The Plan - review
Let's start with a laugh out loud moment:
Cavil: "One of your counterparts managed to get himself outed back on Ragnar Station."
Doral: "I can't understand how he was discovered. I heard it was Dr. Baltar."
Cavil: "Well, no. I'm not talking about that, exactly. I'm talking about the fact that you're walking around this fleet wearing that jacket, and more importantly, that face. You're recognizable.
Doral: "Well, his jacket was burgundy. This is teal."
Hands down, at least Doral never dressed up in a ruffled aqua dress. ;)
I can't quite figure out how I stand towards The Plan. It had bits and pieces I liked, some I really liked. It had a lot of stuff I didn't care about, but that's okay - I knew this movie wouldn't focus on the things I am interested in. Still, I can honestly say that I did give the film a fair chance, not expecting too much, but not having a negative attitude towards it either. I'm not sure how I would have thought about it as part of the immediate series, but the time that had passed since the finale helped to view it as an independent kind of bonus movie - and I felt as if it was up to me as a viewer to decide whether I'm willing to connect the dots or not, whether to accept the events or part of the events of The Plan into the BSG universe or not. I have to say I appreciated that freedom.
Sadly, I'm not a fan of most of Jane Espenson's writing on BSG, but I think it worked for The Plan and I have to bow to her for managing to re-write the events from a cylon perspective. That couldn't have been an easy task.
The beginning of the movie actually pulled me in a lot more than I had expected. I liked the intro sequences, the stunning visuals, the multiple settings, getting a look at all of these different Colonial planets, the events leading up to the original attacks on the Colonies, the bombings, the hybrid's monologue ("The farms of Aerilon are burning. The beaches of Canceron are burning. The plains of Leonis are burning..."), people escaping death, the final five dimly remembering, etc. - that was all rather intriguing and well put together (hats off, Ed).
But then it mostly turned into something that shouted out to my brain but that I wasn't following with my heart anymore. It was a sequence of familiar events from a different perspective, jumpy and only coherent for someone who knew the story well in advance. Even though I knew Anders and his fellow team members as characters before and even though I was looking forward to seeing what they experienced on Caprica, I just wasn't able to make a real emotional connection regarding the story that was being told about them in The Plan.
It was all rather jerky and I didn't feel like their backstory got much additional depth. Maybe I expected too much, as it was such a great opportunity to play with people's emotions, being survivors, facing the end of days, their decision to fight back etc. - but I didn't really see much of this. What I saw was them finding themselves in this situation and then immediately fighting back. What I saw was a series of events unfolding but not much of a real story or emotions attached to it, unless the events required it (team member - dead - cry, Kara - gone - be sad). Anders' dialogue with Cavil gives his struggles on the planet some more depth ("I took this stupid idea from a movie. People died, I couldn't handle it..."), but I'd prefer a "show, don't tell" approach. Then again, this is Jane Espenson writing and I had the same issues with "The Hub", e.g.
They certainly did manage to show us the events from that "other" perspective in a smart and witty way, but I was missing the soul of it. That "something" that pulls me into a story and makes me want to live through it with the characters. Instead, I followed multiple events that I had somehow seen before. Now everything was supposed to add up, little events fans had been talking about for years, and it was great to see these things being written into this movie. Caprica meeting with Cavil, Shelly vanishing from Galactica etc.
But then it also felt more like a a series of deleted scenes at best. I don't think the secret Boomer/Cavil arc worked well at all, in fact it annoys me that I'm now supposed to believe that during Boomer's struggles aboard Galactica in season 1, she was secretely controlled by Cavil who met up with her behind the scenes. Seriously? Thanks, but no thanks, I'm not connecting these dots.
In case of Shelly, for example, I even felt that the added old scenes pulled me a bit out of the cylon perspective. I had expected them to at least pep up the old scenes a bit by using different angles or by adding new scenes from the Galactica personnel perspective, or to tie them in in a way that kept me on my toes, but instead they were merely used as "this is where we're at in the story" signs and I sort of snored through most of them. I don't think the mix of new and old stuff really worked the way it was supposed to. It felt more like a strike-off-list. Jump from event A to event B to event C and add some background information on the cylon's actions, make "sense" to the events that occured during the series.
The new bit, that had a connection to the show's events, that I did like was Leoben's obsession with Kara, how it started, and learning that he, too, had visions. I just wish they would have delved more into that.
The whole "Brother Cavil holds weekly meetings in his Galactica chapel" thing was ridiculous at best. I mean...seriously? It kind of worked in this movie because most of it felt light and superficial to start with, and I suppose it was the only way to weave everything together. But I'm trying to think back to the good old BSG days, the realism of it, the layered emotions, how the crew fought for survival... And then I'm thinking of Cavil dropping snarky comments and chewinggum!Six (what was her purpose anyhow?), and then all of this seems so absurd, you know? It's like two different stories. Not perspectives. It's like having in-depth serious drama on the one side and somewhat comical mediocre scifi on the other side. And whenever I try to convince my brain that both belong to one and the same thing, a malfunction occurs and there's steam and sparks coming out of my ears.
However, The Plan did achieve something I didn't think possible: They at least gave Cavil's character some depth. I still don't like the whole concept of him, I still think he seems like a caricature most of the times and I can't stomach his "puppet master" role in the BSG universe. But I do feel like I understand his motives and motivations better now. His last scene with the boy, his end along with Caprica!Cavil...that did touch something inside of me and left me thinking. Which, given my dislike for his character, is quite an achievement. ;)
But you see, what touched me here was not part of re-telling the events from a cylon perspective. What touched me were the unique parts. Triggered by Cavil's relationship with the boy.
Another absolutely unique storyline of The Plan was the arc involving Simon, his wife and his daughter. And this was my most favorite thing of the entire movie. Emotions. Depth. A story I could follow from what I saw on screen, not by resorting to old memories of previous events. Good acting, too (hats off to MrsEddie - loved her scenes with Chief Tyrol). If the whole movie had been like this, I would have loved every second of it.
The fact that this movie had no Laura Roslin at all in it bugged me. Not because I would have liked to see Mary McDonnell on screen again - I would have, but that's not the point. This movie wasn't lacking Mary McDonnell, it was lacking Laura Roslin. She was in only one tiny scene of Razor if I recall correctly, but the movie still worked for me as part of the BSG universe. The Plan, however, not only desperately tried to cut Roslin out of old scenes she was in, scenes she was rocking actually (Like the scene in the brig with the Cavils - Roslin was the one to give the order to airlock them both, not Adama nor Tigh like The Plan tried to make us believe.), but they also managed to eliminate every track of this character on the show. While in Razor you could hear reporters talk about Roslin's decision on the radio and you always knew that, while not on screen, she was a part of the story, I felt like The Plan managed to get rid off her role entirely. I understand if there were contractual issues and they couldn't show her on screen or didn't want to pay her enough to do so, but given the fact that she wasn't just a 2nd or 3rd row character, completely nullifying her role in all of this is just...odd and almost feels disrespectful towards her character.
As odd and disrespectful as not giving a frak about Tory's "cylon perspective". Overall, I expected this to be a LOT more about the final 5 instead of the 7, but the way they handled her "storyline" was plain awkward. She crawls out of her car and that's it until the very last second when we see her standing in front of supposedly Roslin's legs. Wtf? After what they did to her in BSG's 4th season and especially in the finale, this shouldn't surprise me. And yet, it does. What is so difficult about giving this character a bit of a backstory? Layers? Feelings?
Ellen's story, while being a bit more extensive, broke off just as abrupt. Cavil gets her off the planet, we see her injured on some space ship and then...who the frak cares, right?
Of course we know Ellen's story from this point on and there probably was no need to show the exact same events again, but that's exactly why the movie, in large parts, felt like a sequence of deleted scenes with no real meaning to the story of this particular movie. I guess it comes down to what Eddie said, about how this film is a gift to the fans. The ones who remember the show in details, who speculated for years, the ones who obsessed over it. But while we may get excited over additional deleted scenes in the bonus section of our DVD sets, even we like to follow a gripping narrative when it comes to watching a story unfold on screen. Not necessarly action-loaded, probably less so, but definitely well-thought out and emotionally enthralling.
And the casual viewer? I don't know...Maybe the most coherent thing is Cavil's arc and I suppose that, if you see The Plan as The Cavil Story, it works well (minus the confusion and lack of background information). His struggles undoubtedly add a philosophical component. I like how, at the end, when both Cavil's are floating into space, we have this voice overlay from No Exit: "I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays. I want to hear x-rays, and I want to...I want to smell dark matter. I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I'm a machine, and I could know much more."
I'm not sure I even want to delve into the long advertised "they have a plan" thing, because whatever... Was there anything more to the plan than Cavil's attempt to kill all humans and teach the final 5 a (totally contrived) lesson? Apparently not. Why were the cylons so interested in cylon/human babies then? No idea. Maybe it was a hobby only shared by Sixes and Sharons and D'annas and Dorals and Simons. Why the fuss about Kara? Why did they take her ovaries? No idea. The only one who did have an interest in her was Leoben, who seemed to have developed this obsession on his own.
The only one with a mission was Cavil, and in the end even his plan didn't matter, because, apparently, the Gods had an even better plan. And maybe the Gods had the plan all along and this little teaser never meant to speak for the cylons. Maybe it was Cavil who thought he had a plan, but the Gods really had a plan and made sure the rest of the cylons got obsessed with babies and blond viper pilots. I think that may be it and perhaps the next BSG movie will be "The Plan 2", starring head!people and pigeons. If it doesn't have any Cavil and is able to portray its pigeons more-dimensional, I might even like that one better. ;)
Cavil: "One of your counterparts managed to get himself outed back on Ragnar Station."
Doral: "I can't understand how he was discovered. I heard it was Dr. Baltar."
Cavil: "Well, no. I'm not talking about that, exactly. I'm talking about the fact that you're walking around this fleet wearing that jacket, and more importantly, that face. You're recognizable.
Doral: "Well, his jacket was burgundy. This is teal."
Hands down, at least Doral never dressed up in a ruffled aqua dress. ;)
I can't quite figure out how I stand towards The Plan. It had bits and pieces I liked, some I really liked. It had a lot of stuff I didn't care about, but that's okay - I knew this movie wouldn't focus on the things I am interested in. Still, I can honestly say that I did give the film a fair chance, not expecting too much, but not having a negative attitude towards it either. I'm not sure how I would have thought about it as part of the immediate series, but the time that had passed since the finale helped to view it as an independent kind of bonus movie - and I felt as if it was up to me as a viewer to decide whether I'm willing to connect the dots or not, whether to accept the events or part of the events of The Plan into the BSG universe or not. I have to say I appreciated that freedom.
Sadly, I'm not a fan of most of Jane Espenson's writing on BSG, but I think it worked for The Plan and I have to bow to her for managing to re-write the events from a cylon perspective. That couldn't have been an easy task.
The beginning of the movie actually pulled me in a lot more than I had expected. I liked the intro sequences, the stunning visuals, the multiple settings, getting a look at all of these different Colonial planets, the events leading up to the original attacks on the Colonies, the bombings, the hybrid's monologue ("The farms of Aerilon are burning. The beaches of Canceron are burning. The plains of Leonis are burning..."), people escaping death, the final five dimly remembering, etc. - that was all rather intriguing and well put together (hats off, Ed).
But then it mostly turned into something that shouted out to my brain but that I wasn't following with my heart anymore. It was a sequence of familiar events from a different perspective, jumpy and only coherent for someone who knew the story well in advance. Even though I knew Anders and his fellow team members as characters before and even though I was looking forward to seeing what they experienced on Caprica, I just wasn't able to make a real emotional connection regarding the story that was being told about them in The Plan.
It was all rather jerky and I didn't feel like their backstory got much additional depth. Maybe I expected too much, as it was such a great opportunity to play with people's emotions, being survivors, facing the end of days, their decision to fight back etc. - but I didn't really see much of this. What I saw was them finding themselves in this situation and then immediately fighting back. What I saw was a series of events unfolding but not much of a real story or emotions attached to it, unless the events required it (team member - dead - cry, Kara - gone - be sad). Anders' dialogue with Cavil gives his struggles on the planet some more depth ("I took this stupid idea from a movie. People died, I couldn't handle it..."), but I'd prefer a "show, don't tell" approach. Then again, this is Jane Espenson writing and I had the same issues with "The Hub", e.g.
They certainly did manage to show us the events from that "other" perspective in a smart and witty way, but I was missing the soul of it. That "something" that pulls me into a story and makes me want to live through it with the characters. Instead, I followed multiple events that I had somehow seen before. Now everything was supposed to add up, little events fans had been talking about for years, and it was great to see these things being written into this movie. Caprica meeting with Cavil, Shelly vanishing from Galactica etc.
But then it also felt more like a a series of deleted scenes at best. I don't think the secret Boomer/Cavil arc worked well at all, in fact it annoys me that I'm now supposed to believe that during Boomer's struggles aboard Galactica in season 1, she was secretely controlled by Cavil who met up with her behind the scenes. Seriously? Thanks, but no thanks, I'm not connecting these dots.
In case of Shelly, for example, I even felt that the added old scenes pulled me a bit out of the cylon perspective. I had expected them to at least pep up the old scenes a bit by using different angles or by adding new scenes from the Galactica personnel perspective, or to tie them in in a way that kept me on my toes, but instead they were merely used as "this is where we're at in the story" signs and I sort of snored through most of them. I don't think the mix of new and old stuff really worked the way it was supposed to. It felt more like a strike-off-list. Jump from event A to event B to event C and add some background information on the cylon's actions, make "sense" to the events that occured during the series.
The new bit, that had a connection to the show's events, that I did like was Leoben's obsession with Kara, how it started, and learning that he, too, had visions. I just wish they would have delved more into that.
The whole "Brother Cavil holds weekly meetings in his Galactica chapel" thing was ridiculous at best. I mean...seriously? It kind of worked in this movie because most of it felt light and superficial to start with, and I suppose it was the only way to weave everything together. But I'm trying to think back to the good old BSG days, the realism of it, the layered emotions, how the crew fought for survival... And then I'm thinking of Cavil dropping snarky comments and chewinggum!Six (what was her purpose anyhow?), and then all of this seems so absurd, you know? It's like two different stories. Not perspectives. It's like having in-depth serious drama on the one side and somewhat comical mediocre scifi on the other side. And whenever I try to convince my brain that both belong to one and the same thing, a malfunction occurs and there's steam and sparks coming out of my ears.
However, The Plan did achieve something I didn't think possible: They at least gave Cavil's character some depth. I still don't like the whole concept of him, I still think he seems like a caricature most of the times and I can't stomach his "puppet master" role in the BSG universe. But I do feel like I understand his motives and motivations better now. His last scene with the boy, his end along with Caprica!Cavil...that did touch something inside of me and left me thinking. Which, given my dislike for his character, is quite an achievement. ;)
But you see, what touched me here was not part of re-telling the events from a cylon perspective. What touched me were the unique parts. Triggered by Cavil's relationship with the boy.
Another absolutely unique storyline of The Plan was the arc involving Simon, his wife and his daughter. And this was my most favorite thing of the entire movie. Emotions. Depth. A story I could follow from what I saw on screen, not by resorting to old memories of previous events. Good acting, too (hats off to MrsEddie - loved her scenes with Chief Tyrol). If the whole movie had been like this, I would have loved every second of it.
The fact that this movie had no Laura Roslin at all in it bugged me. Not because I would have liked to see Mary McDonnell on screen again - I would have, but that's not the point. This movie wasn't lacking Mary McDonnell, it was lacking Laura Roslin. She was in only one tiny scene of Razor if I recall correctly, but the movie still worked for me as part of the BSG universe. The Plan, however, not only desperately tried to cut Roslin out of old scenes she was in, scenes she was rocking actually (Like the scene in the brig with the Cavils - Roslin was the one to give the order to airlock them both, not Adama nor Tigh like The Plan tried to make us believe.), but they also managed to eliminate every track of this character on the show. While in Razor you could hear reporters talk about Roslin's decision on the radio and you always knew that, while not on screen, she was a part of the story, I felt like The Plan managed to get rid off her role entirely. I understand if there were contractual issues and they couldn't show her on screen or didn't want to pay her enough to do so, but given the fact that she wasn't just a 2nd or 3rd row character, completely nullifying her role in all of this is just...odd and almost feels disrespectful towards her character.
As odd and disrespectful as not giving a frak about Tory's "cylon perspective". Overall, I expected this to be a LOT more about the final 5 instead of the 7, but the way they handled her "storyline" was plain awkward. She crawls out of her car and that's it until the very last second when we see her standing in front of supposedly Roslin's legs. Wtf? After what they did to her in BSG's 4th season and especially in the finale, this shouldn't surprise me. And yet, it does. What is so difficult about giving this character a bit of a backstory? Layers? Feelings?
Ellen's story, while being a bit more extensive, broke off just as abrupt. Cavil gets her off the planet, we see her injured on some space ship and then...who the frak cares, right?
Of course we know Ellen's story from this point on and there probably was no need to show the exact same events again, but that's exactly why the movie, in large parts, felt like a sequence of deleted scenes with no real meaning to the story of this particular movie. I guess it comes down to what Eddie said, about how this film is a gift to the fans. The ones who remember the show in details, who speculated for years, the ones who obsessed over it. But while we may get excited over additional deleted scenes in the bonus section of our DVD sets, even we like to follow a gripping narrative when it comes to watching a story unfold on screen. Not necessarly action-loaded, probably less so, but definitely well-thought out and emotionally enthralling.
And the casual viewer? I don't know...Maybe the most coherent thing is Cavil's arc and I suppose that, if you see The Plan as The Cavil Story, it works well (minus the confusion and lack of background information). His struggles undoubtedly add a philosophical component. I like how, at the end, when both Cavil's are floating into space, we have this voice overlay from No Exit: "I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays. I want to hear x-rays, and I want to...I want to smell dark matter. I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I'm a machine, and I could know much more."
I'm not sure I even want to delve into the long advertised "they have a plan" thing, because whatever... Was there anything more to the plan than Cavil's attempt to kill all humans and teach the final 5 a (totally contrived) lesson? Apparently not. Why were the cylons so interested in cylon/human babies then? No idea. Maybe it was a hobby only shared by Sixes and Sharons and D'annas and Dorals and Simons. Why the fuss about Kara? Why did they take her ovaries? No idea. The only one who did have an interest in her was Leoben, who seemed to have developed this obsession on his own.
The only one with a mission was Cavil, and in the end even his plan didn't matter, because, apparently, the Gods had an even better plan. And maybe the Gods had the plan all along and this little teaser never meant to speak for the cylons. Maybe it was Cavil who thought he had a plan, but the Gods really had a plan and made sure the rest of the cylons got obsessed with babies and blond viper pilots. I think that may be it and perhaps the next BSG movie will be "The Plan 2", starring head!people and pigeons. If it doesn't have any Cavil and is able to portray its pigeons more-dimensional, I might even like that one better. ;)