedia just now.
It’ strikes me as similar in theme to Clarke’s debut novel, The City and the Stars, with added violence and group politics.
@CSK:
What’s in a name? Would that which we call a trump by other name stink less than the bulls**t it is?
@Kathy: Reading Wikipedia doesn’t do it enough injustice. It is a “slight” to behold.
I love Zardoz. You just can’t take it seriously. Also, Beethoven’s 7th.
I have very fond memories of Zardoz from my teenage days, although all the nudity might have had something to do with my appreciation.
The only sensible way to watch and appreciate the genius of Zardoz was to be stoned as heck. lol
The immortality sucks notion goes back a ways. As mentioned before, Clarke’s The City and the Stars. Also the Struldbruggs in Gulliver’s Travels (though they kept on aging as long as they lived). And then there’s (Spoiler Alert!) The Good Place. I’m sure there are more.
Asimov tackles a related issue: long lives. In his robot novels, the Spacers, humans who live on extrasolar colony worlds, live for over three centuries, while Earth humans don’t quite live one century. This gets turned into a weakness rather than strength, starting at the end of the second novel, The Naked Sun.
BTW, where does the oxygen come from is a pertinent question in a lot of SF. In Clarke’s work cited above, were told the entire surface of the Earth, except for one city, is barren desert. I’ve noted the same about Arrakis in Dune. Where does the oxygen come from?
In a story I wrote, Ours, the world the crew explores is largely desert with a few large salty lakes (not big enough to qualify as oceans), and sparse life here and there. This does not account for the oxygen levels observed. The ship’s biologist, Marina, thinks more life may exist in underground oceans. If so, the planet may be like Earth, just getting started to develop life. if not, it may be like Mars, already dying and drying off.
@Kathy:
In Dune, iirc, the oxygen was supposed to come from the “spice”/young sandworm precursors ecosystem in the soil/sand breaking down water into oxygen and hydrogen, and combining carbon an silicon into various compounds.
I don’t think he ever made it clear where the required energy to drive this process was supposed to be coming from.
@JohnSF:
From the same place the oxygen does: magic 😛
There’s nothing wrong with using magic in tech, if the story requires it*. But basics like oxygen is produced by plants, algae, or bacteria, are too obvious to mess with.
*Which means I do it and it’s on stuff I like.