M.A.N.T.I.S.

Social Forums Non-Philosophical Chat
1

I’ve ran out of stuff to watch. I wasn’t really into science fiction until after returning from Iraq, except for Dune and Stargate.

Once I got back from Iraq, started knocking out series after series, some if them twice. I saw M.A.N.T.I.S. growing up, less because I was a fan, more because like, we had two channels. Its that or golf. Only thing I remembered about it was he was a black guy, paralyzed, and in the final episode traveled to the future, where some giant AI eyeball was the overlord of everything, and he defeated it by plugging his suit into it and counting backwards.

I don’t remember anything else.

So, I just finished episode 2, season 1. Some crappy little town in Washington State is targeted by a platoon of rogue navy seals, each one dishonorably discharged for whatever… they decide to go mercenary, take over a island in the bay, wear green camoflague repelling from trees. Yep… trees, in their little terror camp… of course I’m blown away.

M.A.N.T.I.S. sends his bicycle delivery guy to infiltrate it, pretends to be their communications specialist who never showed up… all are ex seals, no one knows what he looks like?

So he can do this job with ease, cause there us fucking no point to having a radio guy, when he us the only one with a radio. Honestly, why have a radio guy if you have only… one radio?

So the bicycle delivery boy gets dressed up in black, like a ninja… goes on the raid, using rubber rafts to look all tactical, and raids a nuclear missile warhouse guarded by three MPs. I can’t get a good look, but it looks like the soldiers had AK47s for whatever stupid reason. Navy Seals knew the layout better than the MPs did. Navy Seals also fell for the old reach around the corner trick, one having his gun taken away… wasn’t even a quick grab, remarkably slow. Nobody knew the difference between cover and concealment, M.A.N.T.I.S. just walked around cargo vans, picking the rogue seals off one by one… occurred to no one to shoot through, or under the vans.

M.A.N.T.I.S. did this mission, like, third time ever wearing the glitchy, poorly powered suit. Didn’t call the military, didn’t call the cops, paralized guy is like “yeah, I’ll take on a highly trained bunch of rogue navy seals.”

WTF?

To boot, M.A.N.T.I.S. has a secret underground submarine base that only he knows about, with a super advanced elevator only he knows about in his research lab. He and… how many workmen? Half the city has to know, construction guys will talk even with non disclosure agreements.

Your a paralyzed man, in a secret elevator only you know about, and it gets stuck. Your fucked. Fire Marshall detects you got it, cause your electric room has “secret elevator” written on it’s own box, your severely fucked, especially when he sees you didn’t go by code, preferring your own set up.

2

They made Dune a TV series? How close is it to the books?

3

Two actually, both miniseries, and one movie… they nearly made a second movie recently, but the director backed out to make the movie “Battleshits”

I um… I had links to the trailers of all that as my signature on this site, as my signature for the longest time.

Dune (full)
m.youtube.com/watch?v=ueYYVRTWmjY

Children of Dune (full)
veoh.com/m/watch.php?v=v15333746Hftb3qDy

Children of Dune is actually Dune Messiah and Children of Dune combined into one series.

It takes you right up to the point Leto II launches his coup and declares the Golden Path, already starting his metamorphosis into a sandworm. From that point on, nothing has been filmed, as God Emperor of Dune is extremely difficult to film or grasp, as it’s more a philosophical text with story inserted around it’s themes, than the other way around. I’ve gone by the user name “Troll Emperor of Doom” out of honor of him before… where I would systematically troll every troll on the site, adjusting my psychology to compensate for their antics. The troll and anti-troll rolled into one.

I had done a shitload of research on the series, but the family members who currently own the copyright are a bit dull, so can’t release much. They even stopped a high school play based on Dune in Spain from going forward.

As to the Brian Herbert and Anderson’s prequels and sequels, not worth your time. I will say, despite the bad writing, the way they finished up Herbert’s unfinished series does fit the guideline he tool from Carl Jung’s “The Red Book” as far as elements go (most of the story themes taken from the iconography, or locations around San Francisco- did some hands on research) it’s still controversial given the shitty writing on their part, it’s hard to convince people, no really, the Jews and Duncan Idaho were supposed to be that late in the story line, he borrowed the concepts, didn’t originate them.

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I cut my Scifi teeth on Dune, it hooked me. I agree about Brian’s efforts. He did not grasp his father. You are so right about philosophies, every time I had to put down a book, I did a lot of thinking. I was 14 yrs old when I discovered his universe, it changed me slowly. I was quickly developing into a kid going down a bad path. I will forever be grateful to the school librarian that knew I was ditching class and thought it was better to introduce me to his works and others rather than turn me in and have me on the streets. She and I talked about Dune and other books. Eventually I embraced learning even though it was never under formal systems. I have to thank Herbert and her.

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Check this out: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky%27s_Dune

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It sounds like he had no clue and that those that watched had no clue… Sad

7

I kept bitching to Frank’s grandson Meritt about the lack of commentary on Frank’s philosophy in Dune, so they yielded a while later and came out with a philosophy of dune series from some philosophy professor… not too insightful, reads like the editors of PhilosophyNow put it together, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Ummm… According to his grandson, Avatar is a unauthorized rip off of another Herbert Novel, The Jesus Incident…

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jesus_Incident

What really bugs me is when it comes to Dune, people think it was a commentary on Heiddagar, it wasn’t. It was a commentary on Nietzsche, using the imagery of Jung’s Collective Unconscious. He made the theme of each book a theme Nietzsche advocated, and at the end, or the next, utterly demolished the argument… a few decades or thousands of years would pass, another Nietzschean ideal asserted, then smashed. Brian and Anderson really didn’t grasp this… their notes had a basic outline, but didn’t grasp the dialectic conflict of pushing Nietzsche’s ideas forward and then smashing them. It was that tension that made the work go forward on such a deep level. It started off on the heroic revolution if a AntiChrist overthrowing the old order in Muad’Dib, but had Duncan Idaho take the much longer, reflective path in the return, having to experience countless lives dying impulsively for an array of ideals he never really understood all that while in those aeperate lives.

A lot of the themes we’re taken straight from Mesopotamian myths, including the fremen, Leto’s encounter with the worms in Jacuarutu, his rivalry with his Aunt. It was the original story of dying, entering into the underworld, and a resurrection. Again, nobody notices this. I wish the Herbert’s would publish Frank’s notes already.

8

That explains why Avatar felt familiar