Monday Movie Miscellany - The Fly

Today's movie is the 1986 production of The Fly, an excellent must-see film for any sci-fi/horror/thriller aficionado. The main thing that I took away from this film is wow, I had no idea Jeff Goldblum was such a stud back in the day. And that he's totally had work done on his nose since then. But more importantly, the film has many a valuable lesson on life, love, and proper laboratory procedures.

I'll start off with some questions the movie raises on life and love via Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis' on-screen relationship. For one, how much is too much when someone's personality starts to change? And how much is too much when a person's physical appearance has changed so much that the ew factor kicks in?

Verdict: Geena Davis, you go above and beyond when it comes to sticking around. That is some serious love you have, being able to hug Jeff Goldblum after he got super mean and all (physically) nasty. I don't think I could care for someone enough to hug them after they threw up digestive juices all over themselves. My first reaction would be to help them clean up.

Another important life lesson to learn from The Fly: relationships can be hard, and they can bum you out sometimes, but drinking won't make you feel any better. Well, maybe it will for a moment, but then you run the risk of trying to compensate for your pain by doing something brash and really dumb. Like deciding the best time to teleport yourself is under the influence and then unknowingly letting a fly into the telepod at the same time. We all know where things go from there.

All that from life and love aside, I think the movie has the most important things to say when it comes to proper lab procedures. So what's the moral of the story kids? First, keep your lab area clean! Probably good idea to keep your lab separate from your living space, too. So there are no flies to contaminate your projects. An equally and possibly even more important point would be don't drink and do science. Especially when it involves serious stuff like taking apart your entire cellular structure and putting it back together.

This also highlights the importance of attention to detail in your experiments and very thorough testing. Again, especially for super serious projects which involve taking apart something at the cellular level and putting it back together. As an aside, man would I hate to write the code for a teleporter. No way would I want to be responsible for a piece of software that must be absolutely perfect, with people's lives depending on it.

And holy cow would I not want to test it. Now the movie wasn't explicit about this, but it seems like Jeff Goldblum didn't start out with teleporting smaller animals, he jumped straight to teleporting a baboon. Come on. Everyone knows when you're testing for something that will eventually be used for people, you start small and work your way up. Obviously he should've started out with lab mice, or better yet, yeast! Makes for way less of a mess when it comes to cleaning up your failures too. Although it is way more endearing when Jeff successfully teleports the baboon, and it runs out the door of the telepod and leaps into his arms.

Altogether, it's a pretty awesome film. There's way more skin falling off than I would have cared for. And bloody stumps, and exposed, bloody flesh. But if gore is your thing, you'll be happy. If not, just be aware that it'll happen. Even with the blood 'n guts, it's fantastic. Go see it.