It’s not just the shell, it’s what’s inside that counts
I didn’t think they would screw it up that bad, but they did.
Now let’s pause a bit and say, before we start caterwauling about this version versus that version, that there may be some real cultural differences that would cause thematic or idea loss in transfer to another culture. Having paid lip service to that, I will go on to say some of the biggest themes in the original was lost not by cultural differences but by misunderstanding or just plain ignoring them.
Yes, there are spoilers here. Many spoilers.
The live-action 2017 Ghost in the Shell was already steeped in controversy even before the film was released in the casting for the main character, Major Motoko Kusanagi. A Japanese or at least Asian actress should have played the part, the criticism goes, not a white actress in the Hollywood mold no matter how much box office she’d pull in. Still, if you have to hire a white woman, you could do a lot worse by not casting Scarlett Johanssen, given her performances in Lucy, Her and Under the Skin. Plus, that voice – there’s no mistaking her for anyone else.
Mamoru Oshii, the director of 95 Ghost, has said it the Major is a cyborg with an artificial body so it doesn’t matter what she looks like on the outside (or who plays her). If that’s the case, why is she even female? And why so voluptuous, especially for an androgynous being? It could just turn out that if you’re going to put a human brain into shell, it might be better psychologically to match gender characteristics to the sex of the donor. Some people might not be able to relate to a robot or android or cyborg who doesn’t look human, but then there’s the problem of the “uncanny valley” wherein an android or robot or cyborg looks mostly human but not quite, thus eliciting feelings of revulsion among other humans [cf. Polar Express]. (Honest Trailers went ahead and censored the Major’s fake nipples in the 95 Ghost video apparently because they looked too real and elicited not revulsion but other physiological reactions, at least for the men. For women, I dunno. I wonder if anyone has even asked them.)
But that’s not the first question that should’ve been asked, and that question is “Why do you need to do a live-action movie in the first place?” Hollywood is going full speed ahead on this and damn the torpedoes. Disney’s got Beauty and the Beast this year, Jungle Book last year, Lion King in the future, and many, many more in the farther future. Wasn’t the original good enough? Is there some shortcoming in the original animation that disappoints and leaves viewers unfulfilled? (In the case of Jungle Book, yes; the other two, no.) Plans are afoot to do this live-action baloney to another Japanese anime, Akira (and if there are gods in this universe, please don’t let that happen). Just because you have the technical capability to redo your animated films into “reality” doesn’t mean you should. Go find or write a new, original story and dazzle us with that.
Alas, Hollywood finds it easier to remake something than start from scratch for the big movies. It speaks to the financing and risks associated with making big films, but also people who grew up with watching the original films saying “I can do better.” Turns out, that’s not always the case.
The 1995 Ghost in the Shell was a thrilling ride into future, with human-machine interfaces and technical gizmos and the electronic cityscape. The Major is a combination of human brain in a cyborg shell, and she begins wondering about her past and her future. In the meantime, she and her colleagues in Section 9 are trying to find out who’s hacking personal memories and making supposedly free-will humans do their bidding. Along the way, the film gets philosophical on what it means to be human in the face of encroaching technology.
In Japanese anime (and the manga sources for many of the films), time is set aside for philosophical introspection, often in slow, meditative scenes without dialog. We’re given time to breathe and ponder before the next action sequence. Not so in in an American film. Introspection is outward, not inward, usually explored with another character even if that character is never seen again.
We get little introspection in 17 Ghost as opposed to 95 Ghost. Gone from 95 is the scene where, as the Section 9 crew loads weapons and prepares to face the enemy, Togusa asks why he, as a mostly human mundane police detective, was recruited by Section 9. Because they need the outlook from a different perspective, he’s told. Gone is the scene when the Major is riding a slow ferry along a canal, taking in the cityscape as music plays in the background. She spots a woman who looks amazingly like her in an office building. It’s just the Major’s expression telling us she has many, many questions about herself, but not a word is spoken. In 96 Ghost, the Major never really finds out about her past, or if she even has one. In that film, the past isn’t as important as the future.
In one of the main scenes of 95 Ghost, the Major goes diving in the river. Batou, one of her Section 9 colleagues, asks her why she does it if it frightens her and she says fear is one reason why; not many things can scare a cyborg. They get philosophical, and at one point he Major speaks in an odd voice. The scene is in 17 Ghost, but bereft of philosophy from the secondary voice. The conversation is just surface, no introspection.
The 2017 Ghost also is afflicted with a Hollywood disease of Everything Has To Be Explained. Example: I was perfectly satisfied with the knowledge that a small band of rebels managed to steal the plans for the Death Star; I didn’t need to know who they were or how they did it. But now we have an entire movie explaining it. I was OK with knowing Han Solo was a smuggler and a rogue, but now we’re going to have an entire movie to explain how he got there. (More profits for Disney being another motive, of course).
17 Ghost is all about the Major’s backstory, something 95 Ghost only hinted at. She finds out she’d been lied to about her origins. She’s egged on by a mysterious hacker who’s also killing the scientists involved, as it turns out, in the creation of the cyborgs. This leads to the big, bad corporation that made her first by murdering her and stealing her brain. She’s the 99th effort to meld mind and machine, the other 98 being failures, some of them her friends who were killed in the same raid she was. So the CEO becomes the real bad guy — big cliché No. 1– and she has to turn rogue in her search for Truth – big cliché No. 2. (On a motorcycle – big cliché No. 3.) We also find out how Batou, a colleague from Section 9, lost his eyes and had them replaced with super-tech lenses. I was satisfied not knowing in 95 Ghost; indeed, I thought he’d had the procedure done voluntarily.
One thing we – meaning Hollywood – should have learned by now is that translating anime into live action has some real problems. So it is here: The Major’s body looks heavy and awkward, as opposed to lithe and limber in 95 Ghost. (Both versions make the same mistake, though. When the Major lands on a roof, it partially collapses under her because of her weight. But why? By the time the movies are set, newer materials should be available, materials that are strong yet light and flexible. Remember, when the Major starts one of her super-human runs, she’s got to accelerate all of that mass. Yet neither movie shows that as a problem.)
The neon-lit megacity with tall skyscrapers, huge blocks of residential towers, small open-air food vendors and giant advertising holograms has now become its own cliché. Blade Runner started it in 1985, though Japanese manga had been moving in that direction. But more movies have been slavishly copying it. Blade Runner was a breakthrough in showing the gritty, multicultural, techno-city of the near future, but the time has come for someone to break that mold and show us something different.
References to The Matrix and Blade Runner are obvious for the 2017 version. One influence not mentioned, though, is Dark City (1998), especially the scene where the doctor is about to wipe out the Major’s memories with some kind of a hypodermic needle. However, the doctor changes her mind and instead gives the Major something to fight back with. Sound familiar?
17 Ghost tosses the biggest main theme of 95 Ghost, that of the future of human and machines, the future that Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have been warning us about. The villain in 95 Ghost isn’t really a villain; he’s an artificial intelligence created in the lab. He escapes because he wants to answer that same question: Who am I? He discovers Major Kusanagi, and is intrigued by her because of her human-machine split. In the end, they combine to form an entirely new life form. “Where does the new mind go from here?” she asks as she looks out over the city.
None of that in 17 Ghost. The Major (given another name for most of the movie; it’s only later does she realize her real one) tracks down her past, finding her mother and realizing that the bad AI was one of her fellow artists that the evil corporation killed. “I’m not ready to leave,” she tells the AI, so she stays and remains the same. We last see her standing on a roof, same pose as at the beginning of the film, ready to fight for justice. And so begins Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. No new life forms, no new experiences. Just the old human conditions and experiences.
I almost walked out of this, but I waited because I wanted to see the end. I knew I was going to be sorry, and I wasn’t disappointed. The 95 Ghost in the Shell isn’t a perfect movie, but it does bear rewatching. The new version cut and paste many scenes from the first, but it sucked all the life and intrigue from them. The 17 Ghost does get one thing tight, and that’s the caring the personnel of Section 9 have for each other. There are some nice visuals and performances, but none of this is enough to save it. The soundtrack by Clint Mansell is OK, but they tossed the original music except for a little sample over the credits.
Again, we have to ask: Was this necessary? Can’t we leave well enough alone?
Another victim of the changing technological winds gives up the ghost
Video killed the radio star; streaming killed the video store.
So it is with Hastings Entertainment. The company has thrown in the towel and is in the throes of its final liquidation sales. Once upon a time, it was a source for books (at that time printed on paper) and music (at that time recorded in the grooves of vinyl platters). Video (at that time magnetically recorded on half-inch tape) and video games (at that time recorded on various types of electronic media) came later.
I found my first Hastings in the late ’70s, early ’80s in Amarillo, Texas. Rock music blared from speakers, the record section was huge, the book section was enticing, the posters on the wall bright with color. Some of the stores were found in those temples of consumerism, the indoor mall, but others could be found in the old-style strip shopping centers or stand-alone buildings.
When I went back to New Mexico, I found Hastings already had invaded, including a couple of stores in Santa Fe. Once the legality of home viewing of Hollywood movies on rental tapes was confirmed, Friday nights became busy places as individuals, couples and whole families came in looking for a weekend’s entertainment possibilities. Sometimes all copies of the movie they wanted were all gone, setting tempers on edge. A waiting game was sometimes played as employees brought in the returns from the drive-up drop-off bin. That paid off only occasionally, but for some customers, always worth the chance.
I worked one summer at one of the SF Hastings stores. I was assigned the Books section (naturally), and found that the chain practiced what I call the “shallow inventory.” This meant only those books that moved fairly quickly were stocked and if they didn’t, they were out. Even so, the sheer number of books was amazing. Once, the entire staff stayed all night doing a “purge” — the managers called it “inventory” — where we pointed a hand-held electronic device at the UPC code (the store pasted its own code over the publisher’s before the book went on the shelf) and if it beeped, the book was pulled. By daybreak, the aisles were jammed with the new rejects, which soon disappeared from the store, probably as fodder for the pulp mills. Or to return as bargain books to be placed on the special shelves. You could get some pretty good books for little money but of course the authors don’t get a cut of sales. Cheap for you, total loss for them.
Stocking the shelves was the Task That Would Not Die. The guys in receiving would cram wheeled carts with the night’s arrivals and they’d be waiting when I reported for work. Morning, noon or night, those damn carts never seemed to empty. Help a customer find a book, go back to shelving the new ones. Clean up the children’s section — another constant task; kids, you know? — go back to shelving books. Make the four thermoses of coffee in the morning, go back to shelving books. Put away the magazines and books left on the chairs where the customers had been reading and drinking coffee like the place was Starbucks (also just getting going), go back to shelving books. It lasted until it was time to play janitor and vacuum around the Books desk, the last task if you were the closer. During the night, some strange magic would be performed and the stocking carts would appear the next day loaded to the point of collapse again.
The only respite came when I was assigned to a cashier slot. I hated that, I’d rather shelve books than cashier. I’m not a people person, so being pleasant to a long line of customers was a real trial. Most of the customers were video renters, and if late charges showed up their accounts, they could get nasty. Gift certificates — not cards then, paper, another sign of antiquity — took special processing. And the soda companies thought it’d be fun to stick coupons for free drinks on the caps of the plastic bottles, creating another pain for cashiers.
Vinyl records were still the main option for music when I started. There was something zen about standing flipping through the eye-catching art on the sleeves. But, technology changes, as it always does, and new gadgets started rolling in. First it was cassette tapes (eight-track tape cartridges had pretty much withered away), then CDs slowly started to proliferate. (Digital audio tapes, DATs, came and went practically unnoticed.) Vinyl is having its last laugh, though, rising from the dead on wings of audiophile preferences.
On the video side, VHS won the war against Betamax, but soon they were succumbing to DVDs. Tech advances add new capabilities, but the disks seem to be the end of physical media. Streaming is the new paradigm for now, as it is for music and video games. Books still cling to printed life against e-books, but Hastings evidently missed the import of all this streaming and electronic downloading and such. So it has to pay the piper, as it were.
One time my friend and I were waiting our turn to get a Saturday night movie when a woman in the next line freaked because she didn’t want her name entered in the store’s computer. That’s Santa Fe, N.M., folks, and that’s not unusual. She asked if there was a video store that didn’t use computers, and, that again being Santa Fe, of course there was.
(That store was called Video Library, and Hastings reportedly opened a second store in SF with the express purpose of running them out of business. Didn’t work; they’re still renting VHS tapes and DVDs and still keeping track of them on file cards filled out with pencil. The locally owned bookstore, Collected Works, also has out-lasted Hastings. The record store, alas, didn’t.)
When Santa Fe raised the minimum wage, Hastings retaliated by closing one store (the one I had worked at, but I’d long since left). That left the one in the DeVargas Mall Center, which needed a viable store badly at the time as malls themselves were being rattled by changes in shopping habits. It wasn’t the only video store in town, but the Friday and Saturday crowds made it seem so.
In their heyday, the stores became nodes for pop culture. Comic books became a staple, and the stores stocked theme merchandise, everything from bobble-head dolls to clothing to posters to kids toys. Some electronics, too; headphones, portable players, that sort of thing. The last time I saw a Hasting store, the shelves were jammed, the music loud, the lights flashing. What they looked like the day before the bankruptcy was announced I don’t know.
The other cultural phenomenon Hasting rode for a while was the rise of the “speculation genres” — science fiction, fantasy, horror — into the mainstream of popular culture. The revolution in special effects in movies made possible by computers helped spark this boom. It was necessary. Harry Potter had jolted popular culture with a huge blast of storytelling magic. Seeing the movie version with the old special effect methods would have made them laughingstocks. Suddenly stories that had been around for years — Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Beowulf — became fodder for the new tech in the new movies. Along with that was the realization that books for children and young adults held some great source material for Hollywood producers eager to get a share of the disposable income the new generations of entertainment-savvy youngsters had rattling in their pockets.
I asked George R.R. Martin during a signing in the DeVargas store why he, having spent time in Hollywood working on TV shows, thought the old, venerable tales like Lord of the Rings had to be made into movies. He gestured around at the store with its mass of merchandise and said something like “it’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?” Uh, yeah, I said, but beyond money, isn’t just reading books good enough any more? We did agree that visual storytelling pulled in more people to the material than just books could, and perhaps some of them then would turn to the original sources, which was a good thing. Thus was Hasting’s mission defined: To be a conduit for fans to get access to their favorite stories be it videos, CDs, books, video games or music.
(This conversation likely took place around the time of the publication of A Game of Thrones, the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. Yes, it was possible to have a conversation with George at a signing because not many people showed up that day. Not like now, when such an event would cause eager fans to form a line that would go out the door, up the highway and into the next county. Plus, at that time, he had no desire to make a movie or TV series out of his tale. Ha, ha, ha, how quickly things change, right?.)
I don’t mean to suggest that Hastings was a haven for all that was cool and hip. It was a corporate operation that looked upon all that merchandise with a cold eye for profits, not cultural milestones. The stores looked pretty much the same inside wherever they were. The music playing on the sound system generally was top-forty, with only an occasional foray into something cutting-edge. (And when that happened, it was quite noticeable.) The trailers playing on the monitors above the cashier stations were for that week’s new movies, but if you wanted something more esoteric — small independent, foreign, cult, obscure — your best bet was to hit one of the local video stores. Same with the books. Same with the games. Same with the music.
The shutdown of the chain signifies the end of another American cultural touchstone, like the passing of the malt shops of the ’50s or the malls of the ’70s, and ’80s. And while Gen-Xers and Millennials might look upon this as just another Baby Boomer lamenting the passing of his childhood, it could be worse — this could be about head shops with their psychedelic posters, background sitar music, albums (vinyl, of course) with bands like Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix and such filling the racks, all in a haze of incense (and perhaps something, shall we say, more pungent). So count your lucky stars.
So long, Hastings, you were a bright and noisy source for home entertainment and the occasional community hang-out for a while. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to buy some stuff from Amazon.com.
The ‘Star Wars’ juggernaut is about to squeeze your wallet thinner than a light-saber beam
With the special showings to privileged people and backers just hours away and the general opening for everyone else days away of the new Stars Wars movie, The Hype Awakens Revenge of the Corporation The Monetization of Fandom The Force Awakens (hereinafter known as Star Wars 7 or SW7), a review of the protocols to ensure that the common consumers are given the fullest opportunity to spend as much as they can and beyond and will do so with the correct attitude. That is, with open wallets and shut mouths.
Corporations with no connections to the movie business whatsoever, as they have been doing all of 2015, will be doing promotions both serious and silly as per orders and guidance from the Walt Disney Company. As the time for the suckers common movie fans to be allowed to view the movie approaches, these efforts will increase this week until almost everything else has been pushed aside and all media outlets, personal blogs, online sites, TV commercials, podcasts, “factual” programs on the few remaining radio stations and “neutral” articles appearing in the few remaining newspapers will have some kind of mention of Star Wars as many times as possible. Intrusions of unwanted and unsanctioned “news” material‑ presidential campaigns, climate change, terrorism, interest rates, food poisonings at chain restaurants, police-citizen clashes, immigrants, natural disasters and such ‑ should be expected, but Disney representatives will be working closely with media CEOs and their minions to assure that not too much time is wasted on those issues and time better spent presenting articles and related material about the Star Wars 7 movie. Non-cooperating media venues will be cut off from future coverage ‑ including but not limited to press junkets, one-on-one interviews with Disney celebrities, access to “leaks” ‑ of Star Wars, Marvel Universe, Pixar, Muppets or any Disney-owned entertainment venues for a period not less than ten years (by which time, it is felt, such discordant organizations will have faded away).
(And sometimes, help just falls out of the heavens ‑ so to speak ‑ from the unlikeliest places. Last week, a NASA scientist discussed how to build a Death Star out of asteroids. Don’t you just love those “scientific” nerds?)
Beginning at the Thursday, Dec. 17 first screenings and continuing until the end of the year, special crowd control officers will be deployed to theaters across the country to ensure that no less than 90 percent of common customers buy tickets for Star Wars 7. Although some officials at the company and associated investors would rather see a higher mandatory percentage, it is felt that allowing some customers to see other movies opening/still playing (sort of like standing on a beach as a hurricane come ashore, as it were) will count as a public-relations gesture to show that the Disney company can be lenient. (Besides, a Disney film, Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur, is one of those movies still playing. Unfortunately, it needs the help as it is not performing to Disney standards. This is unacceptable and an internal review has already been launched.)
There have been rumblings among stockholders and other investors that the income from the already released Star Warts Wars 7 merchandise has not generated enough billions of dollars, that many were expecting trillions. The Disney company urges patience; after all, the movie, as of this date, hasn’t even been released yet. The mountains of cash are still to come, believe it.
The campaign since the announcement that SW7 will be a reality has worked well. Anticipation is at a fever pitch, and thanks must be given to the PR and marketing departments. The little tidbits that have been allowed to dribble out have caused massive reactions among what’s laughingly called “fanboys.” (It has been hysterical to watch). And in another brilliant move, film reviewers will not be given advance screenings so their judgmental articles about the film won’t be seen before the mass audience is snookered lured ordered allowed in. Who needs ’em? Yeah, fuck you, movie reviewer, and the Prius you rode in on.
***
So I’m not a real fan of Star Wars (hey, really? gosh). You may see the above as a cynical take on studio motives, but I say there’s more than a few grains of truth in there. Ever since the original Star Wars in 1977 became a monster hit, the reaction by money people switched from “What the hell is this??” to “Cash cow, we gotta get our hooks into it.” Entertainment became a strictly a secondary consideration.
Now, George Lucas definitely set out to make something entertaining. The first Star Wars film ‑ A New Hope, as it later became known ‑ made such an impact because Lucas was in love with old science fiction (hereinafter called SF) movies, serials and old TV shows and he made the world in the movie look like something that could exist, solid and real, not something automatically cheesy and ridiculous. The story itself is as old as humanity, as has been mentioned ad nauseam. Being a “space” adventure adds nothing to this story: Light sabers are swords, Jedi masters are wizards, X-wings are horses, the Millennium Falcon is a pirate galley, the Emperor is an evil witch-king, the Death Star is a windmill, Princess Leia is a damsel in distress. (Yes, admittedly, a kick-ass damsel, but stop and ask — how many other women are there in the original trilogy?)
The packaging was part of the appeal, the characters were another. The hero, Luke, is as bland as heroes in these stories tend to come, but, again, as usual in such stories, he’s surrounded by characters who are much more interesting. The plot? Callow youth reluctantly goes on journey that ends with the collapse of the social order and he’s hailed a hero for causing that.
(In this discussion of the Star Wars films, I do not include the prequels or whatever they’re called. They made such a mess of what the original trilogy had established that I just pretend they don’t exist.)
So, what can we expect from the third trilogy? More of the same. This isn’t an independent film exploring the vagaries of human emotions . This is an action franchise. The plot , as based on what’s been discussed all over the web and seen in the trailers, is about some kind of resistance fighting some kind of empire-leftovers. Dogfights ‘twixt A-wings and TIE fighters are in the mix. (In the trailers, some of these take place in the atmosphere of a planet, so they look at least a little realistic. These kinds of dogfights cannot happen the same way in space, but I have a hunch that’s going to be ignored just as it was in the originals.) Looks like there’s going to be a scene in a cantina, maybe even the same one as in the first movie. (SW7 supposedly takes place 30 years after Return of the Jedi, so if the cantina is still in business, that’s a remarkable accomplishment. Those wretched examples of scum and villainy sure are loyal.)
And there are new things, too. Can’t afford to piss off the merchandisers. There’s a droid call BB-8, a rollicking, rolling machine whose purpose I can’t fathom. And is that a love interest for R2-D2, all pink and cute? (Will there be a love scene ‘twixt the two? Better hope not.) And what about C3PO? Is he just his irritating self, no love interest for him? And while the X-wings and TIE fighters are leftovers from the originals, they’ve been “updated,” so of course that means a whole new toy line. Don’t want to be caught with 30-year-old versions, do we? And, of course, all sorts of other machines, weapons, space ships, characters too numerous to mention. So fanboys, get them wallets open. Time’s a-wastin’!
What SW7 won’t have is Darth Vader (unless they go the comic-book superhero route and say “He’s not really dead, he just looked it.”) Vader is one of the greatest villains to menace the heroes on-screen. Even my jaded self remembers the thrill when he first stepped through the smoke to the thomp-thomp of John Williams’ music. Man, I had high hopes for him. I didn’t want him to be human, I wanted him to be a physical manifestation of the evil Emperor’s hate, coalesced into this humanoid form that cannot exist outside of the mechanical suit. A truly evil being, with no remorse and no humanity whatsoever. Alas, he was just someone’s dad who once gave in to lust and thus allowed himself to be turned to the dark side. (See, teen-agers? Stop that fooling around before it’s too late.) So with Vader dead (we think), we need a new villain. The trailers have showed us some guy in a dark mask vowing to continue Vader’s work. See? More of the same. Vader-light will give the heroes hell until he’s taken down by those same heroes. Luke Skywalker might be that hero, but since we haven’t seen Luke in the trailers we don’t know what he’s been up to these last 30 years.
One of the things I’m hoping for in this new trilogy is a career boost for John Boyega. (His character is Finn, an odd name for the SW universe. Could be worse, though, he could’ve been Capt. Phasma (Capt. Phasma? Sounds like someone out of those cheesy ’50s TV SF shows). Boyega was terrific in Attack the Block (2011) as the guy who first causes alien monsters to invade his neighborhood, then takes the lead in getting them out, even to sacrificing his own freedom. That character had an edge, an uncompromising sense of right. Those rough edges probably have been sanded off for SW7, but I hope he stashes the money from these movies in the bank and then chooses some challenging parts in future movies. Luck, Mr. Boyega.
What Should Happen in SW7 but is Highly Unlikely: The rebels, after successfully bringing down the Empire, have split into factions and the years spent years fighting among themselves have finally resulted in a government that in order to solidify its position, turns into something worse than the Empire ever was. (The Empire grew out of trade disagreements; this government rose out of ideological conflict.) In order to try to regain the ideals and hopes ( a new new hope, in other words) of the original rebellion, a new rebellion flares with Princess General Leia in command. A new generation of young rebels answers the call, including at least one new force-sensitive warrior, who has to face a new almost-Sith lord, Luke Skywalker He is such an emotional wreck that the new Emperor-wannabe has twisted Luke’s mind into believing what he’s doing is righteous and correct. Instead of destroying Luke, she (yes, please, let the new Jedi warrior be a woman) helps him see where it all went wrong and after a painful self-examination and purge of the dark side, turns around and tries to save the new rebellion and redeem himself.
And what of Han and Chewbacca? I have no clue. The trailers show them back on the Millennium Falcon, but why? That ship was a wreck in the original trilogy, 30 years later it should be scrap. And if it had been kept up, perhaps the current owners aren’t too happy about giving it up to these old dudes with vainglorious boasts about the old days and their part in the Empire’s demise. Perhaps Han went rogue again, abandoning Leia and any children, and he and Chewie went back to their old smuggling ways and Han is now the new Jabba. Redemption is required all around.
Well, as you can see, my ideas have nothing to do with the actual SW universe. The fans must be placated, they must like the new Star Wars, otherwise they might not shell out as much of their money as they’re supposed to. Yeah, that’s cynical, but I will allow that the movie might have a few nice surprises for me. I also have no doubt it will be an entertaining, wild romp in the SW universe and just might well bring a totally new take to the story.
However ‑ keep this in mind, padawan. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (awakens? I thought the force was a big part of the New Hope-Strikes Back-Return pantheon; where’s it been the last 30 years? wouldn’t a better title be The Force Re-awakens?) was directed by J.J. Abrams. The same J.J. Abrams who destroyed the Star Trek franchise.
Just sayin’.
Of Plasticine dinosaurs and muddled storytelling
If you’re going to tell a story that suggests the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed, then you should be prepared to follow through and explore the ramifications of that idea.
If you’re going to let several million years pass before your story begins, you should allow for “nature” to progress for all living creatures, not just a few. All of your creatures should be subject to the same rules that all of the other living things — plants, animals, birds, insects, bacteria — are subject to. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a misshapen ecology.
You’ll end up with The Good Dinosaur.
(Spoilers coming)
Basically, the film makes no sense as a story. It’s beautiful to look at, and an occasional interesting moment arrives and leaves, but overall it looks like the result of one of those “I know!” ideas that people have and they get all excited and have what they think are dynamite ideas and they work hard on them, but no one ever steps back and says “I don’t think the pieces are connecting very well.”
Pixar being Pixar, they never do things by half measures, as seen in the incredible landscapes that are based on U.S. government geological maps and data of Wyoming and Montana. It’s not all one-to-one correlation, there are made-up mountains and rivers and such, but the real places served as a base for software programs. Real mountains rise in rocky splendor, real rivers flow through canyons with liquid movement, real trees make up the forests, real clouds from puffy to intimidating thunderheads fill the skies — or so it looks. A common reaction from a viewer might be “I’ve been there.” Maybe not that exact spot, but you’ll be reminded of a hike, or camping in a forest, or fishing in a favorite river bend, or climbing up mountain sometime in your real life.
The details don’t just apply to the grand landscapes, either. One scene takes place in a shallow river edge where the water is just a few inches deep. We see how the light dances on the water surface, we see the sunshine reach the flattened, smooth stones that line the riverbed and we see it all bathed in a golden glow of late afternoon light.
Exquisite.
But then we see a toy dinosaur made of green Plasticine as if some kid had dropped it there. Its skin is a smooth, featureless shape, its toes are just lumps of clay and its face looks like it was drawn by a 10-year-old.
The story was written for 10-year-olds, too.
Well, let’s be fair. While the story is typical Disney-Hollywood fare, it’s been around since someone thought that morals and lessons are important ingredients for stories. A frightened youth loses/has already lost one or both parents must face his, hers, fears and learn how grow up emotionally and mentally in the world. This generally requires a journey, help from unexpected friends, advice from an old sage or two, a threat or two to be overcome, and a triumphant return home.
The twist here is the youngster is a dinosaur, an apatosaurus named Arlo. True to the story, he’s the runt of the litter, and as the runt, he’s afraid of everything, including the family “chickens.” His older brother, Buck, and sister, Libby, dump on him for being such a weenie. He botches every task his father assigns him in trying to make a man dinosaur of Arlo. Poppa builds a corn silo, and it’s good, so he gets to put his mark — a footprint — on the side. Buck chops down trees with his tail, and it’s good, so he gets to make his mark on the silo. Libby plows the field with her face, and it’s good, so she gets to make her mark. Momma does something extra — she’s the mother, what extra does she need to do? — and gets to put her mark on the silo. Arlo is a dweeb so he doesn’t get to put his mark there. (Buck and Libby, being competent and obedient, are like all the competent and obedient siblings in these stories: They don’t get to go on an adventure. They stay home and do extra chores to make up for the missing runt. That’s what you get for being normal, people.)
So — Poppa gives Arlo one last chance: trap the critter that’s been eating the family’s winter stash, then bash his head in with the club he’s going to be holding in his mouth. Of course, Arlo fails, and Poppa finally gets mad and makes Arlo come with him to chase after the critter. In the chase, Arlo gets hurt — of course — and Poppa gets swept away in a flash flood. Of course. Arlo, wracked with guilt, vows to do better, so the next time the critter shows up, he chases him and falls into the river and is swept away. Let the adventure begin!
This is a story that could be told with anyone — and, apparently, any thing — in the title roles. There is nothing in Good Dinosaur that shows how putting dinosaurs as the central figures can change the story. It’s just humans in dino disguise. But, it’s the meteor, see? It missed, and —
That’s the “I have a great idea!” moment. The meteor missed, and everything changed. Except it didn’t. As has been pointed out elsewhere. these dinosaurs never got the advantage of natural selection, the process that favors physiological change that gives a species an advantage in survival. They don’t have hands (except for the T-rexes and we all know how funny their hands are, giggle snort), they don’t walk on two feet, they don’t shrink in size so they don’t need as much food to survive the winter, they don’t even evolve feathers or fur. (Some raptors have a few feathers, Pixar’s bone to evolution, but even after all these millennia, the raptors never developed the ability to fly.) So they’re stuck with plowing the fields with their faces ’cause they didn’t develop many tools, either. To water the crops, they must suck in great amounts of water and blow it all back out like land-borne whales. They lift rocks and branches with their teeth, and, as Buck demonstrated, use their tails to cut down trees. (And those tails slice through easily, despite not having developed any bone or a hardened shell.) We see woven ropes knotted around containers, but we don’t see how the weaving is done. They’ve built themselves a dugout house — which has to be packed pretty full when everyone’s home — but we don’t see any outhouses. Maybe they just poop in the river. (It’s like in Pixar’s Cars — the characters drive up to the gas pump but have no hands or arms to pick up the nozzle, jam it into their own sides and squeeze the trigger. Some things humankind is not meant to know.)
This is where evolution got the dinosaurs when the meteor missed — hardly anywhere. The most realistic dinosaurs in the film at the beginning when we see the errant meteor blaze a trail overhead and some grazing dinos look up for a moment, then go back to grazing. That scene looks like it was stolen lifted borrowed from the “Rite of Spring” section of the first Fantasia movie.
Everything else gets to evolve, though. Trees — both evergreen and deciduous — flowering plants, fruit-bearing plants, insects, birds (wait — birds? did some dinos evolve after all?) snakes (with hands, no less) and insects. Especially fireflies. Oh, the dinos do love them fireflies. In fact, maybe only fireflies. I saw no clouds of stinging flies, no dino blood-sucking mosquitoes, no biting ants, no multi-legged horrors crawling out from under a rock just as you’re dropping off to sleep.
The biggest beneficiaries of evolution in this universe are the mammals. This is actually where Good Dinosaur got a few things right. In the days of real dinosaurs, mammals were small, timid creatures trying to avoid getting stomped/chomped by the ruling species.
But this is not the world of real dinosaurs, or dinosaurs that act like real dinosaurs.
Tyrannosaurus rex has become to be known, through the fossil evidence, as a fearsome meat-eater. According to Pixar, though, if left alone they would evolve into — cowboys, complete with folksy, western accents and slang. Oh, they’re big and have huge teeth, but they evidently they don’t eat their own kind (i.e., other dinosaurs). They fight off rustling raptors by chomping down on them hard — then hurling them away. After a hard day of rustler flinging, they sit around a campfire and tell tall tales. And what are they cowboys of? Big, hairy, shaggy beasts — mammalian beasts. You’re supposed to read “buffalo” here, but “cowboys” is a Texas thing, don’t y’all know, so we’re gonna call ’em “longhorns.” And longhorns they are, a sort of amalgamation of buffalo and steer. Well, then, you ask, did horses evolve so that the “cowboys” could have something to ride on? No, they did not. The T-rexboys must chase the herd on foot. We also don’t see them, y’know, chowing down, either. Do the T-rexes slaughter the beasts, then roast them over an open fire? Or do they just jump on one and rip the thing apart with their teeth and swallow raw chunks, including the innards? Alas, we never find out. Someone decided such questions are too intense for young viewers, but I’d bet money some of those young viewers are asking that very question.
So there are some large mammals in this world. Which brings us to another set of mammals, without whom we’d have nothing to empathize with: humans. (Did the filmmakers, in addition to saying “what if the meteor missed?” also ask “what if humans walked with dinosaurs?” which opens a whole other paleontological/theological can of worms.) Remember that critter that kept getting into the dino family food? That was a feral boy, age indeterminate, who doesn’t talk, doesn’t walk on two feet, scratches himself and thumps the floor with his rear leg like a dog, and howls like a dog. He’s an orphan, of course, lost and alone, so he makes friends with the clumsy dinosaur, helping him find food, protecting him from threats such as the snake-with-hands, and goading Arlo into action, usually by biting him. However, as feral as he is, he’s still civilized enough to wear a breech clout (made of bark and leaves, evidently). All the humans wear something, though the “domesticated” dinosaurs don’t. (They don’t have genitals, either, so reproduction among them is one of those mysteries humans etc., etc.) We can’t have naked humans in a Hollywood movie, even feral ones (Mowgli, Tarzan), but it makes the dinosaurs that much more cartoony, separating them from the humans. The dinosaurs may be civilized, but they’re reptiles, after all, they’ll never amount to much. Later, when the boy meets a pack of humans, they all have clothes, too. Where do the clothes come from? Do the humans have a pact with the T-rexes to get the pelts of the longhorns who ended up as dinner? Are there other large mammals around that the humans hunt? Have humans developed tools to make them? The short scene with them gives us no clues.
And, yes, I said “pack” of humans. The humans communicate by howling, and they move mostly on all fours, However, their evolution gave them the same arms and legs we have now, which have developed to help us stand. We no longer are built to move like that, despite we see on the screen, and it looks difficult. Still, the last we see of the boy he’s standing on his own two feet. (If that isn’t a metaphor for the whole movie, I don’t know what is.)
All of the mammals, human and otherwise, fit better into this world than the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are these plastic creations superimposed on the landscape; the mammals live in it.
Well, anyway, the boy — eventually we learn his name is Spot, arf, arf, arf — saves Arlo’s butt and they become fast friends. (Spot is more interesting as a character than Arlo, IMHO.) Arlo learns bravery and finds maturity by in turn rescuing Spot from ravenous pterodactyls, a flash flood (again) and against all other odds the writers can think of and —
Spoiler: Arlo goes home, and because he did something good, gets to put his mark on the silo next to Poppa’s (those prints are mud, how do they stay put in the rain?) because he’s now a hero because he saved the life of the boy who’s head he was supposed to bash in ’cause the boy was stealing their winter food but because Arlo failed to do that, he and Poppa had to try and catch the thief but they got caught in a flash flood that killed Poppa which made Arlo very sad and angry and later chased the boy again but got lost and without the help of the thief he would have starved to death, been trampled or killed in a flood and so he saved the thief from being eaten/drowned but was man dinosaur enough to send the boy with his own people and finally made his way back after the harvest was in. Yup, he deserves a mark all right.
Dude, you’ll probably be saying, you’re putting way too much into this, man, it’s just a cartoon. And you’d be right. On the surface, the film can be a delight for all of the things we expect in a Pixar movie. But there is also something missing, something that pulls against the movie as a whole.
Pixar filmmakers are known for their meticulous and thoughtful preparation and production, not afraid to revamp or shut down a film they don’t think is working. This one reportedly got one of those revampings, but I think they went off on the wrong track. Instead of going where the idea took them, they put on the brakes and switched to an easier route. Questions they should have asked: After 65 million years, what would a dinosaur society look like? What would the dinosaurs themselves look like? Can tools really be used by picking them up in your mouth? (Though Arlo later does knock a pterodactyl out of the air by throwing a club that way)? Would humans develop a canine sense of smell and locomotion? Would humans and dinosaurs really get along? (Or, as Neil deGrasse Tyson points out, would they just eat us?) Instead, they gave us a kiddie cartoon with some of the most realistic settings ever seen in an animated movie. They pulled back from where the idea was taking them in favor of just another coming-of-age story. They spent a lot of time and effort in getting the settings perfect, but they are not extrapolations of landscapes of the age of dinosaurs. Walt Disney constantly was trying to make animated films “real,” but sometimes going real undermines all the other elements of the film. Realistic mountains and clouds, but cartoony dinosaurs, the central element of the film. It does not work.
There was so much potential here that was lost. I just wish the creators had the courage to follow some of the more interesting aspects of their great idea.
One day steeped in the world of KC SF and fantasy
I spent one day this past weekend at ConQuest 46, the Kansas City science fiction convention.
One. Lousy. Day.
Why only one day is an explanation for some other time (having to do with bad choices, stupid actions and unreal expectations, but let’s not get into that now. Or maybe never. Some things are just too depressing for public discourse).
No, the con was not what was lousy. What was lousy was that I only got to spend one day out of a two-and-a-half-day event. The con itself was a pleasant as a con can be, with fans coming to see writers and partake in discussion panels, check out offerings by fantasy-based artists, see what the merchants were offering — books, T–shirts, medallions, swords, the usual things except for the life-sized R2-D2 units; don’t know if any were for sale, but it was a kick to be sitting in the foyer and seeing an R2 unit diddly-beeping along . You could get your picture taken sitting in the throne of swords from Game of Thrones. You could play games, electronic and board. You could write a story based on what you pulled out of a bag, or you could have had one of your stories critiqued by people willing to give up a holiday weekend (and a couple of weeks before) to do that. And, of course, dress up in costumes (called “masquerades” in the standard SF con vernacular; perhaps the term is now being co-opted by “cosplay”).
And writers, of course. Brandon Sanderson was the writer guest of honor, and if you know him as only the guy who finished the Robert Jordan Wheel of Times series, you are missing a lot. This man is a writing machine. George R.R. Martin was editor guest of honor . Yes, editor. Wild Card series, anyone? Dangerous Women, Rogues, Old Mars, Old Venus — just a few of the many anthologies he’s edited or co-edited. Of course, he can’t get away completely from his writer status. At one point, Sanderson was at a table in the second-floor foyer signing books and Martin was in one of the ballrooms. Sanderson’s line of fans went along one wall and Martin’s down the middle of the foyer, down a hallway and — who knows? — perhaps out the door and down the sidewalk all the way to the Missouri River. Who says people aren’t reading books any more?
(There were other guests of honor, but alas, I didn’t have enough time to see them: artist Nene Thomas, fan Mark Oshiro and toastmaster Selina Rosen. My apologies, folks.)
This all took place in the Downtown Kansas City Marriott Hotel, which will be the main hotel for next year’s worldcon, MidAmeriCon II. It was nice as modern hotels go, but it has its quirks. See, it’s not enough any more just to push a button to summon an elevator. No, now you have to tap a keypad on a screen, then watch a graphic that tells you which elevator to expect. All nice and 21st-century-ish, but while high-tech hits the call button, the elevator itself is still subject to gravity and other forces in moving up and down the shaft. So, if you plan to stay at this hotel for the worldcon, be prepared for the usual pile-ups of people waiting for the elevator. (Experienced con-goers are already pretty familiar with that phenomenon, I’m thinking.)
Comic-book cons perhaps have taken the spotlight from SF cons, but if you like science fiction and fantasy — and horror, or anything in the related genres — you really should consider one. There are regional cons all over the country. The two I know best are this one and Bubonicon, New Mexico’s version held in Albuquerque. It’s a chance to meet other fans, plus you get an idea of that’s going on not only in publishing but on the Internet, blogs, sites and podcasts. And the people who run them are friendly and welcoming. I mean, come on, how many conventions honor the people who come to the conventions? Just ask Mr. Oshiro, cited above.
For me, it was a chance to shove aside current frustrations and relax among people with similar interests (and senses of humor, which helps.) I got to see a New Mexico friend, John Jos. Miller, a Wild Cards writer from the beginning and 1950s SF movie freak. (Check out his Cheese Magnet site for deep, academic [heh-heh] discussions of the classic and less-classic films.)
ConQuest is sponsored by the KC Science Fiction and Fantasy Society, Inc., or KaCSFFS (they say it’s pronounced “kax-fuss.”) . The next ConQuest will still take place next May. (The worldcon doesn’t happen until August. While KaCSFFS is involved with MidAmeriCon II planning, the group isn’t the only one. Worldcon is just too damn big for that.)
I plan to attend both. This is a goal. Whether either or both happens, we’ll see.
The Spandex brigade begins its annual flight to the movieplex
Once again, the silly superhero season is upon us.
As the Avengers prepare to battle that Ultron thing (at least in the U.S.; in some markets overseas the battle has already been joined), more superheroes will be coming out of the screens in the movie complexes and the toy stores and the fast-food joints and whatever other merchandising the companies have in store. There will be more this summer, this fall, this winter, next spring and on and on and on until the third for fourth decade of the 21st century probably. Back in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s of the last millennium, we had been waiting for flying cars; instead we got flying Spandex-clad superheroes.
Superheroes or superhero-related shows haven’t all been relegated to the summer, television has had a bunch of such shows going on for a while to mixed success. But it’s summer, and that mean big, bombastic movies, and so we’re getting ’em, like ’em or not.
I suppose the big one is Avengers, Age of Ultron. I gather the plot is about Tony Stark screwing up and instead of making a robot mind to aid people instead makes one that decides to just replace them all. Leave it to the movies to tap into our collective angst: Big Important Thinkers such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have been warning us that Artificial Intelligence might be a dangerous thing to be messing with. Yeah, when’s that ever stopped us?
As I’ve said before, I’m not all that charged up by superheroes. The stories just repeat themselves ’cause it’s easier to recycle an old villain that come up with a new one. I will to admit enjoying — and also being a bit surprised — by one or two or three. Captain America: The Winter Soldier mostly; to a lesser extent the first Avengers movie and The Guardians of the Galaxy. The latter two, though, were less interesting because they dealt with some amorphous threat from outer space while Winter Soldier stayed on Earth and dealt with real, imminent threats to privacy and government overreach. That made it more immediate and more topical, a rare thing in superhero movies.
As a tiny counterpoint to the big Marvel release this week, DC has been dropping trailers for its next big film, Batman v. Superman, which has nearly a year to go before we see the whole thing. No, it doesn’t look promising, but at least it does seem to be addressing a big issue from the end of Man of Steel, the wanton destruction of the city and the deaths of thousands. We’ll have to wait to see if it’s just a trailer-tease or if the issue is really addressed, but I like to think that the makers have been pressured to respond by the criticism about that ending. (Evidently the Avengers do sort of mention the destruction that occurred at the end of their first movie, but they’ve also evidently moved their battles overseas. Less of a problem if it’s some foreigner’s city that gets flattened.)
The Batman trailer also illustrates a pet peeve of mine (outside of being, dark, colorless, hopeless and dreary), and that’s how superheroes get a pass on the laws of physics. When Superman started in the comics, he was just a powerful man. He didn’t fly, he just leaped pretty far. Gradually, he gained the ability to fly (along with X-ray vision, super breath, super hearing, etc., etc., etc.) Now he not only flies, he hovers. How the hell does he do that? If science fiction writers tried to do that with their protagonist, they’d be laughed out of the convention unless they had a sound, plausibly scientific explanation. Even fantasy writers have to keep their magic consistent, so if they give the hero hovering ability, it better have a solid root in the general magic realm. So superheroes are neither SF nor fantasy, but a class of genre fiction all their own. Akin to myths, legends and gods — yea, verily I say unto you, superheroes are the new gods for the allegedly rational 21st century.
Despite what Warner Brothers, DC, Marvel and Disney would have you believe, those superheroes aren’t the only ones around. Other comics, other novels, even a couple of movies have explored more rational attempts at explaining superheroes and how they work. However, I’m going to focus on one, a series worth reading because it explores how having super powers can be a curse and how so-called heroes can have feet of clay. That’s the Wild Card series edited by George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass. There are several books out and the latest, Lowball, has just been published.
I also lied because I’m going to plug another different take on superheroes, and, yes, it’s my own book, Tyranny of Heroes. (This is my blog and I’ll shill my books if I want to.) My superheroes don’t mess around, they take over the word, they kill their enemies and they make sure everyone on the planet behaves themselves. And, of course, they change history, which is explored by an underground what we would call blogger, except the Internet is closely controlled by the Supers, so our underground writer has to resort to more prosaic methods. (Remember mimeograph machines?)
Information on getting the e-book is available at the right where you see the cover. (And, OK, I’ll admit it, I’m looking for some sales here. I think it’s a good book, and if you agree, please tell your friends. But please give it a try.)
May the legacy of Nimoy and Spock live long and prosper
So the man who spent his life trying to deal with another man who didn’t even exist is gone. That fictional man threatened to engulf and overwhelm the human original, and perhaps it did once or twice.
But the original finally came to terms with the other, and both became admired and loved.
Leonard Nimoy was an actor, playing various parts for TV movies, theater. He was good at his craft, he making himself a solid career.
And then came Mr. Spock. He originated somewhere in the minds of Gene Roddenberry and his writing staff who were putting together a TV series based on the idea of “Wagon Train in space.” The central idea was a starship filled with human beings and perhaps a couple of friendly aliens exploring the galaxy, seeing what’s out there, finding new things, going where no man one has gone before. And doing it boldly, even if it meant bending rules of grammar.
So who was this “Spock” guy anyway, and why did women, including my mother, take to him so readily? Half-human, half-alien, utterly in control of his emotions, always looking for the logical answers to everything, imperturbable yet a master of a musical instrument, a bit mysterious. Almost cold, sometimes, always ready to reject your argument with a twitch of an eyebrow.
He may be alien, but those character traits are ones we humans would like to have. Able to set aside emotional baggage, be able to see things without prejudice, utterly competent at what task he takes on, stoic in the face of danger, strong without being over-intimidating , quiet and reserved. It took Vulcans a long time to achieve balance of emotion, of intellect and control, so it gave us hope that human could at least in move in that direction and achieve at least a little of that.
It didn’t always work, of course. Spock had a partial excuse in his partial human origins, but even full-blooded Vulcans sometimes slipped. What logic is there in marrying a human female? None, yet Sarek still fell in love with Amanda and produced a son that seemed at war with himself sometimes. That son carried this battle with him always, it helped define him, and it made for some great story-telling. Spock sometimes showed us more about being human than many of the human characters in drama.
And Nimoy inhabited the role. Despite the kind-of cheesy make-up (TV-show budgets being what they were) with the slanted eyebrows, pointy ears and a greenish pallor, Spock became as real as any fictional character ever has, allowing us to project our desires, our admiration, our hopes onto him. And while Nimoy has many other accomplishments, when you talk SF, Spock is now as central as ray guns, robots or alien invasions.
With his death, there’s been talk about honoring him and Spock with an announcement of another iteration of Star Trek. That might not be a good idea. The optimism of the ’60s has faded and now everything has gone dark (as seen in the re-boot movies). The mission of the Enterprise crew was to explore, find new things, not constantly get into battle with them. It didn’t always work; the Romulans and the Klingons didn’t like having humans around, but while conflict flared up occasionally, it didn’t become the sole reason for the series. Sometimes the Klingons and Romulans even helped solve the puzzle and prevent disaster. That’s not gonna happen in any new series. It’ll be constant conflict with some alien species or another, battle after battle, war upon war, because that’s the way we view the universe now.
A more fitting tribute to the legacies of both Nimoy and Spock would be to continue to learn, to understand, to deal with the universe and the future. That means continuing to send robotic spacecraft to explore the Solar System, it means continuing to develop launch capability whether public or private, it means continuing plans to send humans to the other planets as the beginning of the exploration of the galaxy, where perhaps a real Spock-like alien awaits our arrival.
And it also means continuing to try and understand and deal with problems at home, from global warming to vaccines to our origins to overpopulation to epidemics. Spock indeed would be very, very disappointed if we failed in this. Enough to make him turn away and wash his hands of us forever, perhaps.
No, a better way would be something like this:
You’re heading to Mars to begin your new job at the Mars Biological and Life Sciences Institute at Goddard City. It’s been a long trip out from Earth, so you’ll need to acclimate from ship-gravity and time. You’ll stop at Spock City on Nimoy Station, a hollowed-out asteroid moved to Mars orbit. A short stay and you’re ready for your Mars adventure.
A small step, but still bold, eh?
I wanted a big, galactic adventure but all I got was this orb plot
The biggest movie of the year, the one filled with wit, adventure and interplanetary travel, the one that pulled in the biggest box office (though summer 2014 box office numbers supposedly aren’t that great) and probably will kick-start a bevy of movies with these characters mixing with characters from other parts of the Marvel universe, left me cold.
I don’t have much interest in a lot of the superhero movies mostly because I have no interest in the comic books they are based on. Many stories in the comics have gone just totally batty and the characters hard to identify with. They occupy worlds unto themselves, where laws of nature — a.k.a. physics — are ignored while the human drama becomes little more than soap operas. This was a condition of superheroes from the get-go; Superman has never made sense but he’s a hero to us because he’s a fulfillment of our hopes and dreams. He’s taken a dark turn lately, so we’ll have to see if he remains at the pinnacle of human possibilities or he becomes just another overpowered costumed avatar grubbing around the shadowy corners of our dark natures.
I wasn’t planning to see the Captain America films at all, but the response to them, including by friends whose judgment of superheroes and superhero movies I trust, intrigued me so I watched the first on DVD and saw the second in the theater. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the better of the two, partly because of the struggle the captain has to make to adjust from the years of the so-called “good war” years to the America of the nervous, divided and cynical society of the 21st century, a century when we were supposed to be exploring planets and getting ready to go to the starts. The other big reason it appealed to me was Cap’s decision to take down the giant surveillance apparatus being put together by S.H.I.E.L.D. (Oh, Nick Fury, you have changed so much from your Howling Commando days.) This explores, though only minutely, the idea that superpowered humans, or those who control superpowered humans, will try to take over control of everyone and every thing in the world. It’s a natural outgrowth — look at mundane human society — those with the physical power to conquer and rule generally tend to do so.
(Time out for blatant self-promotion: This is the theme explored in my book, The Tyranny of Heroes, which has a Superman-like character, a Wonder Woman-like character, and a Captain America-like character as a triumvirate in charge of a league of superheroes who have taken over the world and rule with an iron hand [literally in one case]. Links to the e-book sales sites can be found elsewhere on this page.)
Where the movies faltered was in bringing the comics version of global evil, HYDRA (although it was a hoot watching Robert Redford mutter “Hail HYDRA” as his character was dying). I suppose the plot-driving Object of Desire — you know, the tesseract, orb, power crystal, ring, sword, whateverthehell — comes from the comics, too, but I tend to also ascribe it to lack of imagination among the movie writers. That damned Object of Desire stuff is spilling over to many of the Marvel movies, including the one this post is supposed to be about, Guardians of the Galaxy. (Not to be confused, as a couple of theaters did, with Rise of the Guardians, a “family” film about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy and Jack Frost joining forces to keep the bad guy from destroying children’s dreams — hey, am I seeing a pattern here?)
The whole movie is centered on the Object of Desire, who has it, who loses it, who controls it, what they want it for, who it bites in the big climatic scene. And in the end, it makes no difference whatsoever. Yeah, the Evil Guy wanted it to take over a world or something, and in the end died for it, but the object itself, after all that destruction, is not changed. And it is placed where it can be — and will be, you bet — stolen by another Evil Guy and here we go ’round the merry-go-round again.
Said Evil Guy — looking an awful lot like someone who took his style clues from north and south Native Americans, Egyptians and the Na’vi of Pandora — wants to use the orb-thing to destroy a planet (don’t they all?). A large part of the film is our heroes trying to keep it from him, but they fail. All the Evil Guy has to do is touch the thing to the planet’s surface and zap! no more cities and people and stuff. So, he jumps into a small one-person shuttle, using the craft’s small radar profile to weave his way through planetary defenses, lands on an isolated spot, raises the orb, says “Sayonara, suckers!” and slams the thing into the ground, completing his mission (comic-book science allowing him to survive his own evil).
No! He does not do that! He aims his gigantic spaceship directly at the main city, sparking evacuations of said city (we are told everyone got out; do I see fallout from Man of Steel here?) while scrambling the defenses. I have to admit, the visuals are amazing, particularly when the one-person defensive ships link into a huge net and encapsulate the enemy spacecraft. This whole sequence, except for a few plot lapses, is pretty exciting. But, alas, it shares a fate with other exciting, amazing sequences in other movies, that being a worthy thing trapped in bad film.
Meanwhile the subplots — our main characters hate each other at first, are captured, bicker, join forces, are beaten and lose the Object of Desire, bicker, are disheartened, listen to a speech that inspires them, gird their loins, bicker, go out and beat the tar out of the bad guy, recovering Object of Desire — are playing out the way they’ve played out in the various Captain America, Thor, Avengers and many more superhero movies to come. A lot to come — Guardians suggests moviemakers are going to scrape the entire Marvel pantheon for future films (Howard the Duck?!). The result being the creation of another walled universe called Marvel the way a walled universe of Marvel comics exists. Members only, thank you.
Rocket Raccoon is problematic for me, too. Every time I heard the name, my brain kept digging up the old Beatles song Rocky Raccoon from the white album. Well, what do you know? Wikipedia says the writers of the comic-book version based the name on that song back in 1975. The 2014 Rocket Raccoon (Rocky Raccoon checked into his room/Only to find Gideon’s bible … Gideon checked out and he left it no doubt/To help with good Rocky’s revival … oh, uh, sorry) bothers me because I just don’t believe those words are coming his mouth. The body is too small, the lungs are too small, the vocal chords are too small. His voice should be pitched higher. Well, comic-book science, right? I suppose they’ll explain it by referring to the biological manipulation that created him. But still … it’d be nice if someone made the effort.
I have no trouble with Groot. Odd, you’d think, ’cause here’s more comic-book science in making a plant-man. His sacrifice at the end saves everyone, but in true comic-book tradition, he comes back. And man, does he have the moves.
The other characters? Meh. The hero is a “loveable rogue” — ha ha, like we haven’t seen that before. His fixation on his mother’s mix tape is supposed to be endearing, but it’s irritating, especially when he puts it above the mission and his friends. Look, if he was that smart — probably is, but comic-book plotting, right? — why didn’t he copy the music, then keep the tape in a safe place? It’s not like there wasn’t any technology around him. Plus, after 20 years, he’s lucky that tape wasn’t at least stretched, making his music sound a little more … alien. And, of course, the non-human aliens have the technology to play 20th-century cassette tapes, and, of course, they’re grooving to American rock-and-roll music. That’s like hacking an alien computer with an Apple MacBook.
And I am sick to death of giant space ships falling on cities. It’s as if writers and producers got together at a secret retreat a few of years ago and said “OK, Star Trek, Guardians of the Galaxy, you’ll drop big honkin’ starships on hapless cities. Captain America, you can use those flying carrier things, they’re big enough. Avengers, we’ll count the big invading bugs as space ships for now, but you gotta do better next time. That thing the purple-faced guy is riding would be great. Look, think about it, OK? I mean, come on guys, this is the Next Cool Thing.”
And these misfits have the gall to call themselves “guardians of the galaxy.” The Milky Way Galaxy is hundreds of thousands of light years across and could contain 400 billion stars and probably billions of planets. You’re going to patrol all of that? Right. And who knows what’s on the other side? You could run into really powerful beings with super-dooper-holy-mackerel technology, stuff that’ll make your orb look like an LED Christmas light. With just a flick of a mighty wrist, they could just sweep away the entire Marvel and DC universes (no matter what studio) and say “OK, we’re starting all over and we’re going to do this with logic.”
I’d pay to see that.
Good movies, good popcorn — good move, George
Congratulations to George R.R. Martin and Jon R. Bowman on the reopening of the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe, NM, this weekend (Aug. 9).
A labor of love, as the saying goes, an effort by Mr. Martin to bring back the one-screen, intimate theater showing interesting movies without too much worry about whether said film will top the weekend box-office charts, along with a recognition older movies still have something to say to us. Such theaters are an endangered species as the multi-theater multiplex continues to squeeze them out.
Usually, you find such efforts in larger cities because there’s a better chance pf success. Santa Fe is not a big city, but it has an eclectic population that does like alternatives in books, movies, restaurants and lifestyle. So, while its a risk, it’s not a pie-in-the-sky dream.
It takes more than just a love of film to open such a theater. It takes budgetary planning, a knowledge of finances, a knowledge of how film distribution works along with a knowledge about the films themselves, which ones are likely to draw an audience, what kind of an audience that will be and how many days they might be willing to come for a particular movie. That usually falls to a manager the owner — who might be a film lover but a bit weak on the mechanics of showing them — chooses to run his heater.
And Mr. Martin couldn’t have picked a better managerthan Mr. Bowman. He knows film, he’s studied them formally since college (and probably informally since he was a kid) and he reviewed them for many years for the local newspaper. As director of the Santa Fe Film Festival, he learned about the distribution of new movies and movies making the film-festival circuit. which film creators might be available to attend and making sure they’re treated right, and how to entice an audience to come and take a chance on these movies. All while trying to keep things on budget. While Mr. Bowman’s personal tastes in films are sometimes, shall we say, a bit skewed, he does know the value of bringing films with wider interest, especially when trying to make a go of a small theater.
And it won’t be easy. The bigger chain theaters will have first crack at the big movies (something the Bowman-Martin team likely wouldn’t be interested in anyway), but they’ll also be in the position to get the smaller ones, too. And in a few months, a new multi-plex might rear its ugly head a few doors down in the Railyard retail complex. Might open — there’s been talk for years about opening a theater in that spot, but all have failed in one way or another. This one looks the most promising, but the Martin project has a big advantage: It’s open now, it’s real, it’s showing movies, it’s not just talk, it’s not just a dream.
Well, it was once, a dream born of Mr. Martin’s desire to regain the pleasure he once had of watching movies in small venues where the crowds were small, the movies intimate, the popcorn tasty. (That last isn’t just a wish — when the Jean Cocteau was showing movies in its earlier incarnation, it’s was renown for having the best popcorn anywhere. Martin-Bowman are under the gun to repeat that.) Santa Fe is lucky Mr. Martin is in a position to make his wish a reality. And while one would would expect that because of Mr. Martin’s affinity for science fiction and fantasy, that’s all that will show there, but one would be wrong. Both Mr. Martin and Mr. Bowman know that to make a success of the operation, they have to attract as many movie-lovers as possible. This means a wide range of films, and you can bet that’s what we’ll get. OK, so maybe the opening films for the free-admission opening week — Forbidden Planet (1956), one of the classiest SF films ever made; Orpheus (1950) directed by the theater’s namesake; and Dark Star (1974), John Carpenter’s darkly funny look at space exploration — may be biased toward SF/fantasy, but let them have their new-toy fun, eh? Dark Star is the midnight movie, so they have your fun in mind, too, see?
So, raise your bag of popcorn in a toast to the rejuvenated Jean Cocteau Cinema, may it shine a light in the dark — so we can see at least the film.
More information and photos are on the theater’s website.
The summer the buildings fell, the cities crumbled and civilization turned to dust
In the last four weeks, I watched as city after city was destroyed, buildings collapsing like Lego blocks at a day-care center. Nations collapsed, infrastructure wiped out, millions of people killed, millions more injured, probably billions more left starving and homeless.
“Probably” because we don’t know for sure; the human toll isn’t mentioned much. Not a big concern, evidently.
The damage is horrendous, spectacular, awesome; damage that just boggles the mind. Is there anything left? Well, the planet itself is sitting there just waiting to be smushed like an overripe plum. That will happen soon, no doubt about it.
I’m not fooling anybody, right? Y’all know I’m talking about movies. Particularly the four “tentpole” movies this summer. They all have one thing in common: utter destruction. The people who made these are gleefully destroying cities — mostly American, but a few foreign metropolises (metropili?) tossed in, too for good measure. Is there a message here? Are they saying that American, Western, civilization is doomed, and we’d better be prepared for the apocalypse that will either rain from the skies, roar out of the oceans or start with the bite of an infected neighbor?
Or are these guys just having fun?
Guys, yeah; the four directors — J.J. Abrams, Star Trek: Into Darkness; Zack Snyder, Man Of Steel; Guillermo del Toro, Pacific Rim; Marc Forster, World War Z — are all guys, and so are the screenwriters. Little boys playing with their toys, toys that cost millions to use. Where before the destruction of Tokyo once could have been done by dressing a guy in a rubber suit and having him stomp around on a cheap model of the city, now the work is done on computers (with an occasional miniature or large model thrown in). But the cost is on the scale of the virtual destruction: horrendous and spectacular. Meaning we consumers better march in droves down the box office and show our support for these magic-makers. (Heh, good luck with that, Lone Ranger.)
You wouldn’t think — at least I wouldn’t; maybe I’m just a drudge — to see this kind of thing in Star Trek. As one character in Start Trek: Into Darkness points out, the Enterprise was built for exploration, not war. Same with the Star Trek franchise. Alas, everything is dark, nowdays: Batman, Superman, Sherlock Holmes, Alice in once-but-no-more Wonderland. Now that the ST series has turned into action movies of mostly bad-guy-seeks-revenge-against-James Kirk and/or Mr. Spock (even at the cost of his own planet), exploration has been pushed to the back burner. So, where to go for a nasty villain? Why Khan, of course. (And no, Bandersnatch Cumberbund Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t Khan. Only the Shakespeare & Melville-quoting Ricardo Montalban has the proper [if over the top] gravitas.) And what does the remade Khan in the remade Star Trek do? Drop a starship on San Francisco. The apocalypse from an avenging angel.
Let’s pause for a moment among the carnage to ponder a few questions STID poses for us. How could a renegade admiral build a giant super-starship off Saturn (or Jupiter, I forget which) without anyone noticing either A, a giant starship hangar hanging around the solar system; or B, the drain on Starfleet resources in building said super-starship? How could Mr. Scott could approach said giant super-starship-construction complex in a shuttle without being detected? And how he was able to integrate into the crew without being unmasked? And most important, where the hell did Bones McCoy get that tribble?
Ahem, sorry. The producers, director and writers don’t want us to concern ourselves over such tribbles–uh, quibbles, instead just look in awe at that epic Vulcan-to-uberman fight on top of a speeding shuttle (or whatever it was) between the re-booted Spock and the ersatz Khan. Cool, huh? (No.)
Kirk does suggest, at the end of the movie, that the Enterprise will be going ahead with its 5-year mission to explore strange new things, etc., etc. Better get going, boys, ’cause I have a feeling your mission will be side-tracked by another crazy person ready to take out whole planets — maybe even a solar system or two — gunning for Kirk or Spock or Kirk and Spock.
I suppose someone will eventually ask who’d win a man-to-man fight: Khan or Superman. The answer has no meaning, of course, but corporations are building whole franchises on such ponderings. Take Superman, for example. Here, yet again, is another rewrite of his myth. (Boy, did Siegel and Shuster hit a nerve or what?). Only this time he’s more conflicted, darker, not so goody-goody anymore. Yes, that’s what we need in this world, a darker, moodier, conflicted superman.
Man of Steel (notice the clever way they never mention the name “Superman,” knowing we’ll all be fooled) spends a lot of time on Krypton, Kal-El’s birth planet. It’s an ugly world, with genetically engineered people doing only what they’re programmed to do. Kal-El is different, of course; the movie starts with his mom, Lara Lor-Van, Mrs. Jor-El giving birth to him the natural way. And that’s pretty much it for her. Thanks, Mom, for the birth scene, and a little bit of sad mom-love as Dad prepares to send the tyke off to Earth, now go die in a fireball. Dad, of course, will pop up now and then in virtual form to give his son advice.
Clark Kent (as he is known on Earth) does get to explore a bit more into what it would be like to grow up knowing he’s practically a god. He tries to fit in, but he looks like a nerd, so he’s treated like one (of course; he wouldn’t be heroic if he were, say, the quarterback on the football team). Don’t give in to your anger, (huh ‑ I swear I’ve heard that somewhere else), says adoptive Dad even as young Clark puts a dent into an iron fence post. Turning bullies into red mush would not be polite, you see.
As a young man Clark goes out in the world to find himself. The film switches to an episode of The Deadliest Catch as he’s confronted with a choice of exposing himself (with flames, no less) or letting men die on a collapsing oil rig. Everywhere he goes he’s faced with the same sort of dilemma and word starts getting around. An enterprising reporter named — oh, come on; who do you think? — starts tracking him down, threatening to expose him even more. The theme of taking odd jobs between his farm days and his super days was explored in It’s Superman! by Tom De Haven (2005). De Haven’s wandering Man of Steel does a stint as a Hollywood stunt man, which makes so much freaking sense you wonder why they left it out of this movie. Well, because then they’d have to pay De Haven royalties, wouldn’t they? He doesn’t get any credits in this movie, but I believe his mark is there.
General Zod, the bad guy here, is the apocalypse personified. He and his prison-busting Kryptonite cohorts plan to remake the Earth into a new Krypton. That it means the death of every human is no matter. Humans are soft, weak creatures. Time to replace them with strong, disciplined beings a step up on the evolutionary chain. Despite the best efforts of the American military, only Superman can stop them. If he’d just get over his angst and stand up like a man.
A big stickler in any Superman movie is his costume. It’s easy to portray it in comics; a few brush strokes can cover up the weird parts. Man of Steel gives him one that looks like the rubber mats you put on the floor; it must’ve been hot as heck for the actor. (And he wears his undershorts inside for the first time in Superman history.) But the movie also makes a point about the downside of capes when Zod grabs it, spins Superman around and around before letting go and sending the Man of Steel smashing through several buildings.
Now let’s talk about this smashing buildings stuff. By the end of Man of Steel, I was exhausted just watching the destruction of the city and watching building after building fall. Even the Daily Planet building is destroyed. In all this carnage, you have to ask, what happened to all the people? The buildings are empty as the combatants tear through them, the falling buildings land on streets devoid of bodies and no one inside is screaming as the structure comes apart around them. Only one person is trapped in rubble, but she’s part of the cast, so she’s rescued. If 9/11/01 taught us anything, it’s that collapsing buildings cause a lot of casualties. At the end of the movie, the Daily Planet staff is back in its newsroom as if nothing had happened. Amazing how these cities get rebuilt so fast.
OK, OK, it’s a comic-book movie. But sometimes when you ignore reality, when you ignore all of the consequences of what you have happen even in your fictional story, it all becomes just background noise. Not worth watching, not worth reading.
(Addendum, July 23: Buzzfeed.com had someone calculate the casualties and property damage. The result, as I expected, is horrendous.)
Coastal cities around the world are being ravaged by monsters from the sea. By now, we’re pretty sure the seas aren’t teeming with giant lizards or dinosaurs, radioactive or not, so where can they be coming from? Why, a portal in the bottom of the ocean. This means they’re aliens despite the attempt to put a home-grown spin on them. They come stomping out of the ocean like they did in the old Japanese monster flicks. And, as we all know, the standard military response just isn’t enough. Something else is needed. Something better, bigger, more powerful, more awesome. What can save us?
Giant robots. Yeah, that’s the trick.
That’s Pacific Rim in a nutshell. Oh, there are the stories of the pilots of the giant walking war machines, and stories about the people who design and maintain the robots (which in this case should be called “waldoes,” right, Robert Heinlein?), stories about the scientists trying to figure out what is going on, stories about idiot politicians who decide that giant walls are enough to hold back the horde. (“Hello? China here. Bad idea. Is anyone listening?”) But the main thing is the robot-versus-monster fights. Epic fights. Yes, cities are destroyed, but with such style, such panache. I mean, come on, when a giant robot picks up a cargo ship and uses it as a club, you’ve just got to sit back and let it roll over you.
There is a plot here. It’s the apocalypse, after all, and we need to keep that in mind. The monsters had come before, you see, but the atmosphere was not to their liking. So they waited as we humans pumped carbon dioxide and all sorts of other nasty things into the atmosphere. Now they’ve come to stay. Western culture to blame, right, so we’ll just stomp it into powder. But the nations of Earth cannot stand idly by and watch the destruction (though in real life several would like to see the United States get its ass kicked), so they band together to fight the invaders. A bit of fantasy there, eh? We can’t even agree to band together to cut carbon emissions.
But, just to be a stuck-in-the-mud, how many people are killed by these battles? We see people taking shelter (not always the safest place), but even so, it has to be at least in the thousands in each battle, but like STID and Man of Steel before it, the figures are just glossed over. Also, filmmakers still under-estimate both the power of nuclear-weapons blasts and the after-effects. Nice visuals, but remember how Indiana Jones survived a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator? That’s the level of physics we’re at here.
Pacific Rim does get one thing right: if there is profit in monster bones, parts or poop, someone will cash in. Greed — there’s your unifying force of humanity.
I don’t like zombies, movies about zombies, TV shows about zombies, comic books about zombies. I do not like zombies period. So I thought I could go without seeing World War Z because it is a zombie movie. However, a colleague urged me to see it, so I said, “all right,” girded my loins and went. I can’t say the surprise was pleasant — not for this movie — but more, say, intriguing.
Oddly, this film is the most human of the four. (But make no mistake — it is the most brutal of the bunch.) The central character doesn’t have super-powers, nor does he have access to super-powered technology. Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is a normal man with normal powers (despite the odd haircut). He’s just a guy trying to save his family.
The film does suffer from what I call the Only One Man Syndrome: only one man in the entire world can see the solution to the problem, only one man in the entire world can save humanity despite medical, scientific and research teams all over the world trying desperately to find the solution. Nope, all the scientific teamwork in the world is no match for this one man’s intellect.
That aside, the movie starts off innocently enough, a family headed to their respective destinations only to get stuck in traffic. Things slowly fall apart as the virus spreads and Lane finds himself in a desperate situation trying to save his family from people going berserk. Unlike the standard zombie film, though, the victims don’t just shamble around muttering “Brains, brains,” they hurl themselves at the uninfected, bite them, and move on. Lane times it and discovers it takes about 12 seconds for the infection to take over the human body. He works for the U.N. (the U.N. was in Pacific Rim, too; are Hollywood movie-makers trying to tell us something?), and his expertise is needed to lead a team in the search for a cure. He starts out with an expert in viruses and a squad of SEALS, but quickly he’s the only one left (see? the Only One Man Syndrome at work). He does save an Israeli soldier from the plague so she joins him.
A rogue CIA agent (are there any other kind?) tells him the Israeli saw it coming and quickly built walls to seal the plague-carriers out. Walls again. In Pacific Rim, they were ineffective from the get go; in WWZ, they’re more effective … for a while. They have as much success at keeping the zombie plague out as did the high walls around castles in Medieval Europe had in keeping the Black Plague out. Well, who in Israel could foresee zombies piling up their own bodies until they top the walls? There’s another message from your movie-makers: Walls might make good neighbors but are porous to weapons of the apocalypse.
Zombies don’t make physical sense, but they sure are popular. They can be seen as undead beings just wanting to eat like everyone else, or they can play the role of metaphor. What scares you the most? What’s happening in the world that makes you so damn sure the real apocalypse is coming? Pick your plague: zombies = plague-infected people, zombies = gay people, zombies = atheists, zombies = fundamentalists, zombies = immigrants; zombies = liberals, zombies = conservatives, zombies = teen-agers, zombies = adults, zombies = poor people, zombies = old people, zombies = people of color, zombies = white people … the list goes on and on. So when we see zombies stack themselves against a wall and go over the top to infect the “pure” people within, that’s the apocalypse. And it’s what makes them so popular.
So, there’s your message of the four films: be prepared for the apocalypse. It’s a popular subject these days; it seems everyone’s convinced it’s around the corner. More apocalyptic films are in the pipeline, several have come and gone already. So is Hollywood telling us Western civilization is doomed? The amount of destruction in the films seems to say yes. On the other hand, maybe it’s just some people having fun pretending to destroy everything.
But I’ll tell you, it sure gets wearisome.
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Eh — never mind, it’s just another superhero
Superheroes are everywhere. You’d think they were gods or something.
Humanity always has had a yen for something greater than itself, someone or some thing that will fight for the oppressed and right the wrongs in society.
Because it’s so hard to do it oneself, right?
Super-strong and/or super-smart creatures of myth go back as far as golems and Herculeses and messiahs and archangels, but for our purposes, superhero history starts in April, 1938 with the publication of Action Comics No. 1. The cover sported a man in red-and-blue tights smashing a car into a boulder as (presumably) the crooks flee in terror. The man in tights was Superman, as if any American born after 1938 couldn’t tell.
Superman was a big hit almost immediately and still is going strong, fueling a billion-dollar business today with video games, movies, comic books, graphic novels (thicker comic books, some with hard covers, to make them at least look sophisticated) and all the assorted merchandising therefrom. Superman’s got more staying power than any battery-operated bunny and he’s known worldwide. Children whose great-grandparents picked up Action No. 1 have a broad choice on which Superman story to follow. If you’re interested in Superman’s personal history and all the permutations to this point, and about the men who created him, Larry Tye’s Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero (Random House) is a fine account.
Tye did an excellent job for me in tying together the many threads that are Superman. As each generation changes to the next, publishers feel a need to update their superheroes lest they be become obsolete or even worse, unhip. This has led to the many variations of Superman and his ilk: Batman, Green Lantern, Spider-Man, the Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Captain Marvel (and Junior, Mary and Uncle), Ant Man, Aqua-man, The Human Torch, Plastic Man, Wonder Man, The Shield, Sky Wizard, Magno the Magnetic Man, Red Raven, The Green Lama, Iron Man, The Flash and so on and so on to just about infinity. Some of those are oldies and long gone, some are oldies but still around and even more have yet to be discovered. It’s a wide, wide world in the realm of the superhero.
My first experience with Superman was in the ’50s when he seemed … boring. Either he was in a romantic tiff with Lois Lane or Lana Lang or some other “LL” girl or he was being warped out of shape by the various colors of Kryptonite, or he was – temporarily, always temporarily – about to be eliminated by Brainiac, that ‘LL of a guy, Lex Luthor, or that guy with the all-consonant name. Bizarro was the interesting character; his warped being and that warped world he lived in much more interesting than the latest lecture on how superbeings must always do good. And I couldn’t stand Jimmy Olsen.
The arrival of the Marvel superheroes didn’t do much for me, either. Yeah, I know Marvel saved or reinvented superheroes (depending on your point of view), but they were all too whiny and too inward-looking. They were superheroes, for goodness sake, couldn’t they come to some conclusion and then get on with saving the world? And yes, the art was great, but the characters … meh. Mostly. Occasionally one stood out. The Thing, the Hulk, Captain America, Fin Fang Foom. (Wait – that last isn’t a superhero, is it? He’s one of those weird Jack Kirby monsters who were often more interesting than the superheroes.)
And the Marvel villains – talk about going off the scale! Planet-devouring gods. Mystic bald-headed advisers. A man with metallic arms attached to his side. A shiny surfer (in a ploy to show the surfer crowd that superheroes can be cool, too).
DC couldn’t just stand by in the face of all this, so their supervillains started getting bigger and badder. Until one came along who could kill Superman. For a while, at least.
This points out one of the basic problems of superheroes: they need enemies that can fight at their level. If you’re a superhero, just arresting bank robbers, thieves, corrupt politicians and greedy CEOs will get boring after a while. So, eventually the Lex Luthors, the Brainiacs, the Dr. Dooms, the Jokers, the Galactuses, the Doomsdays, the Doctor Octopuses start appearing. And with each iteration, they get meaner, more destructive, and more personal in their vendettas. Only on rare occasion is a villain destroyed; but usually they just slink away, only to come back later. Or escape the insane asylum
This constant recycling of bad guys became a problem for me. In the superhero realm, this has to do with prohibitions against killing. In the real world, it has to do with the writers unable to come up with a new villain. Look, shoot ’em, punch ’em, break ’em , zap ’em, pulverize ’em– just get rid of them. Granted, it’ll be hard to replace the Joker, but it’ll be a good challenge for the imagination.
Batman is a special case, of course. He’s not a superhero in the strict sense; he has no power that enables him to fly or move mountains or drop tanks on bad guys. He’s been carrying the trauma of his parent’s death for 70 years now, and he’s gotten darker and darker, until he’s just this paranoid, angry vigilante hiding in the shadows. But that’s part of his charm – if you can call it that.
There’s talk the new move will make Superman darker, too. Tye makes a good point in that Superman cannot really become this because he’s too embedded in the American mythos. In the 74 years of his existence, Superman has become the symbol of what’s good about America. Naive, maybe, but with the optimism and a belief in himself. Just like the country he represents. A dark Superman will suggest that the optimism is misguided at best and worthless at worst. Perhaps that’s a reflection of the country, but as so goes Superman, so goes the nations’ future.
It’s all tied into these generational changes. Each superhero must be reborn, his (or hers) backstory altered to fit the mindset of the hip young, the ones with money and a driving thirst for entertainment. This has led to that tangle of threads mentioned earlier that threatens to engulf all of the superheroes. This is also a failure of storytelling.
Tales of a different set of superheroes (and superlosers) has worked around that problem. The Wild Cards series doesn’t come out in comic-book form but as novels and anthologies (thus perhaps too daunting for some people). Edited by George R.R. Martin (yes, that George R.R. Martin; he does do other things besides Game of Thrones, you know) and Melinda Snodgrass, the series has been going since 1987 and is up to 21 books, soon 22. The series came out of a role-playing game and started with a core group of writers sharing the Wild Card universe. New writers have been picked up along the way, helping solve the staying-relevant problem. The generations not only pass in the real world, they pass in the series, too. The original superheroes have aged, some have died, others have just disappeared; and still others have been born (or mutated) since the series began so there’s always a new crop of heroes. And villains, who come out of the same source as the heroes.
That source was an alien virus deliberately spread into Earth’s atmosphere. Its effects on humans varies; you can become an Ace with nifty superpowers, or you can become a Joker with terrible physical consequences. All this certainly stretches credibility, but it’s better than bites from radioactive spiders, mystical magic, lanterns from space and vats of acid.
The stories are about humans dealing with the cards they are dealt, and it’s not always for the better. Power has different effects on people; not every man endowed with superpowers is going to fight crime and battle for truth, justice and the American way. And other people – heads of corporations, dictators of nations – are going to want to exploit those powers for nefarious reasons. Even reality TV enters into the Wild Card universe. How hip is that?
(A Wild Cards movie is in the works, but if you want to familiarize yourself before then, you can always start at the beginning with the original Wild Cards anthology called, um, Wild Cards. Tor books has released a revised edition with a new story added. Or you can start with the latest, Fort Freak, for a good introduction; Lowball, the 22nd book, is due this year).
As mentioned, the Wild Card heroes at least have ready-made villains instead of having to wit for someone to arrive out of the mist. This idea of superheroes having no one to fight is one of the premises of my own superhero novel, The Tyranny of Heroes. (You didn’t think I was talking about superheroes just for the heck of it, did you?) The heroes – 54 of them, just to make things interesting – descend upon Earth at about the same time Superman did in his universe, during the Great Depression. They start out like Superman did, catching crooks, smacking down nasty landlords, dealing with greedy capitalists etc., etc. They help with big government projects like Hoover Dam while taking care of the Mafia-connected gangs that terrorized the population. Unfortunately for my superheroes, though, there isn’t anyone who can challenge them. So what do they do? Well, they do what I’ve always thought people with superpowers would do – they take over the world.
At first, they are reluctant to accrue too much authority. But World War II persuades them that humanity needs guidance and they’re the only ones who can provide it. Good intentions begin to go awry, as they often do. In trying to fix this problem or stop that injustice, they slowly usurp the powers of the government. Not just the USA government, but all governments. Soon the superheroes are not just in charge, they are dictators. A benevolent dictatorship to be sure, but in securing the world’s safety they have to take draconian actions, meaning dissidents go to jail, certain ideas are crushed, censorship is the norm and all nations must follow the American ideal.
Is that so bad? There are no wars big or small; civil rights are guaranteed for all; electric cars dominate the roads; mag-lev trains crisscross continents; nuclear weapons are banned; every country is economically secure; air, land and water are unpolluted; and national borders are open with passports a thing of the past.
The downside? Humans haven’t gone into space. You want to study Moon rocks? The Supers will bring you all the samples you want. You want to know what Saturn looks like up close? The Super will take videos for you. You want to live in space? Well – it’s dangerous out there and not inviting at all. Humans haven’t explored their own planet much, either. It’s cheaper to send a Super to the bottom of the ocean than it is to build an expensive machine to protect frail humans. The world might have mag-lev trains in 2014, but personal computers are just barely appearing in the marketplace. The Internet isn’t even a dream and cable TV has yet to be strung. Cell phones? Never heard of them.
Scientific and technological advances are under Supers control. While research has eliminated diseases such as smallpox, polio and malaria, everyone in the field must adhere to the Supers rules – or be bounced out (sometimes literally). And often politics plays a part – look at the debacle the Supers made of the AIDS epidemic. (I know what some people are going to say about the politics of all of this, but they will be wrong. This is a fable, not a manifesto.)
Of course, most people are quite satisfied with the way things are. Life is good, why rock the boat? But there is that minority that sees the status quo as a dead end for humanity. They struggle to point out the loss of national sovereignty, the denial of due process, that civil rights don’t exist if dissidents face imprisonment in Alcatraz – or worse. Arrest, trial and execution cane be swift then the overlords have powers way beyond mere humanity.
Still, the Supers have secrets of their own, secrets that could undermine their authority. This is why they keep their origins a secret; this is why research into Super DNA is banned. But they can’t stop human curiosity. One man who feels his family is threatened by the Supers suddenly is becoming a real irritant under their superskins.
Then the Supers suddenly face a threat that does have the power to destroy them, but from a direction they never expected.
The Tyranny of Heroes is an e-book. Clicking on the picture at right will take you to Amazon.com. For now, you’ll have to go to Barnes & Noble through your browser.
Into the Unknown, or a pleasant weekend at a Midwestern SF con
ConQuest 43 (theme: Into the Unknown) is history now and it lived up to its reputation as a friendly regional con that took place in a mostly convivial atmosphere.
I say mostly because it had the misfortune of being held during a hotel name switch. The con hotel used to be the Hyatt, but that company lost operating rights or however these things work and now the Sheraton has taken its place. And, of course, the new people have to put their mark on the place by putting their own their stamp on it. And the best place to make that statement is the front lobby, which was blocked off completely. This meant getting on the elevator, going up one floor to the mezzanine, walking to the opposite escalator nearly three-quarters of the way around the hotel and riding it down to the one tiny corner of untouched lobby for check-in. Once competed, the same journey had to be made in reverse in order to get back to the elevators that took you to floor, all the while dragging your luggage behind you like dead pets. (And grumbling – a constant chorus of muttered complaints could be heard in the back-and-forth parade of newly arrived and irritated hotel guests.)
Fortunately, I arrived too late to hear the cacophony of jackhammers tearing up the tiled lobby floor, but I heard plenty of complaints about that.
The con itself was a chance to see New Mexico friends such as Parris McBride, wife of George R.R. Martin (George himself being in the wilds of Montana) and Steven Gould (Jumper, Helm, Blind Waves, Wildside); SF acquaintances such Robin Wayne Bailey (Shadowdance) and Gardner Dozois (editor, writer) plus the chance to put faces to names I’ve seen over the years such as Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (Ghost Ship, part of the Liaden series of novels).
This con – and any con held this year, and maybe last year and the next – comes in the middle of the Great Upheaval in Publishing where e-books are coming up strong, panicking traditional publishers, who are doing some rash things in response. They’re afraid of the economic model that allows authors to go around them and make their work available to an audience directly. Many of the writers who attended ConQuest have had experience with e-books either as an adjunct to their print career, a second track to their overall career, or as their main career track. As Gardner pointed out, writers with a backlog of out-of-print titles should be taking advantage of e-book to get those titles back into print and make some money off of them. Steve Gould is one who has done so, and he says his e-book backlist is paying his mortgage. For every writer doing that, however, are several who aren’t because they don’t know how and don’t want to learn. Those tend to be older writers, but they’re hurting themselves. Writers with established careers have fans, who would like to see some of the old stuff again. Plus, e-books could bring in new fans for these writers.
The large traditional publishers have reacted to this by dumping mid-list writers (those who sell steadily but not spectacularly) in favor of those who sell millions of copies and thus earn millions of dollars. Gardner equates this to shooting oneself in one’s foot because the publishers spent all that time and money supporting the careers of these midlist writers, but by cutting them loose, they’re sending he author’s fans away, too. The author then can turn to e-books, continue sell to his backlist to fans with not a cent going to the original publisher.
Some writers are doing both, selling their books to traditional publishers while putting short stories, novellas or even novels on e-book sites. This puts printed copies on bookstore shelves while maintaining an electronic presence, sometimes through a small press. If done right, both methods feed off each other (that is, give the author more marketing presence).
The third category is fraught with uncertainty. This is the author who has no backlist, is perhaps just starting out, and puts a first novel on e-book sites. Because most people won’t have heard of him, the possibility of the book just sitting there is large. E-book self-published authors have no marketing staff behind them, no signing tours planned, no ads in printed or broadcast media (not that those help all that much). Word of mouth – readers telling their friends to read a book they like – is the best ad campaign, but a lone author has little unless he can get his friends to start the ball rolling. So why would anyone do it? Because he he’s got something to say and he knows he’s got a good story, well-written, professionally edited and formatted, so, despite all reasonable expectations being against him, he does it anyway. (Hang around here long enough and you might see something like that actually happen.)
The big problem with doing this is the author watching his beloved child sink into a morass of self-published dreck, never to be seen again. The only consolation is that traditional publishers often published dreck, too, and spent a lot of money doing it.
One worrisome item mentioned at the con was the aging of the attendees. Many fans started attending – and a lot of writers started writing – in the 1960s-’70s, so there was a lot of gray hair walking the hotel corridors. Getting younger folks to attend should be a priority of con planners, yet there seems to a be a reluctance to do this. Old canards about young people not reading cannot be used as excuses because it’s not true. It certainly isn’t graybeards and grayladies buying Harry Potter or the Hunger Games or Brian Selznick or any of the other successful juvenile authors. You must consider youth or your con will just wither away with the Old Ones.
So it was good to see ConQuest make an attempt with the con-within-a-con programming geared toward paranormal romance fans. As was pointed out, SF/fantasy and paranormal romance genres don’t overlap that much, but they still have some things in common. Inviting fans from other genres causes intermingling, which can lead to discoveries on both sides. The old SF/fantasy conventions might change because of this new blood (heh-heh), but change is good.
Long live the genres of any stripe.
In a galaxy where special effects allow knights in robes to battle with high-tech swords
So the 100th anniversary of the Star Wars movies has come …
Excuse me, not 100? Just 20? Huh – seems like a long, long time ago.
Maybe it’s because the known universe has been inundated with Star Wars-related stuff. The creators of Star Wars don’t want you ever to forget the films, which is why they re-release them every time new technology come along. When workable Smell-O-Vision finally reaches theaters, you can bet the odors that permeate Jabba the Hut’s lair will soon be wafting through the theater to your olfactory delight.
Some folks even have gone nostalgic in remembering where they were when the first film came out as if it was some sort of worldwide disaster. “Yeah, I was workin’ at my sewer job that year an’ I took my girl and we was blown away by it. We liked movie one and two, but the others kinda stank, knowhutImean?”
The wonder and excitement started right at the beginning when that huge spaceship rumbled over our heads bearing down on that poor little rebel ship, a scene that has become iconic in American film. Movie special effects had been slowly improving over the years, but the use of computers finally gave us believable spaceships. The later sequences of the fighters going up against the star destroyers (or cruisers or whatever, why does everyone fall back on the Navy for outer space terms?) enthralled us because they were new. Never mind that the battle tactics and physics were all wrong for outer space, it was a hoot to watch.
The story itself is as old as the hills; Joseph Campbell and all that, plus liberal helpings from Hidden Fortress, right down to the bickering servants. That’s OK, though, the hero’s journey story still resonates. Burying old plots under glittering special effects is a Hollywood tradition, especially these days. Look at Avatar.
Star Wars sometimes is called a western in outer space. No, it’s a fantasy, pure and simple. George Lucas knows fantasy, he does not know science fiction. Jedi Knights=wizards, light sabers=swords, Princess Leia=Princess Who Must Be Rescued, Darth Vader=Evil Dragon, the Force=magic, R2-D2 and C-3PO=dwarfs/comic relief, Han Solo=the expert swordsman/archer. Spaceships and blasters alone do not make a science fiction movie. Because of Star Wars, a lot of swordplay appears in so-called SF movies nowadays. Why? Because the filmmakers, harking back to days of ancient battles, likely consider one-on-one battles more honorable, or at least more visually spectacular. (Steven Spielberg parodies this when Indiana Jones simply shoots the tall guy with the sword. Was this barb aimed at Lucas?)
As I said, since that day 20 years ago, we’ve seen a relentless barrage of Star Wars movies, TV shows, Internet episodes, books, children’s books, dolls, toys, lunchboxes, bedsheets and who knows what else. It’s as if Lucas wants to expunge anything that doesn’t have to do with Star Wars (Star Trek especially). It’s not enough to make millions on the movies, he’s got to make billions with all that other crap.
I certainly wouldn’t want to live in the Star Wars universe. Beyond the lack of anyone in that universe having any sense of style (Jedi knights in bathrobes, anyone?) are the constant wars. A kid growing up seems limited to two choices as an adult: Storm Trooper or merchant. No art, science, exploration for the sake of exploration.
When Darth Vader first emerged from the smoke in part one—uh, part four—the first movie, I had hoped it wasn’t a human inside that carapace. I wanted whatever was inside to be more machine than man, that we would never see the being inside. Alas …
Let’s play a mind game here. Let’s suppose it played out as I had envisioned. Would it be a better film? Perhaps not, but it will be more intellectually satisfying. To me, at least.
Darth Vader is a creature formed out of pure malevolence and given life through manipulation of the dark side of the Force. Who gives it this twisted life energy? The Emperor. He’s physically small and we get only brief glances of his face. He stays in the background, rarely seen, but rules through terror and fear with his loyal surrogate as his enforcer. (This would need a stronger back story that just someone trying to take over an Imperial Senate, but one thing at a time, please.) Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda are hiding in their miserable little holes because they cannot stand against Vader. They tried soon after he was created and both suffered serious damage physically and mentally. Then along come this farmboy who not only revives old memories but demands his right to vengeance for the torture-murder of his mother and the death of his father. Kenobi and Yoda tremble at the idea.
Kenobi sacrifices himself on the Death Star to save Luke, Leia and the others, but it’s not a quiet death. He dies screaming as Vader not only pierces him with his light-saber but tears Kenobi’s mind apart with blasts from the dark Force. Even though the blast door slams shut as in the movie, Vader turns his energy on it and begins burning his way through. Luke screams at Han to get the hell out of there, but Han sort of ignores him until Leia – who can feel the malevolence, too – grabs Han by the neck and says “Get us the fuck out of here now!” He does, but barely.
In the attack on the Death Star, Vader doesn’t need wingmen, he just plows through the rebel fleet (maybe he doesn’t even need a ship). Vader is just about to smash Luke, but hesitates because the Emperor feels the Force around Luke and is puzzled. The hesitation is just long enough for Han to do his just-in-time schtick. (And it takes much more effort to destroy the Death Star because in my universe, the architects aren’t dolts.)
Yoda is reluctant to train Luke not because the boy is clumsy and ADD, but because he is too powerful. “Too much like his father, he is. From this will come disaster.” Luke does falls into the trap Vader has set. Vader toys with him while the Emperor confirms what he’s been suspecting. Luke is is barely clinging to life when the visage of the Emperor appears ‘twixt Luke and Vader. “You do not have to die, Luke,” the Emperor says. “Come with me. I can heal you, I can give you power undreamed of. You have it in you already, for I am your father.”
Cue denial scream, fall through the vent tunnels, rescue by Han Han’s friend who betrayed him to Vader Leia, Chewbacca and the ‘droids.
In the final confrontation in the second Death Star, Vader again blasts Luke all over the place. The Emperor says all he has to do is acknowledge him as his father and the pain will stop. Luke refuses, but on the point of death, lets slips a thought about his his relationship to Leia.
“A sister!” the Emperor growls as lightning flashes around him. “I was deceived! Twins! Well, shall we have a reunion?”
The Emperor learns through Luke where Leia is. (And no, she’s not fighting alongside teddy bears to destroy the shield generator for Death Star 2.0. My smart architects and engineers know the best place for a shield generator is inside the shield it generates.) He dispatches Vader on a shuttle and after a brief skirmish captures Leia but brings Han as a bonus. Both are dumped before the Emperor. Han is chained to something and rages helplessly as the Emperor tortures Leia. “I offer you both power! I offer you life! I offer you a universe beyond your wildest imaginings! Acknowledge me or die horribly like your mother did. Oh, she lasted a long time, but there wasn’t much left when I got through. Leia? No? Luke? No? Then die, die, I made Vader, he’s my future, I don’t need either of you!!”
Leia’s screams ignite something in Luke. For an instant, his eyes reflect the look of the dark side, the eyes of the Emperor. The Emperor gloats for that second, but Luke reaches down inside to the lessons of Kenobi and Yoda, to the farm where his aunt and uncle were mercilessly slaughtered, into his soul that’s on the brink of being destroyed. He roars, breaks off the mental energy that had bound him. In a savage fight, he destroys Vader, tears him apart the way Vader did Kenobi. The Emperor is the one screaming now, and with Vader gone, he is diminished. Luke doesn’t hesitate, he grabs the Emperor and hurls him down the reactor shaft where he’s destroyed with the sound of a moth hitting a bug zapper. Luke’s body shakes as he wrestles with himself over which side ultimately will win. He dashes over to Leia, cradles her in his arms, finds she’s still alive, whereupon he relaxes, knowing the bright, good thing did survive and there’s hope for him, too. He can’t help himself: he weeps.
Now that’s a hero.
Terry England 