‘Robopocalypse’ joins a proud tradition of techno-apocalyptic tales, stretching from high-flying Icarus, to Frankenstein’s monster, and to many a giant radioactive creature who has crashed the streets of Tokyo. And then, of course, there’s the Terminator.
It’s very strange – several years ago, I was in the running for the ‘Young Frankenstein’ musical. Kristin Chenoweth was going to do it, but then she backed out because she got ‘Pushing Daisies’ on TV, and then, the next day, I went in for my final-final audition, and I saw Megan Mullally standing there.
‘Frankenstein’ is a work rich in possible meanings, so the horror-show interpretation is as valid as any.
We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.
I’m primarily thought of as a rocker, and certainly ‘Frankenstein’ had a very dramatic power rock image. It was almost a precursor of heavy metal and fusion. But I also love jazz and classical and if there’s one common thread that runs through all my music, it is blues.
I would compare my ‘Frankenstein’ to Cronenberg’s remake of ‘The Fly.’ The monster in the original Fifties version of ‘The Fly’ was a crude, anatomical combination of man and insect, whereas Cronenberg’s version exploited knowledge of DNA to depict him as a transgenic chimera.
I hadn’t seen ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ until high school or maybe even later than that. It’s really one of the great movie experiences where you think you know what it’s going to be, but it’s so much weirder and so much better than anything you could’ve imagined. It’s so full of these striking, powerful images.
According to Jewish legend, only the very wisest and very holiest rabbis had the power to make golems, animated servants of clay. Strictly speaking, the golem is not in the same class with Frankenstein’s monster, because the golem is neither alive nor dead. He is, rather, the ancestor of all robots.
Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it.
You see those guys wearing baggy pants, descendants of the parachute pants, wearing an odd, weird Frankenstein haircut. It all comes out of Peter Lorre.
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