The series is set in a far-flung future where mankind has figured out space travel and colonized the galaxy. With nuclear power, hyperspatial travel and an abundance of starships, travelling from star to star is easy. At the time of the series, humanity has been travelling the stars for more than twenty thousand years, all the galaxy is part of the Empire, a single government with a capital planet called Trantor, with one man at the very top, the Emperor. But there’s a problem, the Empire is breaking down. Trade is slowing down, advancements have all but stopped, repairs are left undone. For some reason people just don’t care anymore, and they’re letting the whole system grind to a halt. When that happens, the Emperor won’t be able to keep control and the entire galaxy will fall into barbarism. Unless someone stops it.

Enter into this one man, Hari Seldon. A mathematician from a planet most people have never heard of, who arrives on Trantor to attend a conference and present a paper on a new science he calls psychohistory. This new science has the strange purpose of being able to mathematically predict the future based on the behaviour of society as a whole.  But although Seldon has proved it is theoretically possible, he believes it to be practically impossible. Despite this, Seldon is recruited to develop and use this science to prevent the decay of the Empire by a man called Chetter Hummin, and from there Seldon’s life is one long adventure as he finds out how to make psychohistory work, forms a plan to save the galaxy and then puts into action.

But all this is just the first two books of the series, making a duology that tells the first story, that of Hari Seldon’s life. Over the course of the rest of the books a full five hundred years will pass. But not all at the same pace. The curious thing about Foundation is that it’s not one long story, but three distinctly different stories. While Seldon couldn’t prevent the decay of the Empire, he could figure out what would happen next, a period of barbarism that would last thirty thousand years. Seldon planned to shorten the period of barbarism to only one thousand years by putting in place the Foundation, a colony of physical scientists at the edge of the galaxy that would in time form the leadership of a Second Empire. The story of the Foundation makes up the middle three books in the series. These tales are split into several short stories within the three books, each one widely different and concerning different people, as they all happen decades apart when the people of the previous story have died of old age. The Foundation goes through several trials in their time, sometimes failing, but always endeavouring to expand their control and inch their way towards the Second Empire.

The last two books in the series are another duology. They are the adventures of Golan Trevize, a Foundation politician who is given a secret mission to find the Second Foundation, the secret manipulators that keep the Seldon Plan on track. His cover for his mission a companion. Accompanying him is Dr Janov Pelorat, a historian that wants to find Earth, the origin planet of the human species, lost long ago and almost completely forgotten. In buddy movie fashion the two set out on their quest, but while Trevize hunts the Second Foundation, the Second Foundation also hunts him. A representative of the Second Foundation named Stor Gendibal believes that the Seldon Plan is not just working, but working too well, that some other force is controlling events that is more powerful than the Second Foundation. So he follows Trevize, believing he will be led to this unknown force. When the two finally meet, it’s in a completely unexpected situation that catapults Trevize down a new path. He gives up looking for the Second Foundation and joins Pelorat in searching for Earth, for reasons that would sadly completely spoil the rest of the series for you. What he eventually finds brings the whole series full circle to a satisfactory end.

This has all been rather vague, to avoid giving too much of the plot away, but I enjoyed most of the series. While it covers galaxy hopping adventures, clever court intrigues and breakdowns of psychological inevitability, at its core what the series is about for me is being more than one. A person should strive beyond self-advancement and gain, and be a part of something greater; socially, politically and historically. All the heroes in these stories carry out their tasks not just for themselves, but for those that will follow them too. The man behind it all, Hari Seldon, dies shortly before his plan is put into action. He never sees what happens over the rest of the series, all he can do is pass on his knowledge and hope his successors will do well. A bit of self-sacrifice for future generations is a good thing.

So if you have the time, try giving the series a read. You don’t have to read all of it, there’s three closed stories to pick from. The first is Prelude To Foundation and Forward The Foundation; second is Foundation, Foundation And Empire and Second Foundation; third Foundation’s Edge and Foundation And Earth. The amazing thing is, the those first two in the series were the last two written by Asimov, so you really can read them in any order. I enjoyed it, and think you will too.

Metropolis is old. Really old. It was made in 1927, would you believe. It’s not only a black and white film, but it’s a silent film. It has cards inserted into the edit so you have to read the dialogue. I’ve never seen a silent film before, and I found it astonishing, for several reasons. But I’ll get back to that.

First, what’s it all about? In the future, the poor blue collar workers operate vast machines and live underground while the rich white collar administrators run fast moving businesses and play in private gardens. One such man of the upper class is Freder, son of the wealthiest man in the city, all he does is frolick in the gardens with, for lack of a better word, concubines. Freder’s idyllic life is upset when he encounters Maria, a beautiful woman from the worker class that preaches peace and equality for all, and asks Freder to be the Mediator and bring about the peace before civil war breaks out. Complications bar their way though in the form of Rotwang and his Machine Man, built to impersonate Maria and cause havoc.

There’s a lot more that goes on of course, but I don’t want to get into spoilers. The central themes are class inequality, finding peace rather than war, love breaking down barriers and the dangers of uninformed action. That’s a lot going on, when very little is said. Being a silent movie, you can’t have a scene where two characters have a long conversation, as it would mean a great many cards for the audience to read. So the plot has to unfold with looks, gestures and over acting. You have to forgive a lot of the old style, but back then they were still inventing cinema.

One of the incredible things I found about the film was that despite the lack of dialogue, most of the characters were fleshed out. You knew who they were and what drove them. And if you didn’t know their history, you at least knew what their goal was. Freder seeks love, Maria wants peace, the robot wants chaos. Simple drives that keep the plot going.

Aside from the main characters, there are many, many extras in this film, and I need to talk about them for a minute. The film starts with a very interesting set piece, a shift change for the workers.  The new shift is walking in, hundreds of men in ranks of six in lock step plodding along to elevators to take them up to the machines. They live underground remember. Meanwhile, the old shift is coming off the elevators to walk home, also in ranks of six, plodding in lock step. But the old shift is walking slower than the new shift. It’s a tiny touch to show that they’re exhausted after their days work, very subtly displaying the hardships they face daily.

The big controversy surrounding Metropolis is that it was heavily edited for its initial release and that scenes from it are lost forever. On the copy I watched there were replacement cards explaining what happens in the missing scenes. I have mixed views on these. Some of the cut scenes show necessary information about main or side characters, and the loss of the scenes left significant plot holes. But others were essentially meaningless, extra hurdles that characters quickly overcame or things that didn’t really matter. It’s a shame the footage was lost, but not all of it was needed in the first place.

All I’ve got left to say is that it’s a thoroughly good film and worth the watch. Forgive its flaws, and marvel at its genius.

I’ve been watching a lot of the old Zatoichi movies lately. There’s twenty-six in all, I’ve seen six so far. Most were made in the sixties and seventies, though the series stretches all the way to 1989. In all but two of the series Zatoichi is played by Shintaro Katsu. The films are all set in the same world, but there’s no through-line with the plots.

The stories all take place in feudal Japan, where Tokyo is still called Edo, samurai wear top knots, everyone wears kimonos and paper money hasn’t been invented yet. Through it all walks Zatoichi, a blind masseur on an ending journey to nowhere. He scrapes together what money he can from massages and gambling, but mainly relies on the charity of others. Wherever he goes he introduces himself as Ichi, avoiding his real name because he is really a wanted criminal, and renowned swordsman.

Zatoichi always carries with him his cane, which is secretly a sword cane, and when threatened he uses it with blinding speed to kill the enemies in seconds. He’s by no means the great hero though. He likes his drink and loves his gambling, and wherever he goes he inevitably ends up killing a lot of people. The land if rife with corruption and crime, so there’s a lot of wrongs to righted, and the only way Zatoichi knows how is to use his sword.

In his adventures Zatoichi meets a lot of people, some falling into a few archetypical roles. First, there is The Boss. This is the man in charge, the puppet master. He’s either the leader of the local yakuza or a corrupt government official. This is the man who Zatoichi has to end up killing to restore peace to the village or town. The Boss will have varying levels of intelligence and sometimes there’s more than one, but he always reveals himself to be a vile person that cares only about personal wealth and power.

The second archetype is the Nemisis. Most enemies Zatoichi comes up against are poorly trained fighters, so he can, and does, kill whole swathes at a time. The Nemisis is different, he’s highly skilled and dedicated to his craft. Like Zatoichi his sword is a blur when he uses it, and he is feared by his fellows. Sometimes the Nemesis isn’t given much time on screen to develop as a character, so we must assume he works for the Boss purely for the money and fights Zatoichi because he’s ordered to. When the Nemesis is characterised, he ends up fighting Zatoichi either for glory or vengeance. The glory seekers want the bragging rights of saying they beat Zatoichi. The vengeance seekers are after Zatoichi for something he did over the course of the movie, sometimes by mistake. But at some point the two always end up fighting, and only one walks away from it.

The next archetypes don’t all continuously occur, but are present in various combinations. These are the Good Man, the Heroine and the Kid. The Good Man is the everyman of the story, he’s there to be trampled on by the bad guys and show just how evil they are. The Heroine’s job is to be in love with the Good Man or fall in love with Zatoichi. The Kid has much the same role as the Good Man, but amplifies their evil for doing it to a child. All of these archetypes are there to provide the tragic element of Zatoichi’s journey. He can’t save everybody, he can’t fall in love, he can never stay in one place for very long.

As I said before, most of the Zatoichi movies were made in ’60s and ’70s. This is before any kind of visual effects, decent wire work or convincing prosthetics. In short, if it wasn’t on set, it wasn’t in the movie. It’s important to remember this when watching, and suspend you disbelief for the filmmakers and what they had to deal with. When cut, the characters don’t bleed and their clothes are rarely torn. And Zatoichi moves so fast you’re not sure where they were cut in the first place. Despite this, they do manage to get over the biggest problem when it comes to filmmaking: the main character is blind, but the actor is not. So for most of the movie, he has his eyes closed to hide his perfectly normal eyes; including the fight scenes where he’s moving so fast around other people with his real looking sword cane. Very dangerous, but they pull it off. I hope they didn’t have many accidents while filming.

All in all, I enjoyed the Zatoichi films I’ve seen, and think you will too. There’s a lot of them, but like the James Bond series you don’t have to watch them all in order.  You can pick these up at any point and watch in any order as much or as little as you want. So check your usual haunt for movies and look these up, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

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