Here is why you should believe in Zardoz

[Rev. Rye]

Never saw that movie. I'm just wondering why crates of ammunition weren't spewing out.

Yeah, you clearly never watched Zardoz. If you did, that would easily be the least of your questions.

I mean, seriously, the opening scene, just before this, involved a guy with underwear on his head and a Sharpied-on moustache and goatee bouncing around the screen like a DVD screensaver, giving a brief prologue that explains nothing and might even imply that the viewer is a fictional character.

It might make more sense if you see a production of The Tempest and realise this is a warped, coke-fueled adaptation. Yes, that is seriously my interpretation of Zardoz and I'm surprised that nobody else seems to have figured it out.

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Prospero’s Island, like the Vortex, is a place ruled by a magician (and, as Arthur C. Clarke said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic), but as fascinating as it is at first, things are not what they seem, since the Vortex is ruled by a cruel supercomputer, vaguely like Prospero, the vengeful former Duke of Milan. The film begins as the play does, with a major character being stranded on this unusual place, essentially turned into an island by the periphery shield. And yet, in this case, Caliban and the stowaways’ roles are inverted. The stowaway is not the object of vengeance, but the monster Caliban, here called Zed, and the upper class people who called him monster were already there. Frayn and Friend are Stephano and Trinculo, with a little bit of Prospero for good measure. But Prospero does not burn his books at the end. The coup they have planned has come to pass, and, at least in their case, it’s all for the best; despite the Tabernacle’s best efforts, their plan is slowly killing them.
This came from an Anglotopia article I wrote about the film a few years ago.

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