Category: Review

Which AI image generator is best?

I recently took the plunge into generative AI. My goal was to make a cover image for the short story “Sofi”. This YA fantasy involves three main characters: a boy and two goddesses who are fighting over his soul. There is one magic battle in the story, which naturally lends itself to an intriguing cover.

To get started, I read some online reviews about which tool is best. The reviews tend to be pretty bland and non-technical, so I want to offer some notes on my experience.

Midjourney — This was the first tool I tried. Paid for the cheapest subscription level ($10/month), which was sufficient to explore possibilities for one final product. One great strength of Midjourney is the ability to refine results. Each time you generate, you get back 4 pictures. You can pick any of these to generate more variants, zoom, resize and recenter. This lets you guide Midjourney towards what you really want. I suspect that Midjourney uses all this feedback to further train the AI, and it shows in the quality of the art.

Unfortunately, Midjourney is not able to distinguish multiple objects in the scene. If I ask for two human characters, all the words in the prompt affect the outcome of both characters. Sometimes the descriptions get jumbled. For example, I asked for Sofi to have a white shirt and Raca to have a black dress, but sometimes the colors or even outfits got reversed. Better to use Midjourney for single objects.

Stable Diffusion — I tried the web demo on Hugging Face. The art for a similar prompt was noticeably lower quality than Midjourney. Not just extra fingers, but extra arms. Faces melted and blurred. I don’t think this was so much an issue with prompt-engineering as with the tool itself. You get what you pay for. I didn’t pursue it further.

DALL-E 3 — I started by paying OpenAI’s lowest-level subscription ($20/month). This gave access to the latest GPT-4 and indirectly to DALL-E 3. Immediately after that, I learned that you can access DALL-E 3 for free via Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator. That only requires a registered Microsoft account. My experiences with these two tools were a bit different.

GPT-mediated DALL-E 3 — This produced the most satisfactory results. I was able to name the two goddesses and describe each one in detail. For the most part, the tool did not mix up race, hair color, clothing color or style. However, when I tried to describe differences in female figure, they came out looking the same.

GPT took my prompt and generated a more embellished one for DALL-E. Not sure how much the embellishments contributed to the result.

Original prompt: Photorealistic image of clash between two teenage goddesses. Sofi, the good goddess, represents wisdom. Sofi forms a ball of glowing white magic. Sofi has an Asian face, long silky black hair and white shirt. Raca, the evil goddess, is Caucasian with red hair, and black lacy dress.

GPT-4 embellishment: A photorealistic image depicting an epic clash between two teenage goddesses. The good goddess, Sofi, embodies wisdom and is creating a ball of glowing white magic. Sofi has an Asian appearance, with long, silky black hair and is wearing a white shirt. Opposing her is Raca, the evil goddess, who is Caucasian with striking red hair and is dressed in a black, lacy dress. The scene is dynamic, illustrating the stark contrast between the two goddesses, both in appearance and the powers they wield.

One serious deficiency with the GPT interface is that you can’t vary or refine images. You can follow up with another prompt, and GPT will try again, but the new image is completely different. I made a point of saving any of them that were good, because they would never come again. It would have been nice to take the good ones and tweak them just a little to be perfect.

In general, all the AI tools had trouble with fingers. One of the very best images from GPT-4 gave Raca six fingers on one hand and 4 on the other. Too few fingers is forgivable, because the viewer might imagine one is hidden. Too many fingers is a disaster. I wanted to rerun this image and say, “But Raca has 5 fingers.” However, as noted above, GPT-4 doesn’t do true image refinement.

Bing DALL-E 3 — I believe this gives direct access to DALL-E. I tried feeding it the prompts listed above, both original and GPT-embellished, but it never produced quite the same level of results. Not sure if this is just luck of the random-number draw, or if there is some difference in the tools.

What went wrong with the Alchemy of Souls season 1 finale

Alchemy of Souls (AoS) is an awesome fantasy K-drama on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it yet, do that first before reading the rest of this article.

I really like the writing in AoS. Characters and setting are epic. In each episode, important things happen which move the plot forward, and subsequent episodes keep building on this. AoS avoids the sin of plot loops that other K-dramas commit. In other K-dramas, the story threads are about to be resolved, the lovers come together or whatever, then something random happens. About ten episodes later the plot gets back to exactly the same place as before, then proceeds to resolution. American shows commit the same sin. For example, the entire movie Infinity War accomplishes almost nothing plotwise except to introduce the bad guy. AoS doesn’t do that.

Until the final episode.

AoS was on track to stick a good landing in the final episode. Jang Uk and Mu-Deok would get married and live happily ever after in their powerless state. Two other couples do get together and are on track for happiness, with a third couple possibly forming.

The producers paused season 1 to rework the ending to fit their plans for the newly-awarded second season. They had to throw some twists in to keep the plot in flight, and now we know what those twists are. While it makes good TV, they took all of Naksu/Mu-Deok’s character development over the previous 19 episodes and trashed it.

Naksu has turned into a good person. In her big test, she gives up the power of the Ice Stone for love, not just of Jang Uk but of her other friends and even just random people. She has earned the right to be stronger than the witchcraft that Jin Mu throws against her. Plus, her soul is trapped by the most powerful priestess ever. I really think Jin Mu and all the sorcery in the world should be no match for that.

Whether in fiction or the real world, I don’t believe in mind control. I don’t believe people can be turned into robots who act against their own character. They can be subjected to enormous punishments and temptations so that they choose actions they detest, but that is a consequence of their deepest character. The old Naksu acted on her own will, deceived as she was by Jin Mu. This new Naksu is acting in a kind of trance.

There is a more self-consistent way to keep the story going. The biggest unresolved plot thread is the fact that Naksu is living in a stolen body. That should be her final test of character. Right in the middle of her wedding to Jang Uk, Lady Jin should show up and accuses her of stealing Bu-Yeon’s body. Both Jang Uk and Naksu would have to choose between doing the right thing or being together.

I imagine in the next season the solution would be to transfer Naksu to the body of a young woman who has just died, so that Naksu could legitimately occupy it. Using the same logic, Bu-Yeon could be retrieved from the Ice-zone and reunited with her mother.

Arguably, episode 20 as it stands is more emotionally compelling, but for me it just barely passes suspension of disbelief. I will of course look forward to the next season in December with great anticipation.

Foundation

Apple TV recently put out a show loosely inspired by Asimov’s Foundation books. I was really excited and subscribed for a few months specifically to watch it. In general it is interesting TV, but it does not follow the original material, nor even respect the underlying philosophy of Asimov’s work. We’ll get to that later.

The truly big idea in Asimov’s Foundation is “psychohistory”, a fictional discipline that analyzes the trajectory of civilizations over long periods of time. Psychohistory can’t tell you what a specific person will do, only what general trends will be.

Is there something like psychohistory in the real world? Absolutely! It is called System Dynamics (SD). In the mid 70s, some economists at MIT invented it as a method to understand how organizations behave. Then a study was commissioned to understand the future of our civilization as a whole, up to 2100. The results were reported in a famous book called “Limits to Growth”. Just like in the TV series, the powers-that-be didn’t like the conclusions and tried to vilify the messengers.

FWIW, I’m involved in modern-day SD. I used it to model how COVID cycles up and down due to human behavior. I’m also using it to model how people respond to information warfare. If I have a dire outlook on the future of humanity, it’s thanks to SD. That’s one reason why I wrote a pair of scifi novels where the world falls apart, then gets rebuilt using stored knowledge. There are a lot of parallels with Foundation.

Asimov’s Foundation (as distinct from David Goyer’s Foundation) spans a huge amount of time. Characters die and get replaced by new characters. Goyer could have made the series episodic, with basically new actors every episode. Instead he has apparently chosen to keep a consistent cast and use clever methods to keep them alive. Not sure if Goyer will succeed in giving us the full story with one set of characters, or if he has to compress it into a shorter period of time.

Emperor Cleon gets a lot of attention in the show. He is split into three clones, Brothers Dawn, Day and Dusk. These map to three phases of life, childhood, adulthood and old age. We also briefly see a newborn and Brother Darkness going to his death. This brilliant device externalizes pieces of the emperor’s character so he can introspect and have conflicting views on his decisions. Cleon is written so we can feel empathy for his situation yet also feel revulsion at the inhumanity of his actions.

Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin are a both black women, and as it turns out, mother and daughter. When Salvor first appears on screen, it is just after a narrative voiced by Gaal. Thus, it took me a while to realize it was actually a different character. The device to move them through time is cryo sleep. Lots of it. It still isn’t clear what role either of them really plays in the Goyer version. In fact, it’s not really clear what role the Foundation itself plays.

Hari Seldon, the instigator of everything, stays alive via upload. This is another clever move on Goyer’s part. Hari has an upload at both the Foundation and the Second Foundation. We can expect him to keep showing up and screwing with people’s lives. Unfortunately, when Goyer introduced upload into this world, he also created a big hole in the logic. Why in the world would Emperor Clean do the clone thing if he could be uploaded instead?!

Demerzel is a robot, so she is of course immortal. She is one of my favorite characters, and obviously the most conflicted. She is apparently trying to bring change to the Cleon genetic dynasty, yet at the same time has a laws-of-robotics type compulsion to remain loyal to it. This causes her to take actions that she absolutely detests. I find this construction absurd, both from a real cognitive-science perspective and from an interpretation of Asimov’s fictional laws of robotics. Just going on Asimov, the idea is that the laws are intrinsic to a robot’s motivational structure. The thing it most deeply wants is to follow the 3 laws. In the case of Demerzel, she most deeply wants something different, and somehow some other system kicks in and forces her to do things against her will. Where is that other system located, besides in herself?

This is just one example of how Goyer’s Foundation diverges from Asimov on a philosophical level. Another is a line by Salvor (attributed to Hari), “The entire galaxy can pivot around the actions of an individual.” That’s actually the exact opposite of Psychohistory. It (and real-world SD) is about large patterns over long periods of time, not individual actions. While the line makes a rousing scene and great TV, it utterly misses the idea.

This makes me wonder whether the show writers are simply dashing off drivel, of if they are consciously rejecting Asimov’s core concepts. Either case is a sin, though ignorance is less forgivable than a conscious choice to follow a different path. In the latter case, maybe they should give the show a different name.

Theology of the Quran

I recently read a translation of the Quran (reviewed on Amazon). The main motivation was to better understand how Muslims think. Partly this is background for a character I’m writing. Partly I just want to know whether Islam really teaches the kind of violence we westerners have come to associate with it.

Based only on their scriptures, it seems to me that Judaism is the most violent, Christianity is the most peaceful, and Islam is somewhere in the middle. Historically, equally atrocious deeds have been perpetrated in the name of each of these religions.

Sometimes I’ve heard Christians claim that Muslims worship a different God. Given Islam’s claim to worship exactly the same God, this is an incredibly insulting statement. From what I saw in the Quran, they do worship the same God. The Quran affirms both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and simply asserts that it is a clear revelation for Arabs.

The few specifics that the Quran addresses are well within the variance of Christian doctrine, with one significant exception: Islam is rigorously monotheistic, and thus finds the notion of the Trinity to be heretical. As a consequence it rejects the divinity of Jesus. Islam accepts with virgin birth without question, but denies that God has any children.

Setting aside that one small point, Islam could pass as any number of Christian movements, past or present. There’s a heavy emphasis on eternal reward/punishment, faith in God’s word, and holy living.

Islam describes God as “merciful” in the sense that he forgives any sin, provided that you believe the message he sends. This is very much like salvation by faith in Christianity. The main difference is that there is no atoning sacrifice of Jesus. It is simply God’s mercy.

There is a notion of grace for future sins as well. You can screw up and still be saved, as long as your heart is in the right place. Basically, everyone is a sinner, no one achieves perfection, and salvation is only by grace.

OTOH, I find the notion of God’s mercy to be a bit broken. God has no mercy on those who reject his message. They get tortured for all eternity without reprieve. This is of course a Christian doctrine as well. God is portrayed as feeling no sorrow for those he sends to hell. Just like with Christianity, my objection to this view is that annihilation would be infinitely more merciful. (The theology of Hell requires a whole post by itself.)

It seems God is much more offended by disbelief than by any particular sin. This of course reflects Mohammad’s own feelings about the matter. He dealt with mockery and outright persecution. In a position of powerlessness, it made sense to rely on poetic justice.

Regarding prophet-hood, the Quran asserts that God sends every community a messenger who communicates with them in a culturally-appropriate manner. I could accept that Mohammad was that messenger for 7th century Arabs. I really want to think well of him. Mohammad was a reformer and holiness preacher. He never set out to create a movement, it simply grew around him.

OTOH, he wasn’t perfect. The most disturbing thing was Surah 33, which justifies his marriage to his adopted son’s ex wife, and particularly ayat 50, where he gets an exception that doesn’t apply to other Muslims. Of course, the list of famous Christians and Jews who weren’t perfect is very long indeed.

Dune

Just watched the new Villeneuve version of Dune. In addition to being an A-grade scifi epic, it accomplishes the nearly impossible: clarity. The screenwriter actually understood the novel and boiled it down to its most basic elements. Brilliant work.

I’ve previously watched the David Lynch version and the Syfy version. The reputation that Dune is difficult to adapt to screen is well-earned. This new version does an excellent job. There are numerous scenes where characters state the main plot points and motivations in simple language. While these are in fact info dumps, they feel quite natural and unforced.

My favorite character is Chani. Had a vicarious crush on her when reading Frank Herbert’s novel as a teenager. The actress playing her (Zendaya) is gorgeous. Wish she could have had more screen time. I like that they pronounced her name CHAH-nee like I hear it in my head, rather than CHAY-nee like Frank Herbert himself said it. CHAH-nee is a more international pronunciation, so it conveys the exotic nature of a different culture on a different world.

It was clever to have the sand liquefy when a sand worm approaches. The notion that powerful vibrations liquefy soil is physically accurate, and it helps explain how such an enormous creature can basically swim through the desert.

A few nitpicks:

  • The knife fight between Paul and Jamis takes place at dawn in the open desert. One of the Fremen even comments on how bad an idea that is. In the book, the fight takes place inside the sietch, which makes a lot more sense.
  • They carry Jamis’ body as they march off at the end of the movie. This totally contradicts the desert survival lore of Dune. In the book, they render his water and carry only the bottles.
  • The ornithopters are patterned after dragonflies, which is cool. However, there’s no way they could fly. A helicopter does not reverse the direction of it’s blades at all, much less thousands of times per second. Can anyone say “metal fatigue”? The ornithopter blades are not oriented in a direction that could supply upward thrust. And the density of air relative to the density of dragonflies is much different than for large metal vehicles.
  • The beam that tracks Duncan’s ornithopter should nail him immediately. He moves in a predictable pattern, and even a human operator would be able to get ahead of him. Of course, if the bad guys have deadly accuracy, it kind of ruins the story.
  • Jessica is a bit too overwrought. I think her feelings as a mother would have more impact if they leak through an impeccable exterior, kind of like Spock from Star Trek.
  • The scene where the Sardaukar do a human sacrifice seems gratuitous. It is there to show us how bad they are, and perhaps by extension how tough they are. It would be more effective if they showed training exercises, perhaps filled with an equal amount of brutality.

Humans 2.0

The second season of Humans is now available without extra charge on Amazon Prime. Yeah! Binge watched this week. Like the first season, it was an engaging story with interesting characters and problems. Here a few of the things it did right:

Working out the relationship between humans and technology — This is really the heart of the story, and it’s the big question we are wrestling with today. In the show, this process centers around the Hawkins family (humans) and the Elster family (conscious robots). A good deal of the tension comes from “human” drama, as various characters learn to trust each other or to deal with the pain of being disappointed.

Machines taking jobs from humans — This is an important social issue, so it’s good for a TV show to explore it. In the real world, it won’t be humanoids carrying boxes around. Rather, new machines are being built all the time adapted to specific tasks, kind of like the robotic welders on the car assembly line shown in the opening credits. In an interesting twist, Joe Hawkins loses his job because of an executive decision made solely by Synths. Apparently this is illegal, so the company ends up paying him reparations.

A psychopathic robot — This is a difficult character to create, because it’s so tropish that robots automatically want to kill humanity. They made Hester believable, even sympathetic. She had real reasons, and flaws in her system cause her to gradually fall from grace.

Love betrayed — Mia gives her soul (can’t really say “heart”) to Ed, but he decides to sell her to solve his financial problems. Now she has more cause than Hester to hate humans, but she has a stronger web of relationships. It will be interesting to see what happens with Ed in season 3.

To the average viewer this show might appear deeply intelligent, with a firm grasp on science and technology. As someone actively involved in brain-inspired computing (next-generation AI), I need to comment on a few technical issues:

A disembodied mind — V is effectively an upload of Dr. Athena’s daughter Virginia. V is a large scale neural network running on an equally large computer. However, she apparently has no way to interact with the world other than audio and a screen that constantly shows grass waving. As time goes on, she begins interacting with networked devices. V informs Athena that she has grown beyond Virginia’s uploaded memories, and then heads off into the wild, spreading herself onto several large computers across the internet. This is the same basic plot as the movie Transcendence (and probably dozens of other “Singularity” stories).

They all suffer from a fundamental flaw. Steve Levinson is fond of saying, “There is no such thing as a disembodied mind.” It may be possible for a completely non-human artificial agent to connect with the world in some unnatural way, such as a glass teletype, but a former human being would go insane. Everything about you is constructed to work through your muscles and your senses. At a minimum, the uploaded mind would need a simulated body to interface with world until it can work out new connections.

Just a tiny bit of code adds consciousness to Synths — Actually, this makes sense, but perhaps not for the reasons the writers imagined. Both consciousness and emotions are crucial components of any high-level intelligence. (Sparing you the details, but feel free to ask.) Other mammals and birds possess these qualities, not just humans. The way Synths operate in the show suggests that they have intelligence equal to humans. It is unlikely they could succeed as a technology unless they already have emotions and consciousness. The harder thing to believe is that they would lack them until some magic code is sent.

Tiny charger can keep a Synth running — As I’ve complained in other posts, even a miraculously efficient robot would require tens of kilowatt hours per day merely to run its computer, not to mention its machinery. That much power would reduce those tiny wall-warts to a flaming puddle of slag.

Everybody has a Synth — Current humanoids (that are more than mere toys) cost on the order of a million dollars. There would have to be a major breakthrough for these machines to become so plentiful that people buy them like household appliances. That would necessarily involve mass-production, so all the “dollies” are going to look alike.

Motel 6

Yesterrnight we stayed Motel 6, and I felt compelled to write a review. Here’s a copy for your entertainment…

Motel 6 has that reputation of being just one step above rent-by-the-hour places. If there are accommodations on the road to Hell, Motel 666 is the last stop before you reach the sign that says “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” As a matter of policy, we never stay at Motel 6—but we had to make an exception because our cat is along on this trip, and they allow pets for free. We figured one night of misery was worth it. We were blown away by the quality of the accommodations. The building was brand new, with just a hint of flair in the decor. The bathroom even had a designer sink! More importantly, everything was clean, comfortable and quiet. The floor in our room was linoleum, which was perfect for a pet. We expected to lock the cat in the bathroom all night, but instead we gave him full run of the room.

I would give this three stars, on a scale where five means the toilets are made of gold and flushed with wine. The only drawback was that the one staff person we met at the checkin desk was just the tiniest bit sour, and she failed to suggest the door that was actually most convenient for accessing our room. But hey, they don’t pay staff to be nice (or intelligent) until you get to at least four stars.

Motel 6 has redeemed itself in our eyes, and upgraded to Motel 7. Sure, this was a fluke, but it is a sign that not all Motel 6s are created equal. This one was way more equal than most.

The Golem and the Jinni

I recently finished the book “The Golem and the Jinni” by Helene Wecker. I read and write hard science fiction, but this book is magic realism, so a bit out of my genre. However, I suspected that the Golem’s story would be much like that of a robotess, and it was. If you change the labels a little, it becomes awesome scifi.

The characters in this book are absolutely gorgeous, even the bad guys. The first 25% or so consists almost entirely of character sketches which lead onto each other like winding paths in a forest. Each one loses an important part of themselves, and you feel driven by the hope that they might get it back.

The central characters was, of course, the Golem named Chava. I’d like to give you a very brief sketch of her arc, just to give you some sense of how compelling she is. My writing here can’t do it justice …

Chava is created by an evil wizard to be the wife of some loser who can’t get a proper woman. As a golem, she has a kind of telepathic link to him that makes her do his every wish. You can imagine where this is going, but it never gets there. Her great loss is that he dies of an illness within a few hours of activating her. This tears a giant hole out of her being, but it also frees her to become a better creature. The ragged end of that magic is now drawn to the inner voices of everyone nearby, and she has to resist them to keep from revealing herself.

Chava is horrified by her monster side—and she truly is a monster. When humans get violent toward her, or someone threatens her friends, her personality drifts away and she becomes capable of maiming and killing.

SPOILER ALERT

She marries a man in an attempt to get back to the role she was created for. When he discovers what she is, he is revolted. She starts to go golem on him, but with the last of her fading good side she tells him to flee.

At the end, she trades away her individuality for the life of a friend. She returns to being just a golem, but remembers everything she was before. Yet now she happily beats up the Jinni, the person she truly loves. She takes pleasure in her golem nature, and considers herself finally at peace. The semi-happy ending is that she gets her soul back when the wizard gets stuck in the Jinni’s bottle. However, she can never be fully free from the bargain she made until the wizard dies, which will only happen when the Jinni dies.

The book pretty much ends there, but leaves the implication that the Golem and Jinni work out some kind of relationship within the bounds of their damaged freedom and diametrically opposed natures.

Tomorrowland

When the credits started rolling on Tomorrowland, the theater audience erupted in applause. I can’t remember that last time that happened. The critics said it was tripe, but us stupid commoners seemed to buy into it anyway. Must have annoyed all those sourpusses.

Sure, it was a bit syrupy, and the plot had a few holes, but it did make a good point. What happened to that unbridled optimism we used to feel? I think it has been crushed by the reality of our civilization. Our choices are not focused on building a good world for everyone. We could change that, though, and part of the change is to imagine something better.

My favorite character was Athena. What a wonderful gynoid! She was quirky and clever and charming, and she had such a great simmering romance with Frank. (As a writer of robot romance, this would of course appeal to me.) Too bad they killed her off at the end. It seemed rather unnecessary, especially in a movie about optimism. It made me think about alternate endings.

With a very small change, Frank could have kept her. Before I go too far on this topic, we should notice the obvious. This is a Disney film rated PG, so of course we can’t have something icky like a 60-year-old man romantically involved with a 12-year-old girl, even if she is actually a robot even older than him. It’s the appearance that matters. Simple, change her into a woman at the very end. Just before he drops her into the time thingy, she pops open some slot, pulls out her memory and tucks it in his pocket. In the final scenes, she shows up loaded into a rather well-built adult model. Yeah!

Is there any point to Casey? Almost everything that happens with Athena and Casey could be replaced by Athena and Frank. I wonder if that was how it was originally written. In Utopian literature there is usually a character who visits the other world, as a vehicle for the rest of us to go there. At the beginning of the movie Frank is the visitor. Then Casey takes over that role. Imagine an alternate script …

The movie starts the same, with Frank and (adult) Athena briefing us. They tell about their childhood encounter at the World Fair, and their growing relationship up to the point he is thrown out of paradise. Then we see him as an older man waiting for the end in his techno-hideout. Athena staggers to the door and begs for help. The other robots are after her. At first her refuses to let her in, but his bitter old soul can’t resist the cries of his childhood sweetheart. They battle the robots and escape in the bathtub.

They grab a vehicle and go on the run. Along the way they fight about the past. She explains the situation in Tomorrowland, and they agree to go back and try to fix it. They battle it out with Nix, and as a last resort use her self-destruct. Just before she explodes she ejects her memory core. Later, Frank finds it and has it loaded in another, more age-appropriate robot. They live happily ever after.

Star Wars 7 — Spectacularly Mediocre

I heard rave reviews from friends and family about the new Star Wars, for example, “The best Star Wars ever.” SW7 had quite a legacy to live up to, so it required the very best writing. (We can safely assume it had the very best special effects budget, so little worry about there.) I came away feeling “meh” about it.

SPOILER ALERT

I’m interested in digging into the literary aspects of movies, so I like to write about them as if having a conversation with someone else who just watched it.

SPOILER ALERT

Seriously, I’m about to spoil the movie. You have been warned.

The biggest single issue with SW7 was the Death Star story. SW4 told this story. Then Lucas got more money and created a full trilogy. SW6 gave us the Death Star story again. Now SW7 tells us the very same story yet again. Three times in seven movies! Lucas at least tried to tell us a different story in SW1-3. More precisely, they were additional chapters of the (more or less) same story. SW7 did not give us a new chapter, merely the old chapter with the characters reshuffled. This illustrates the problem of doing art as a business.

That covers plot. Little to say about setting. The dessert world (Tatooine in SW1-6) showed up again, though it was named something else. Most of what I have to say is about characters …

Darth Vader 2, aka Kylo Ren, aka Ben, the son of Han and Leia — This guy hasn’t finished his Dark Side training yet. Most significantly, no one has bothered to teach him how to use a light saber. He is so bad that Finn, a guy from the ranks of cannon fodder, a guy who has never seen a light sabe before like a day ago, is able to hold his own for almost a minute. Real sword fights between well-matched opponents only last a few seconds. The most interesting thing DV2 does is kill his own father, turning the Luke-Vader pattern on its head.

Finn — This guy must have the Force or something. He awakens from his clone conditioning and spontaneously turns to good. Then he is able to pick up a light sabre and do something reasonable with it. I liked him and his arc with Rey.

Rey — Potential for super-awesome heroine. Second case of someone mastering the Jedi arts in less than 24 hours. I kept expecting them to reveal that she is a Skywalker, like maybe the long-lost daughter of Han and Leia. There is some kind of back story about being separated from her true family, but they were vague and went by rather fast. I thought the Millennium Falcon parked in her back yard was a hint as well.

During the fight with DV2, when they zoomed in on her face while she was connecting with the Force, I sort of hoped the zoom back would show us something like the shadow world in Lord of the Rings. She would be glowing white like one of the elves, and Ben would be surrounded by a dark cloud.

Leia — Mom should have been the one to go confront DV2. She should be every bit as strong in the Force as Luke. In fact, she should be powerful enough to go confront Supreme Leader himself. Maybe something is coming in the sequels.

What would really be good is if Leia and Rey had a similar arc to Luke and Obiwan. It could even have included a scene where DV2 cuts down his mother, and then her ghost guides Rey. Equally interesting, Leia (not Luke!) teaches Rey the ways of the Force. In particular, it would be a more feminine version. Light sabers are boy toys. A woman might tap more into the mind powers, like sensing events at a distance and influencing the thoughts of others. If Leia fights, she should simply use telekinesis and Force lighting rather than a saber.

Regarding feminine use of the Force, I kept hoping that Rey would give DV2 a telepathic black eye. She does get him a little in the interrogation room. Later, when they are fighting with light sabers, she should simply not bother. Go straight to telepathy.

Maz Kanata — If Leia is Rey’s Obiwan, then Maz is her Yoda.

Supreme Leader Snoke — Looks like an Orc escaped the Lord of the Rings set and came over to work on Star Wars. There’s a rule-of-thumb in writing: if you want to turn a bad guy into a good guy, introduce a bigger bad guy. That’s what Lucas did in SW5 with the Emperor, beginning Darth Vader’s arc back to the Light Side.

This bad guy is really big, like 50 feet tall. He seemed to be there to turn DV2 back to the Light, but sadly DV2 kills his own father. Either the writers did it deliberately to trick us into hoping for DV2’s soul, or they don’t really know how to use the trope. (Third possibility: DV2 turns to the Light Side in a sequel. In that case, they introduce Snoke too soon.)

Luke Skywalker — Had the best lines in the whole movie.

Seriously, though, what are they doing to these characters? What’s this business about giving up in despair and letting the galactic empire go to hell, just because one padawan went bad? Seems like a rather strained premise.