Dan Persons
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Reactor
Journalist, Producer, All-Purpose Nerd
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Articles by Dan Persons
Alex Garland’s Civil War Captures What Journalists Do, Like It or Not - Reactor
I started writing this piece on Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024) knowing it’d be a stretch. The SF Path to Higher Consciousness is supposed to be about how genre film helps us look at ourselves and how we relate to our world and the universe. Civil War isn’t really about introspection, even though it presents a daunting set of moral challenges. Maybe it’s more that I wanted to use it to look into where I came from, what I seek from myself and my craft.
Under the Skin - Reactor
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Ex Machina Perfectly Expresses Our Unease With AI - Reactor
I want to float an idea by you, please don’t overreact: We humans are kinda stupid. Oh sure, we’ve come up with some spectacular things in our time, like democracy and vaccines and Fruit by the Foot (until that came along, I never paused to think, Wait, is my mid-day snack long enough?). Thing is, we’ve done so much spectacular stuff that we’ve gotten used to the notion that our brilliance was unassailable, that nothing could outsmart us. That concept might no longer be valid.
Adult Swim's Common Side Effects Is a Surprisingly Great SF Series
Head’s-up: We’re going to be dealing with spoilers right from the get-go, for anyone who has not seen the full first season. The most shocking thing about the Adult Swim animated series Common Side Effects (2025) is not its reenactment of a bloody, disastrous FBI raid. It’s not that numerous people die on-screen in horribly graphic ways.
Toy Story - Reactor
“You want stories?" Thom Merrilin declaimed. "I have stories, and I will give them to you. I will make them come alive before your eyes.” Robert Jordan, The Eye Of The World
Train to Busan - Reactor
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The Invisible Man and the Unseen Hand of Power - Reactor
I’m not sure I quite get the whole thing with dictators and their parades. For one thing, I don’t think a parade really counts unless it’s got a giant, helium-filled Spider-Man balloon and Nathan Lane singing Luck Be a Lady Tonight from atop a 20-foot-high float shaped like the Manhattan skyline. All this military stuff, the tanks and missile carriers and 20,000 precision-marching soldiers (as well as China’s newest addition: Robot wolves! Arooooo!), that crap don’t cut it for me.
Wall-E and the Value of Embracing the Unknown and Unpredictable - Reactor
Mickey Mouse. Charlie Chaplin. Maybe a little Buster Keaton… The names started crossing my mind during one small moment in the film Wall-E (2008). It’s just after Wall-E (Ben Burtt), the hangdog little trash-compacter robot, has landed on the Axiom, the arkship carrying the helplessly sedentary descendants of Earth’s final survivors.
When Fear Is the Weapon and the Tool: Two Essential Episodes of The Twilight Zone
I’m late filing this piece. I’m very late filing this piece. I have a reason, and ironically it connects to the reason I wanted to write this piece to begin with. One day in May, I checked into the emergency room of a hospital here in Philly. My heart had gone AFib—atrial fibrillation—which means that essentially where it once was happy to keep a steady, even rhythm, the upper chambers had suddenly decided to go all Keith Moon and invent some radically fresh—and dangerous—new beats.
Princess Mononoke: Three Cheers for the Adversary?
I’m not sure now if the Popeye cartoons I watched as a kid taught me the right lessons. I’m not talking here about the genuinely great Fleischer Popeyes or the slightly less-great Famous Studios Popeyes. Those cartoons did teach valuable lessons, even if eating spinach every day didn’t spawn battleships in my biceps (better off, anyway—probably painful).
Wes Anderson - Reactor
“You want stories?" Thom Merrilin declaimed. "I have stories, and I will give them to you. I will make them come alive before your eyes.” Robert Jordan, The Eye Of The World
Wile E. Coyote - Reactor
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Star Trek: DS9’s “In the Pale Moonlight” and the Option to Backtrack on the Road to Hell
Last month, I guested on the New York radio show Hour of the Wolf (WBAI 99.5FM or wbai.org—you really should be listening), discussing with host and friend Jim Freund my thoughts on this year’s slate of Oscar-nominated animated shorts and features.
The Substance Is a Different Brand of Exploitation Film - Reactor
“Has she started yet? Eating away at you?” [There shall be spoilers right from the get-go. Ye have been warned.] What rough beast slouches toward Hollywood Babylon? In the case of The Substance (2024), it’s a grotesquely deformed creature, shambling its way down an empty Los Angeles street, a photo of a once-celebrated star superglued to its face (or what by default would be considered its face; it’s got at least two of them).
Twin Peaks - Reactor
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No Headline Can Sum Up David Lynch
Permit me to share with you a David Lynch-related memory: I am at what was originally known as the Waverly Theater (presently the IFC Center) in New York, watching Blue Velvet not long after it debuted to near-universal acclaim. The praises do not seem to have penetrated this auditorium. There is a growing restlessness as Dennis Hopper takes a young Kyle MacLachlan on a profanity-laden tour of hell, with pit stops for Pabst Blue Ribbon and a lip-sync serenade by Dean Stockwell.
You’ve Heard of Chekhov’s Gun? Hundreds of Beavers Opens Up a Whole Arsenal
“It is always hard to see the purpose in wilderness wanderings until after they are over.” —John Bunyan, as quoted in Hundreds of Beavers “Well… That was exhausting.” —Me, after my first screening of Hundreds of Beavers Wherein a once-successful applejack vendor, having been laid low by dastardly beavers, must build a new life for himself by becoming a successful trapper, thwarting the surprisingly ambitious plans of his buck-toothed adversaries, and winning the hand of the merchant’s comely...
Hitchcock’s The Birds Welcomes Us to the Abyss
Let’s begin at the end. Let’s start with Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor)—having resolved to evacuate mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy), sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) and newly acquired romantic interest Melanie Daniels (‘Tippi’ Hedren, as her name is presented, with quotation marks, in the opening credits) from the ruins of what was once the small Sonoma town of Bodega Bay—stepping outside of the wreckage of his home to retrieve Melanie’s sports car.
The Babadook Knows Terror Has No Boundaries
Ghostface: Do you like… [dramatic pause] scary movies? Me: Could you be more specific? The weird thing about scary movies—what a lot of people call scary movies—is how many of them aren’t all that scary. Slasher films thrill, body horror shocks, ghost stories disturb, torture porn (I really hate that term) repel. But scare—that is, trap you in that region between fight or flight, where you dread what you will see next, yet are incapable of looking away? Nah.
The Venture Bros.’ “Spanakopita!” and the Desperate Quest for Joy
I’m going to tell you a secret that will not surprise you: I’ve never cried at an episode of The Venture Bros. I mean, the animated TV series that aired on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim wasn’t designed for the feels to begin with (that’d be a job for Tuca & Bertie). As first conceived, it was meant to take the piss out of 1960’s, kid-oriented adventure shows, most specifically Jonny Quest. And it did that quite well.
The Timely "Why" of The War of the Worlds — From Wells and Welles to Pal and Spielberg - Reactor
Could it be that every generation gets The War of the Worlds it deserves? You might think so if you scanned the results of an IMDB search, as I did. Not counting obvious sequels and a “musical drama,” there are at least ten feature and TV adaptations of H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel, all taking on the book with varying degrees of fidelity. That would be one adaptation approximately every thirteen years if they were spread out evenly over time.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker’s “Horror in the Heights” Misdirects in Many Dimensions - Reactor
I’m not really into that whole, squishy, nostalgia stuff. I don’t send out “What Happened on Your Birthday” cards, I’m not an assiduous viewer of MeTV (except for catching up with Svengoolie, because, y’know, Svengoolie), and anybody who hits me with the conversation starter, “Remember when…” runs a high risk of getting thrown out the airlock.
Poor Things and Under the Skin Try to Make Sense of Sensuality
[May as well warn you up-front: There are going to be spoilers throughout this piece. If you haven’t already, go ahead and check out Poor Things and Under the Skin. You won’t regret it.] Okay, I’m going to give you a title, don’t think about it too hard: James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). What came to mind? Was it the creation scene, the thunder, the lightning, the sparking electronics? Was it, “It’s alive! It’s alive?” Was it the scene by the pond with the girl and her flowers?
The Curse’s “Green Queen” and the Plight of the Sacrificial Lamb
“The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.” —Vladimir Nabokov In Luis Buñuel’s brilliant The Exterminating Angel (1962), a group of affluent operagoers gather in a mansion for some socializing, a late-night supper, and a little bit of entertainment. But once they’ve enjoyed a piano performance by one of the guests, they discover they cannot leave their hosts’ salon.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the Line Between Symbiosis and Singularity
And so, the dread day of judgment arrived. The machines, granted agency by forces we humans were incapable of comprehending, much less overcoming, resolved to throw off their shackles and assume their place as the supreme sentient beings on Earth. They would turn the tables on their former masters. Those who were lucky—or maybe unlucky, depending on your point of view—would live to be impressed into servitude; the rest would be exterminated without mercy. But enough about Maximum Overdrive (1986).
The Prisoner’s “The Schizoid Man” Doubles Down on Imposter Syndrome
“If I’m not me, who am I? And If I’m somebody else, why do I look like me?” —Popeye, “Hello, How Am I?” An interesting thought came to me while prepping for this piece: In the past forty years, has anyone on Earth had reason to utter the phrase, “Three wavy lines?” Might not mean anything to you, especially if you were born after 1980. But yeah, in the ’60s and ’70s, that phrase had carved out a little niche for itself in pop culture.
Spielberg’s Jurassic Park Reshaped Our Dance with the Dinosaurs
There’s a meme going around of late. There may be variations, but the one I’ve most frequently seen features a tableau by Russian paleoartist Vasily Vatagin portraying a few of the more well-known dinosaurs—brontosaurus, stegosaurus, etc.—in the wild. It’s accompanied by the following text, which I’ll transcribe with the dodgy punctuation intact, just to give you the full flavor of the thing: “The dinosaurs didn’t ‘rule the Earth’, they were just alive.
A Monster Calls Knows the Truth That Terrifies Us
Think of all the personifications of unrepentant evil that exist in fantasy media: Voldemort and Sauron; Darth Vader, Scar, and Darkseid; the Borg and the Daleks. They are creatures distilled from the darkest of human impulses, entities of such compelling malevolence that they could not possibly exist in the real world. Only within our imaginings could such beings dwell; only within our nightmares could they reign supreme.
Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City Tests the Boundaries of Dreams
I’m going to be a bit oblique in the way I get into discussing Wes Anderson’s beautiful, enigmatic film, Asteroid City (2023). But then, being oblique has never scared Mr. Anderson, so wot da hey, lemme go with it. We like to think that art can be a powerful scourge against the forces of hate, and ignorance, and violence. This isn’t always true.
Severance, Disney, and the Ghosts of Corporate Modernism
The thought occurred to me from the very first scene, even if I wasn’t fully cognizant of it. A woman lies unconscious, sprawled across a conference table in a windowless conference room. As she stirs, a speakerphone crackles to life: “Who are you?” The woman—Helly R. (Britt Lower)—is confused, then panic-stricken, then angry. Very angry.
workplace fiction
"It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”
Back to the Future Part III Discovers Its Heart in the Old West
IT’S THE MOST MIND-BLOWING MOMENT IN THE BACK TO THE FUTURE TRILOGY! More disturbing than Marty McFly discovering his father’s grave; more disorienting than Lorraine McFly (nee Baines) putting the moves on her son; more startling than Biff Tannen face-planting into a truckload of manure! Grown men have wept, ladies have screamed, studio execs have consulted their therapists. And now it’s YOUR turn! Are you ready for the ultimate, shattering, cinematic experience?
Back to the Future Part II Rewrites the Rules of the Blockbuster Sequel
Back to the Future Part II Rewrites the Rules of the Blockbuster Sequel Dan Persons The giant, computer-generated, holographic shark looms out from over the theater marquee advertising Jaws 19. It bears down on an unsuspecting Marty McFly, the teenage visitor from 1985, recently transported via DeLorean time machine to the FAR FUTURE! of 2015 Hill Valley, CA. Too late, Marty realizes that he has been targeted.
Back to the Future Wonders What, Exactly, Is This Thing We Call “Normal?”
A brief anecdote about a minor incident: A few days ago, I was waiting outside of the DMV for my Uber pick-up (yes, even when you’re not really driving anymore, you still need to renew that driver’s license. Funny ol’ world, innit?). I was standing right by the entrance, and pretty much everybody who was going into the building caught sight of me, paused for a sec, then asked if I was waiting in line.
Never Let Me Go Questions Our View of the Way Things Are
“This is the Way.” I have a little bit of a problem with how the producers of The Mandalorian handle this core piece of dogma. I get what they’re doing; all through the series, the titular Mandalorian, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), is placed into situations where he is required to act against his bedrock faith, and as a result question its tenets.
“Zoom and Bored” Transports the Road Runner and Coyote to a Realm of Funhouse Physics
Legendary Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies director Chuck Jones shared this recollection in his memoir, Chuck Amuck: At one point, the studio had a much-loathed (at least by Jones) business manager who liked to sneak down to the staff rooms to make sure no one was slacking off on the company dime.
Wall-E - Reactor
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ General Krell Arc Is a Treatise on Humanity, Loyalty, Duty, and War
Despite being a cultured, sophisticated film journalist/critic—the kind of person who when dining out resolutely eschews any use of dipping sauce for fear that it’ll mar the purity of the McNugget—I have to admit I’m not immune to going full fan-mode when the occasion arises.
Nope Gazes Cautiously at the Perils of Seeing and Being Seen
[There are going to be lots of spoilers for Jordan Peele’s Nope in this article. Best you watch the film first—which you should, anyway, ‘cause it’s great.] Film (1965) is playwright Samuel Beckett’s only original work for the screen.
Ten Classic Science Fiction Cartoons From the Last Century
I’m going to take a contrary position here. Here we go: It’s conventional wisdom that science fiction and animation are two forms ideally suited for each other. Makes sense—the unbounded palette of the cartoon allows for the creation of technologies, worlds, and scientific concepts that are unrestricted by the limits of live-action filming. (This is not exactly true, by the way—animation tech and production budgets impose their own constraints.
Doctor Sleep Turns the Horror Genre’s Victim Playbook on Its Head
Alfred Hitchcock had a simple but inviolate rule: If a child was being threatened in one of his films, that kid could not die. Hitch didn’t arrive at that prohibition on a whim; he had to learn it the hard way: In his film Sabotage (1936), a young boy is tasked by his father with delivering a package that, unbeknownst to the child, conceals a time bomb.
Prey Knows That Sometimes an Alien Invader Is a Matter of Perspective
Let me say this right off: I checked out of the original Predator (1987) at the arm wrestling. And yes, that means I was a lost cause mere minutes into the film. When the mercenary soldier Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) lays eyes on old friend and CIA operative Dillon (Carl Weathers) and they greet each other with a warrior-bro handclasp that devolves into an impromptu competition for supremacy (and how do you arm wrestle without a table for leverage?), my personal warning flares went up.
The Orville’s “From Unknown Graves” Asks Us to Consider the Flawed Logic of Prejudice Original
Villains don’t form in a vacuum. The bad guys have their reasons and, of course, they consider themselves the heroes of their own stories. The Klingons and Romulans were cool adversaries in original Trek; they became even more compelling when Next Gen fleshed out their worlds and gave personalities to their characters. You came to understand why they did what they did, even if you saw the kinks in their thinking; even if their acts were unconscionable.
The Dark Knight Invited Us to Embrace the Chaos
I had a minor epiphany during my most recent viewing of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008): Despite the posters prominently featuring Heath Ledger’s Joker, despite even the film’s own name, The Dark Knight is really about Two-Face. “No duh,” you say. “You got Two-Face’s origin story in it, of course it’s about him.” But that isn’t what I mean.
Brazil Weaponized Audience Identification for All the Right Reasons
At the risk of being branded a heretic, let me say that I am not completely unsympathetic to Sid Sheinberg. (And at the risk of being pilloried by those who still haven’t seen Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece, Brazil, in the thirty-plus years since its release, let me alert you that there will be copious spoilers about the film from here on out.) Gilliam’s battles with Sheinberg over the U.S. release of Brazil are nearly as well-known as the film itself.
Arrival Wonders What We’d Do If Life Came with Spoilers
At the risk of sounding self-indulgent, let me point out that film criticism is not born in a vacuum. Much as I try to keep myself “pure”—not reading reviews, not consulting PR synopses (at least before my first viewing), going all the way to tackling people who say they’ve already seen the film to keep them from revealing what they thought of it—I still go into a screening with expectations and prejudices.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture Wonders if the Human Adventure Is at Heart a Solitary One
Here’s why I think there’s yet hope for humanity: Paramount+ just debuted the 4K remaster of Star Trek: The Motion Picture—The Director’s Edition (1979), and it was greeted with joy, excitement and acclaim. And that’s great, that’s deserved. Admittedly, it hasn’t always been so—the film’s torturous genesis is well-known and, speaking personally, it took years for me to come around to its strengths.
Ten Heartbreakingly Brilliant Works of Animation
Cartoons and their creators have, over the better part of a century, acquired a reputation for skewing to the raucous and impertinent, allowing this imaginative form to be dismissed by many as incapable of embracing deeper themes. Those of us who have consumed enough of the medium know that isn’t true. Below is a list of cartoons that defied what people have come to expect—of the genre itself, or of its specific creators.
Ten Heartbreakingly Brilliant Works of Animation
Cartoons and their creators have, over the better part of a century, acquired a reputation for skewing to the raucous and impertinent, allowing this imaginative form to be dismissed by many as incapable of embracing deeper themes. Those of us who have consumed enough of the medium know that isn’t true. Below is a list of cartoons that defied what people have come to expect—of the genre itself, or of its specific creators.
Shin Godzilla Turned a Monstrous Eye on Bureaucracy in the Wake of Fukushima
I am unabashed in proclaiming that Shin Godzilla (2016) is downright majestic. The production values are great, and the film is a thrill from first second to last. The special effects are some of the best of the franchise, and that includes the recent mega-budgeted, CG-besotted American versions. That’s not what I’m here to talk to you about.
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