1984

Movies

Appropriately, the movie 1984, based upon George Orwell's 1949 novel of the same name, came out in 1984.  I had read the book a few years earlier and so went to see the movie. Fortunately the real world was better than that portrayed by the movie.  

Another year based movie was 2010, the sequel to 2001 Space Odessey. Being a big science fiction fan, I had read all of Arthur C. Clarke’s novels including 2010 that had come out in 1982. After the disaster in 2001, they send another mission to Jupiter to find out what happened to the first mission.  After reactivating the HAL 9000 computer (side note, HAL is IBM minus one letter) in the original spaceship, they found the reason HAL’s misfunction, a programing error caused a conflict in HAL’s Artificial Intelligence program, causing HAL to choose the mission over the life’s of the crew.   In the end HAL sacrifices itself to save the crew. In this day of 2023, there is new concern about the role of AI in society with Congress having hearings on what should be done.   

 It was a good year for science fiction movies with… the release of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai which was just a good fun adventure movie.  Then there was Dune based on the 1965 book by Frank Herbert novel by the same name which I had read.  After the book Dune I read Herbert’s Dune Messiah (1969), Children of Dune (1970) and God Emperor of Dune (1981).  The main problem with the movie they tried to put all the books into one movie.  In 1984 to coincide with the movie, Herbert published the next book in the series, Heretics of Dune which became a best seller. I of course rushed out and bought a copy.   There was The Last Starfighter in which a teenager playing a video game gets selected based on his video game skills and is whisked off by an alien in a spaceship to fight a war in space.  There was The Philadelphia Experiment in based on the urban legend of a U.S. Navy experiment in 1943 going awry sending two sailors forward in time to, yes, the current year, 1984.    Then there was Star Trek III: The Search for Spock in which Spock dies and is brought back to life with the help of Kirk and Bones, all a bit farfetched, and they all looked older than ever, you would have thought that far in the future, 2269, they would have solved aging. 

But arguably the best sci-fi movie of ‘84 was The Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, a cyborg assassin sent back in time from 2029 to, yes again, 1984 to kill Sarah Connor, whose unborn son will one day save mankind from extinction by Skynet, a hostile artificial intelligence.  Kyle Reese is a soldier sent back in time to protect Sarah, which by a simple twist of fate, is the father of the Sarah’s son who the terminator was sent back to stop.  Even better, it was the technology from the Terminator that was found in 1984 that help build Skynet. Some interesting paradoxes.  Meanwhile back to the future when in 2023 Congress decided to let companies, who promised they will, self-regulate AI use.  Yeah, sure they will, didn’t they watch the movie?

There were a few other notable non-science fiction movies. There was the adventure-romance-comedy Romancing the Stone in which Joan Wilder, a romance novelist, goes on a wild and funny adventure to save her sister whose husband was murdered in Columbia.  Joan travels to Columbia where she meets Jack who helps her find her sister and a treasure.  Of course Joan and Jack fall in love. All great fun.

The Karate Kid with Ralph Macchio was and is still one of my favorite movies.  It is the story of Daniel LaRusso a teenager who moves with his widowed mother to Los Angeles where he is harassed by bullies, one of whom is Johnny, who is the ex-boyfriend of the girl that Daniel is interested in.  After getting beat up, Mr. Miyagi, teaches Daniel karate which in the end Daniel uses to defeat his nemesis, Johnny.   I loved it, it reminded me of when I took Karate classes back in 1974, only I didn’t end up with the girl.  Flash forward to the future when in 2022 the much older Daniel and Johnny are again pitted against each other in a new TV series.

Music

There wasn’t much for me new music wise in ’84, I liked "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper and "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues" by Elton John well enough but not such that I bought their albums.

TV

In TV Dynasty overtook Dallas for the number one show, neither which I watched, I never could watch Dallas for every time I saw Larry Hagman playing JR I pictured him as Major Anthony Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie.  After only watching it occasionally the past couple of years I started watching Cheers pretty regularly.  I still liked Magnum, P.I. but the A-Team was getting a little repetitive and a bit corny.  Star Trek and Kung Fu reruns were still on.

Christmas