OK, explain this to me...(spoilers)

From what I remember, the novel was written in the 60s... expecting it to make sense may be optimistic :).

The movie is one of my 'guilty pleasures', but I still don't really understand what half of it is meant to be about :). I haven't read the novel, but I believe the 'merged' character in the end was a Christ-like hemaphrodite, not a cave-man: I think Moorcock was upset about the changes they made there.

so here's my thoughts...

frank (jerrys brother) is addicted to a drug that he used to write the ad's for, he also got his sister hooked against her will.

the weird death traps are there because jerrys dead dad was paranoid about his work and died a recluse

the plastic bubble room was one of the traps

i have no idea about ms brunner...none at all

the final being looks like jerry because in the last scene of them moulding together he says 'no WE are going to be the new messiah', basically she had always expected to be the dominant force within the new being but jerry decided otherwise. she was present in her reproductive organs and brain only.

i think he looks like a caveman because it is meant to symbolize new beginings

jerry never uses the napalm because the plan goes wrong.

its a really bad film saved by some fantastic characters and sets in my HO.


thanks

It was a bit of a guilty pleasure. I thought the script was very funny, with some great one-liners, but, if anything, I thought the sets were a tad unconvincing, as were the "psychedelic" effects.
I think the caveman at the end represented the project going wrong, perhaps because of Jerry's involvement, owing to his overall pessimism about such things, maybe.

First things first, you have to read the book; that explains a lot, but it's an unconventional narrative with lots of ideas that Moorcock (and others who ended up writing Cornelius stories) experimented with.

Looking for meaning is going to be fraught with danger; basically the whole concept is less about continuity and more about the introduction of concepts, ideas and subversion.

While "The Final Programme" is the first in the series, its end doesn't affect the rest of the novels and stories. Jerry is portrayed as black in one novel, his sister reappears, his mother is - against all odds - a cockney char woman with an accent you could cut with a knife; frankly, it's all really about the whole experimentation of the late 1960s, psychedelia and apocalyptic outlook.

Jerry is also regarded as the final incarnation of Moorcock's "Eternal Champion", but is revealed in the end to be a harlequin, or powerless semi-tragic, semi-comic figure to whom things happen rather than being a character in control of his destiny. He's a conduit for the ideas of the many authors who have written about him.

Oh, and as for the caveman, I feel this was Fuest trying to be ironic. I wish he'd just stuck with the original ending of the book. This point really disappointed me and was an unnecessary ending to a movie which, while flat and odd in parts, was quite fun.

But don't take my word for it, here's what the author has to say about the character:

http://www.novymir.com.au/terminalcafe/lighvein.html