BEST FICTIONAL AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

With the American Presidential race in it's final stages, here's a countdown of some of the most entertaining fictional US screen Presidents.

12. President Marshall - Air Force One

Having been in about 50 per cent of everything that was awesome in the 1980s, Harrison Ford sadly spent most of the 90s with his lip quivering, telling people to get out or off of various things, usually his house but in this case, his plane.

Despite Ford’s increasing shitness at the time, here he is in a movie penned by Andrew Marlowe (End of Days, Hollow Man, Castle) and starring a villainous Gary Oldman so it’s kind of a movie you can’t fuck up.  And true enough, even though I sit there not wanting to like it, I do.

But it’s just the idea of seeing the guy who inhabited the role of Tom Clancy’s right wing wet dream Jack Ryan now be an action hero President (as Ryan actually became in Clancy’s books) that makes me uneasy.

11. President Beck - Deep Impact

Not much for the character to do here other than make some speeches to calm the doomed masses but Morgan Freeman rocks it hard with this performance.  Most of us would vote for him anyway.
The really important thing about this, of course, is the notion of an African American President.  It seemed like a daring casting choice for Mimi Leder in 1998.  And I went to see this at age 13, thinking that a black President seemed unlikely.  10 years later, I found that the American electorate could very pleasantly surprise me.

10. President Shepherd - The American President

Written in a coked-out haze by Aaron Sorkin, this romantic comedy quickly mutates into a decent political drama.  Michael Douglas is great as the President(otherwise he wouldn’t be on the list) but what’s something of a distraction to post-West Wing audiences is Martin Sheen as his Chief of Staff.  Every time they’re on screen together, I find myself confused as to why Sheen isn’t the President.

If nothing else, this is a great historical treat for West Wing fans.  We see the idea for the TV show coming together in Sorkin’s wonderful drug-addled brain.  Many characters can be picked out right away as prototypes for the show- elegant, funny and very tall woman as press secretary, flawed but trustworthy Irish Chief of Staff and a young idealistic curmudgeon in the mix who keeps reminding the old guys what it means to be a Democrat.  (Special mention for Anna Deavere Smith, who was in this, the West Wing and even Dave- Hat Trick!)

The truly proto-Bartlet scene is Shepherd’s speech in which he calls out his Republican challenger in a stirring war cry.  Awesome.

The challenger is played by Richard Dreyfuss, fairly appropriately, as some years later he would portray Dick Chaney.

9. President Whitmore – Independence Day

Well, it’s a cheesy, stars and stripes-waving explosion fest but a damn entertaining one.  So what better President to have in this alien invasion movie than Bill Pullman’s idealistic ex-fighter pilot who’s bad at lying.

Warrior enough for the gun nuts in the audience but suitably guilty and hesitant enough about his war-like acts to still be sympathetic to the rest of us.  Even liberals almost cheer when he utters the right wing orgasmic catch phrase ‘Nuke the Bastards’.  Almost.

His first lady, Mary McDonnell, would later herself become President in the pretentious but addictive Battlestar Galactica re-imagining.

Rather than post the corny scene from the movie, here's Pullman putting a different spin on the same speech.

8. President Stillson (Possible Timeline) – The Dead Zone

Like a warped version of the West Wing, we get to see Martin Sheen (the first Uncle Ben on our list) play a different kind of President.  Bartlet gone mad?

The minds of David Cronenberg and Stephen King come together here to make a truly haunting horror story with help from a great central performance from Christopher Walken, as a man who sees the future, and Michael Kamen who provides one of his best scores.
When the possible future of Greg Stillson becoming President is revealed, it’s finally realised what a dangerous individual he is.  He’s got to be stopped.

A lovely little coincidence in this is Walken’s character talking about the headless demon in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, whom he would later portray.

7. President Dale – Mars Attacks!

A beautiful contrast to Independence Day, released the same year, Mars Attacks! just took the piss completely.  And a suitable foil to that year’s President Whitmore was President Dale.

Jack Nicholson as the President. Holy Jesus.
However, if you find yourself thinking how someone with a demeanour like Nicholson’s (which is great for LA detectives, Gotham City arch-villains and…well, Lucifer) could get elected President then I would take a look at the last 4 out of 5 Republican Presidents.  Yeah, I’m excluding Gerald Ford coz he was just funny.

With Glenn Close as a Nancy/Hillary hybrid, the stage is set for a pretty fucked up White House.  And that’s before the planet Mars decides to attack.

This is a fantastic sci-fi comedy. My kind of movie.

(Clip contains spoilers)



6. President Muffley - Dr. Strangelove

The man who sums up the tone of Dr. Strangelove, Muffley is a sycophant on an international level trying to stop the insanity which he presides over as president from bursting forth globally.

Whilst, it can be argued which of Peter Sellers’ three performances is the best here, President Merkin Muffley set something of a benchmark for political leaders in satire.

5. Unnamed Presidents - Escape From New York/LA

John Carpenter doesn’t seem to hold a lot of hope for the future. If I had once been married to Adrienne Barbeau and lost her then neither would I.

My favourite director’s take on the US Presidents of the future is pretty bleak.  The wonderful Donald Pleasence plays the first one, combining the very electorate-friendly geniality of Loomis from Halloween with the megalomaniacal menace of Blofeld from You Only Live Twice.  And as unlikable a character as he is, there’s a slight satisfaction in seeing him gun down Isaac Hayes’ The Duke.  In the first clip here, we see the President being tortured by the Duke.

The second President that Carpenter gives us is an unstable Bible-bashing nutcase, an eerie prediction of George W. played by Cliff Robertson – the second of two Ben Parkers on our list.  Terrifying, hilarious and incredibly entertaining.

Both of these actors are sadly not with us anymore.

4. President Dave(Fake President Mitchell) – Dave

It’s such a ridiculous concept, you just have to go with it.  This 1993 play on Dumas’ The Man In The Iron Mask, shows us what could be when a corrupt, uncaring Republican President falls into a coma and his conscientious Capraesque doppelganger takes the reigns.

With some disturbing scenes which effectively show us a coup d’état, it’s important to consume that grain of salt in order to get the message that writer Gary Ross is constructing something of a fairytale.

3. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho - Idiocracy

A film that’s finally getting the respect it deserves, Idiocracy is a broad comedy that actually has a disturbingly important point to make- mankind’s getting dumber.

And in the idiot-populated world of tomorrow, an ex-porn star has become President.

            Terry Crews can often be seen dispensing baddies of various non-American backgrounds in Sylvester Stallone movies but is equally well known for his comedy roles.  He’s brilliant and utterly hilarious here as the larger than life, slightly terrifying President of the crumbling land of buffoons.

And, as this list is based on entertainment value, he makes the number 3 spot.

There's very few clips out there that haven't been ironically re-cut by some gobshite, so here's the trailer.

Honourable mention to President NotSure.

2. President Benson – Hot Shots! Part Deux

Having served as Admiral in the first Hot Shots!, Lloyd Bridges had worked his way up to the top by the time of the sequel.  A wonderful example of the cartoon-like rules that the Abrahams/Zucker team brought to their psychotic worlds, Benson is a President whose war-battered body is mostly made up of random textiles and the body parts of his fallen enemies in the field.

A testament to Bridges’ sheer lovability, every other word that comes out of his mouth in both Hot Shots! movies is gut-bustingly funny.

Same story with clips, I'm afraid.

1. President Bartlet – The West Wing

There was only ever going to be one winner.  Had this list been based on performance as President, rather than entertainment value- Bartlet would still be number one.

A hybrid of the values Aaron Sorkin wanted from a President and Martin Sheen’s own liberal Catholic(almost a contradiction in terms) personality, Jed Barlet’s an erudite New Hampshire native of privileged background but with an enormous sense of devotion to people of all classes.
In the same way Boston Legal’s Alan Shore is the superhero of lawyers, Bartlet is an equally impossible figure that represents all the right virtues and even flaws that make a man perfect for the Oval Office.

Sorkin’s shows can be criticised for the long-winded speeches and convenient competence of the characters but he’s trying to teach the American people something with them. The lesson is that this is how administrations should act.

It’s idealised for a reason.  Let’s see the White House be all it can be.  A ridiculous fantasy, yes.  But most of the best stories are.

Our clip sees the Democratic President at his best, addressing a room after a member of his staff has asked him how he intends to beat a Republican challenger.

DEFINING SPACE OPERA - And confusing myself in the process

By Ciaran McNulty

I warn you.  We’re about to get nerdy.

I recall an argument from my teenage years.  Amidst the other kids’ conversations in the Dundalk school yard that day about football, night clubs and girly bits, there could be heard a heated discussion about which Sci-Fi creation was better- Star Wars or Star Trek.  I stated that there couldn’t be an argument as Star Wars was far better.  I still feel there is no argument but for completely different reasons.

For, as my love of Star Trek has increased tenfold since then, these days I find comparing the two is unfair as they now seem to me to fit into two different genres.  Star Trek is absolute Science Fiction, whilst Star Wars is not quite as easy to define.

Trek takes ideas from present technology and then leaps forward with them, offering examples of where such tech could take us in the future, for better or worse- surely the definition of Sci-Fi.

Star Wars, however, does nothing of the sort.  It’s a fable that could as easily be set in Medieval times with swords and horses and it is in outer space with lightsabres and starships.  The technology has no baring on plot- even something like a Death Star destroying a planet could be translated, in another time and setting, as a battleship or army attacking a community.

Therefore, the films Star Wars needs to be held up against are fantasy flicks like Lord of the Rings or myth-inspired fare like Jason and the Argonauts or Clash of the Titans(More on Harryhausen in a later blog)- stories that are life lessons shrewdly fed to people throughout the centuries in nifty dramatic packaging.

Of course though, Star Wars has been lumped into another genre as well, hasn’t it.  For it was in connection with George Lucas’ tale of Rebels, Stormtroopers and Jedi that I first heard the term ‘Space Opera’.  If Star Wars has a place in Science Fiction, it is in this sub-genre, where it actually sets a near-perfect example.

Space Opera, it would seem, can be a broad term as technology can be a vital part of the story or it can be incidental.  All that really defines the Space Opera is the setting and the nature of the story.  A dramatic and exciting tale which chooses the stars as it’s setting.

An example of Space Opera with a purer Sci-Fi emphasis can be seen in Firefly.  Here we have a definite Space Opera, with spaceship battles/chases aplenty but at the centre of it all, an examination of how Western and Eastern cultures could homogenise in the future.

Now, that’s some Futurism and not the sort of thing we’re going to get with something set in a galaxy far, far away.  For whilst Star Wars can play political allegory with it’s votes of no confidence in Chancellors and transformations of democracies into evil galactic empires, it is never a prediction of Earth’s future and makes no leaps of imagination with how our present culture and technology will evolve.  It happily distances itself from the plausible.

And of course, Firefly went for realism by cutting out sound effects in the vacuum of space, not in keeping with the flash-bang of your typical Space Opera.

Which brings us to the other end of the genre.  Whilst the term Space Opera has something of a grand and refined sound to it, many examples of this type of movie are anything but (just check out some early 80s efforts from Roger Corman).  The gleeful lack of fidelity to scientific plausibility in these trashier Space Operas is what sets them apart from the likes of Hard Sci-Fi, as the use of space adventures become nothing more than an excuse for violence and nudity.

However, in order to gain the moniker, all kinds of Space Opera - from Battle Beyond the Stars to Battlestar Galactica - must fall into that category of a ripping galactic yarn.  What quite a lot of them share with Star Wars is their adaptability to any other environment where, in this case, they just happen to take place in outer space.

So, what actually qualifies as Space Opera?  Well, John Carter seems a prime candidate.   It strays away from Star Trek-like pure Sci-fi and delves into the more morality-tale oriented realm of Space Opera with it’s emphasis on mysticism and the allegory of European-Americans and their interaction with Native Americans. However, is this potential Space Opera really set in space?  Not really.

It seems, creator of the source material, Edgar Rice Burroughs was less concerned with Carter’s method of getting to Mars than later authors would be, instead content to use astral projection, bypassing the space between Earth and Mars.

JOHN CARTER OF MARS: Not quite Space Opera but still remarkable.

And where Space Operas triumph is the fun they have on the journey between the planets.  The starscape is a playground for screenwriters wherein to have lazer battles between spaceships and even tense (albeit slow moving) extra-vehicular activity in space suits.

And proof again of the broad nature of the genre is it’s over-lapping of other genres.  Movies involving Superman and Green Lantern are obviously in the superhero genre but also clearly delve into Space Opera.  Green Lantern’s climatic scenes see a normal man endowed with super powers of galactic origin going toe-to-toe with a gigantic alien enemy at the centre of our solar system- without a space suit. And very importantly, such fare tend to be planet-hoppers of movies.

The more varied planets and spaceship environments in a Space Opera the better.  After all, travel from one location to the next means more outer space action on the way.

It’s a difficult genre to define and proof perhaps that pigeon-holing movies is just a silly idea.  Remember though, that this thought process stemmed from my anger at people comparing Trek and Wars.  In order to prove that they shouldn’t be compared, I’ve discussed the nature of certain types of Sci-Fi entertainment and how some of it opposes the other thematically.  Either way, I just love talking about this shit.

But roughly 900 words later and I’ve confused myself.  What the hell is Space Opera? Maybe it should just all be called Sci-Fi.  Agree with anything I said? Or think I’m talking crap? Feel free to comment below, whilst I crack open a beer and watch David Lynch’s Dune.  Yeah, that’s another one.
Check out the opening scene of DUNE!
Follow Ciaran McNulty on Twitter

UNIVERSALLY ADAPTABLE - Why some remakes are justified and others….are not.

By Ciaran McNulty



We remember them from a childhood haze. On Halloween masks. In cartoons. And sometimes even echoed in the puppetry of the Children’s Television Workshop. Existing in the same world as jack-o-lanterns and broomsticks, they permeated our julevile ritual of giddy, gothic pageantry every October.

And whether we knew it or not, these childhood images of Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula all came from the same place. Ever since the 1930s, Universal Studios has defined our horror monsters. That film studio’s classic movie interpretations are not only responsible for certain characters becoming iconic linchpins of the genre but have proved to be our most popular versions of the characters. The Universal Monsters have always been with us.

The seemingly ever-present nature of the Universal Horror Monsters throughout the decades comes, first of all, from the sheer ground-breaking brilliance of those early sound films from Universal but also the characters’ flexibility within the genre. The movie versions of Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy and the Invisible Man lend themselves to re-interpretation just as freely as the original works of Stoker, Shelley and Wells leapt off the page and into 1930s movie theatres to the horrified delight of audiences.

For, as beloved as the early Universal movies are to so many, there’s a certain joy we take from seeing these beastly characters re-imagined and re-packaged with methods not available to the early sound film makers. Is this because the originals are so strongly iconic, so engrained in the public consciousness that we know a remake can’t hurt them? Because we know, no matter what film bares the name, the original (as far as English-speaking sound productions go) will always be the original and never be replaced? After all, as much as fans may delight in more content featuring their favourite characters, the principle motive for these remakes is simply to keep selling a proven product- to trade on the name.

This is precisely what I find so unsettling about the current cinematic climate. Content seems second place to the title of the film, so long as that title is somewhat iconic or just vaguely well thought of. When a sequel to The Fast and The Furious is titled Fast and Furious I ask myself, ‘Are they hoping people won’t notice it’s a different movie?’

"Ssshh....no one will know."

And indeed, if studios are intent on merely selling the title of a film without caring about what that film contains, why not save themselves some money and just re-release the original?

Well, of course, this is where the slight difference in content comes in. For these remakes have shiny new cast rosters- famous, current, sexier and often younger than the originals. Why watch Chris Sarandon seducing virgins with his pointy teeth when you can see a buff Colin Farrell do it? And who is to even know the film isn’t an original if one is of a certain age and pays attention only to a certain part of the main stream? You hear Kevin Bacon was in Footloose and you think, ‘I don’t remember him in it.’

This means the studio has won. They’ve pulled off the con and convinced you that you’ve just seen Assault On Precinct 13, even though Austin Stoker was nowhere in sight.
And don’t let them convince you it’s a new adaptation of the source material either. If that’s the case, why reuse the name Total Recall instead of We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, or a new original title? It’s marketing on the strength and popularity of someone else’s work. This would be okay, if we were talking about a sequel, but here’s a re-do of that first director’s work- a film that effectively says ‘That’s great but we can do it better’. Somewhat disrespectful.

Audiences, for the most part seem not to mind. We like all-new polishes on things. ‘Oh, Bond’s back? And he’s not so much like Bond now, as much as he is like Bourne? Whoooo, reinvention, I like it.’

"Bourne, James Bou.....wait, I messed that up."

And having to sit through a grainy old thing from the 70s when you can get a new version with CGI and six-packs, hardly seems like that big a decision for today’s desensitised movie-goer who thinks they’ve seen it all. Likewise, they’re hardly going to take the time to read subtitles when someone’s very kindly re-shot the movie in English for them (see- anything Swedish).

And so it becomes clear that I am somewhat angry about the remake, reboot and re-imagining filled movie market these days. So, why then, do I not get upset when my beloved Universal Monsters get a make-over?

Well, we are talking, for the most part, about characters that occur in literature and are therefore always going to be open to any kind of interpretation. Nobody but Peter Jackson read Tolkien and saw it exactly the way Jackson saw it, hence why many people enjoy the Ralph Bakshi animation. And one of my favourite group of characters, Dumas’ Musketeers have received so many adaptations that the fun simply comes from seeing who will fill the roles of the various French heroes this time. Unless we’re speaking about Paul W.S. Anderson, in which case, why bother casting when there’s all that CGI and Asian martial arts to bring to 17th Century France.

The Musketeers- Some stories never get old.

However, in asking this question, I find myself rethinking my view on certain adaptations of the Universal Monsters. Perhaps, in order to set the movie apart from the original and allow it to get by on it’s own steam, a change in title should be used more often. And I mean more than attaching ‘Mary Shelley’s…’ or ‘Bram Stoker’s…’ as a prefix (though in both cases, the prefix accurately denotes a greater fidelity to the original text). Instead, the likes of Curse of Frankenstein from Hammer serves more as an example of retelling a tale but not treading on any toes.

Either way, as I despair at the lack of originality in modern cinema, I do sincerely hope they never stop revisiting those great Monsters from the Universal stable. As they keep creeping out of their crypts and laboratorys, I’ll keep watching. And also, keep hoping that, somewhere in our future – just maybe – there’ll be a Monster Mash.
Follow Ciaran McNulty on Twitter