Bechdel Matters

As keen readers of this blog will have had occasion to notice, the most recent season of Doctor Who has not exactly met with my approval. That being so, and with the marvelous advent of A Doctor World to inspire me, I decided to rewatch the whole new series – Eccleston, Tennant and Smith – with an eye to understanding the show’s development. Right now, I’m midway through Season 3, and in keeping with the seriousness of my self-appointed task, I’ve been taking handwritten notes on the structure, themes and byplay of every episode. Specifically, I’m interested in the depictions of female characters. How much agency do they have? Are their odds of survival comparable to that of their male counterparts? How do they die, and under what circumstances? Are they villains or allies? Do they rescue other characters as often as being rescued? How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

It’s this latter question which has occupied most of my thoughts. How heavily should I rely on it? Though undeniably useful, the Bechdel is far from being the ultimate arbiter of narrative – or even feminist – success. Passing it does not, for instance, guarantee that the female characters in question are three-dimensional, believable human beings, nor does it protect against thematic sexism. Pass or fail, however, the results are always interesting – not just because of what they say about particular stories, but because of how the test itself reflects our culture of storytelling. At first glance, it’s utterly trite and obvious to point out that every day, everywhere in the world, human beings pass the Bechdel: after all, half the human population is female, and in accordance with the fact that we are all (as it were) named characters, the overwhelming majority of our conversations, if transposed to a narrative context, would pass. And yet, despite the obviousness of this fact, a disgusting number of movies, TV shows, books and plays all fail. Looked at as a purely narrative problem, it’s a disconcerting dissonance with reality. Looked at as a human problem, however, it’s a travesty.

As per Gail Simone’s observations on women in refrigerators, there are any number of reasons why individual writers might choose to structure a story such that there are no female characters, or only one female character; or why, given the presence of two or more such women, they don’t have occasion to speak to one another; or why, if they do, it’s only about a man. The limit of the Bechdel is the ease with which its detractors can argue – correctly – that the inclusion of women characters who talk about things will not automatically improve a story: not on a thematic level, if the point is to allay concerns about sexism, and not on a narrative level, if the point is to fix a plot. The failure of this objection, however, is that it willfully misconstrues the inclusion of women to be meant as a panacea. It’s not about instituting what amounts to a storywide affirmative action policy, because the suggestion has never been that women, by themselves, make stories better, or fairer, or anything other than stories with women in them, just as stories which lack women, or contain few of them, aren’t innately inferior. Rather, the point has been to ask why, if we believe our society, culture and ethics to be egalitarian – and, more, if we personally support these ideals – our stories say something else.

Consider the following hypothetical instance of a film centered on the adventures of a male lead, Guy, and his female love interest, Gal. Already, Gal is defined by her relationship to Guy: because the narrative fulcrum rests on Guy specifically, Gal’s presence is justified by her participation in his story. (There’s no reason why this scenario can’t work in the reverse without changing the genre – and yet, how much more common is it for stories with female love interests to be action-oriented adventures, while stories with male love interests are billed as romantic comedies?) Thus, Gal’s only investment in the plot comes through her association with Guy, making it much more likely that he, and not she, will take the lead in future plot-oriented conversations – after all, it’s Guy who needs answers, while Gal is just there for the ride. Obviously, that’s a simplification of matters: in save-the-world plots, for instance, the ultimate stakes affect everyone, while personal survival is a pretty strong incentive for even the most reluctant, dragged-along love interest to sit up and take an interest. Assuming Guy and Gal encounter other women in their travels, either as villains or comrades, there’s every reason why Gal might talk to them, and they to her.

Except, more often than not, they won’t – which is where we hit the gender snag. Because in instances where Guy is the protagonist, Gal’s character development matters less than his: not because she’s a girl (or at least, we hope not) but because it’s his story, and any conversations which don’t include or mention him are going to be viewed as extraneous to the plot. Ignoring the false economy of a storytelling style which jettisons secondary character development in the name of streamlining – and ignoring, too, the fact that female love interests are so deeply ingrained as an action movie archetyps that their very presence can feel like last-minute shoehorning – this puts considerable pressure on any fem/fem conversation to be relevant to the action; and if the writer wants to really showcase Guy’s intelligence, strength and resourcefulness, then having two other characters think up a plan, chart a course of action or otherwise save the day will only serve to undermine his specialness. Throw in the necessity of keeping Guy and Gal together for most of the plot – you can’t kindle sparks if the flints don’t touch – and just like that, you’ve practically eliminated any opportunity for Gal and Gal2 to have a conversation. Trying to force them together would just be another sort of shoehorning; and anyway, what does it matter? It’s just a story.

All of which is, frankly, bullshit. Characterisation shouldn’t be the sole privilege of protagonists. Male heroes don’t require a monopoly on good ideas and snappy dialogue to be viewed as heroic – and if you think they do, you’re probably part of the problem. Women shouldn’t be token characters: I love a good, sassy romance as much as the next person, but there’s a profound difference between a love interest whose only investment in the plot is their attachment to the hero, and a fully functioning character who develops into a love interest. As for the age-old argument about some eras, professions and settings being necessarily male dominated, I put it to you that if Deadwood, a well-researched, historically anchored show about life in a lawless town on the American frontier can pass the Bechdel test with ease, then any film the sole premise of which is Shit Gets Blown Up should be able to do it backwards and upside down, particularly if the setting constitutes a departure from everyday reality in any way, shape or form. Which is another way of saying that if you’re willing to break the established laws of physics and human endurance such that the male hero can get blown up, tortured and beaten shortly before running approximately ten miles at top-speed during a thrilling laser gun battle, you can probably stretch to having a female character whose capabilities extend beyond the rigours of looking decorative.

Unless you think women shouldn’t really have key roles in action movies, in which case, see above, re: being part of the problem.

All of which brings me to my sudden inability to think of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth as a realistic fantasy world (which sounds like a non sequitur, but bear with me). I’ll be brutally honest: watching the How It Should Have Ended clip for The Lord of the Rings has not done wonders for my perception of its plot, such that when I sat down this evening to watch the extended version of The Fellowship of the Ring, I found myself wanting to yell at Gandalf to just GO GET THE FUCKING EAGLES. But as I tried to settle into the narrative, I kept asking myself: where are the women? I don’t mean Arwen, Eowyn and Galadriel, who are all wonderful characters despite their lack of screen time: I mean, where are the wives and sisters and mothers? Why, when the succession is so important, is neither Faramir nor Boromir married? Where are the wives of Denethor and Theoden, the mothers of Arwen, Eowyn and Frodo? Why are so many races – the Ents, the Orcs, the Uruk-Hai, the Goblins, the Dwarves – drawn as if they were all male? For a setting which is otherwise so rich in cultural and historical detail, this reads as a serious problem. It’s not just that the trilogy fails the Bechdel test; it’s that the lack of women means we have very little idea of how that society treats them, beyond the basic, obvious knowledge that there must be wives and sisters and mothers of some sort, even though almost every woman in a position to occupy such a niche is either conveniently dead or mysteriously absent. And when, in The Silmarillion, Tolkien does venture to write female characters, it’s almost always in a romantic, devotional context: women who died to support their brothers or husbands, or who were pursued against their will, or who tragically fell in love with someone they shouldn’t (or couldn’t) have.

Which is where I start to wonder if the absence of female characters in Middle Earth is less a species of exclusionary sexism than it is a tacit acknowledgement on Tolkien’s part that, for all he was trying to write a magical, romanticised version of the medieval period, he didn’t know how to do so in a way that would benefit his women the same way it did his men. The happy resolutions to the lives of Luthien, Arwen and Eowyn all hinge on partnerships with men of their own choosing, men with whom they are genuinely in love; and yet a scholar of Tokien’s standing can’t have been unaware of how rare an occurrence that would have been, historically speaking. Perhaps, then, the wives and mothers of so many characters are absent as a preventative against the acknowledgement of exactly that problem; of the fact that one can believe in the restorative magic of feudalism and the aesthetic stylings of chivalry for only so long as one either postpones the question of women’s happiness or takes its existence for granted. As compassionately as Tolkien paints Eowyn’s desire for glory, and as determinedly as he makes Luthien the saviour and rescuer of Beren, the latter stance seems less likely than the former. But in dodging the issue, he undermines the story – because while his male characters are allowed to ask questions about their purpose in life, expressing bitterness at their circumstances and feeling haunted by unwanted duty, he cannot dare let the women do likewise, or else the whole myth of Middle Earth’s glory would come crashing down around him. The elves, conveniently enough, are exempt from this dilemma, presumably on the basis that if everyone in a given society is granted magical supremacy, immortality and eternal beauty as a matter of course, then unhappiness as a result of imposed gender profiling probably won’t be an issue. But humankind are not, which is why, despite how well-drawn she is, Eowyn’s fears are masculinised: her biggest concern is being denied a chance at battle, and not that Theoden or Eomer will see her married off, even though the structure of Tolkien’s society dictates that one must be at least as distinct a possibility as the other.

And that’s why I’ve lost my faith in Middle Earth: because I cannot reconcile Tolkien’s aesthetic mood of beauty, nobility and contemplation with the necessary ugliness and bias of male-dominated feudalism. Which explains why I’m such a fan of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, adapted recently to the HBO series A Game of Thrones: all the history and pageantry is still there, all the chivalrous words and noble aspirations, but we still get to see the women – their desires, struggles, success and persecution – without recourse to either convenient absenteeism or rosy-lensed love. Call it gritty fantasy or nihilism if you must, but no matter how pure and glorious your ambitions, it’ll take a lot to convince me that a standard medieval setting will lack the problems of forced marriage, rape and battery – or worse, that these things don’t matter – just because you choose to emphasise chivalrous conduct.

So, to recap: if you find yourself steering clear of female/female dialogue because:

a) women have no place in your story;

b) it doesn’t feel plot-relevant;

c) you don’t want to develop your female characters; or

d) the women might question the logic of a world you want your male characters to enjoy,

then I would humbly suggest that you are, in fact, part of the problem. Which is why the Bechdel test matters: not because all stories need women, but because the manner of their absence shouldn’t contribute to a culture of inequality.

Sucker Punch

Warning: complete spoilers, much rant.

Up until about a week ago, I hadn’t planned on seeing Sucker Punch at the movies, primarily because I didn’t know it existed. That all changed when rumblings in the blogsphere alerted me both to the film itself and to the suggestion that it was a sexist, misogynistic piece of rape-obsessed trash, as opined (among others) by The Atlantic reviewer Sady Doyle and blogger Cassie Alexander. This did not provoke in me a desire to spend money at the box office so much as a profound feeling of disgust – and yet, I remained a little bit intrigued, too, if only because of the amount of controversy racking up. First, lead actresses Emma Browning and Abbie Cornish both defended the film, and then I saw a favourable review that had been published, of all places, on the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center blog, wherein the author praised it as “the best movie about dissociation [he’d] ever seen.” 

Despite my initial reaction, Sucker Punch was starting to look like something I ought to see, if only for curiosity’s sake. Going in, I was prepared for the worst, but also open to the possibility of redemptive surprise, particularly as I’ve found Zack Snyder’s previous three efforts to be something of a mixed bag: I loathed 300, was on the fence about Watchmen, and liked Legend of the Guardians. Given that these were all adaptations, what then might I make of a story that Snyder had written himself? Accompanied by my long-suffering husband, I bought some popcorn and prepared to find out.

Visually and narratively, Sucker Punch operates in three different realms: the real world, where heroine Baby Doll has been committed to an asylum after her abusive step-father frames her for the murder of her little sister; the first dissociative layer, portrayed as a bordello, where Baby Doll and four of the other inmates plot their escape while enduring sexual abuse at the hands of the male orderlies; and the second, deeper dissociative layer, where the girls’ efforts to overcome their situation are expressed as  fantastic battles against giant warriors, dragons, androids and – wait for it – steampunk zombie Nazis. (And I’ll bet you thought only Hellboy had those, right?) In honour of this approach, I’ve elected to critique the film on three different levels – construction, continuity and context – in order to cover all bases.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

1. Construction 

Besides Baby Doll and her fellow inmates – Sweet Pea, Rocket, Amber and Blondie – Sucker Punch has three other noteworthy characters: villain Blue Jones, a crazed orderly (real world) and sadistic pimp (bordello); ally Vera Gorski, their psychiatrist (real world) and madame (bordello); and a character listed only as the Wise Man, who commands the girls during their fantasy battles.  (He also appears in the real world, but we’ll get to that later.) From the moment she enters the asylum, Baby Doll is on a tight schedule: unless she can escape within five days, a doctor will come and lobotomise her. To this end, the Wise Man lists the items she needs to achieve a “perfect victory”:  a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a fifth thing he refuses to name, which Baby Doll doesn’t mention to her friends. One by one, these items are acquired during the fantasy scenes, returning afterwards to the bordello realm, in which we spend the greatest amount of time. Our only visits to the real world, in fact, are spaced far apart: the very beginning and very end of the film. While this lends a certain sort of symmetry to the narrative, it’s a conceit which swiftly becomes problematic (more of which during the continuity section).

Despite their disparate themes, Zack Snyder’s previous films are united by a common visual aesthetic to which Sucker Punch is no exception: stylistic slow motion interspersed with lighting-fast flashes of violence and a sepia-tinted colour scheme give the film an eerie feel, while his trademark close-ups and swooping vistas provide a strong contrast between personal scenes and battles. The soundtrack is, I’ll admit, catchy, but at a price: the song-to-dialogue ratio is so heavily skewed that vital character development is done away with in favour of what are, effectively, music videos. Snyder’s distinctive visuals only compound this problem: the action scenes are long, almost totally unscripted except for the Wise Man’s briefings, and delivered with such a predictable rhythm that they soon become self-defeating, like endless cut-scenes in a video game.

As per the traditional laziness of the trashy action genre, our five man – or in this case, five girl – army is desperately under-characterised. Although we witness the chain of events leading to Baby Doll’s imprisonment, these opening scenes have no dialogue, leaning heavily on the straw-man Evil Step-Father image to justify her wrongful incarceration. Of the other girls, only sisters Sweet Pea and Rocket are ever given the slightest bit of history, and even this is flimsily done: Rocket ran away from home after clashing with her parents, and Sweet Pea, despite not being part of the argument, followed. How they ended up in the asylum is anyone’s guess – but then, there’s not much real world logic to Sucker Punch, even when we’re actually in the real world.

2. Continuity

As was demonstrated by the recent success of Inception, it is entirely possible for a Hollywood blockbuster to switch back and forth between multiple interlocking realities in a way that actually makes sense. Sucker Punch, however, does not do this. Partly, this is down to laziness, but there’s also an ample helping of fridge logic, too. For starters, it’s inferred that the real world is not the present day, but rather sometime in the 1950s, an assumption supported not just by the cars, technology, clothing and general mood of these scenes, but by the type of asylum Baby Doll is sent to. The fact that her step-father openly bribes an orderly to admit her might still work in the present day, if one were willing to explain the visuals as an affectation; but the threat of a lobotomy conducted via a chisel through the skull-front is undeniably past tense. To borrow from another recent film, think Shutter Island with women. That’s our base level of reality, and even with the dearth of early dialogue, it’s still as plain as day.

And that, alas, is a problem. Even allowing for the creation of an internally dissociative fantasy, I cannot buy the presence in that world of anachronisms – one or two, maybe, but the number here is enormous. Baby Doll’s outfit, for instance, is pure weaponised Japanese schoolgirl, down to the fact that her gun is accessorised with cute little dangling charms. The same is true of all the fantasy costumes, never mind the presence of touch-screen technology, battle suits and silver-gleaming androids. This is further compounded by glitches in the bordello realm: near the end, one male orderly plays with a touchscreen device, his ears adorned with the trademark white earbuds of an iPod, while earlier, a major plot point revolves around Sweet Pea’s ability to photocopy a map of the asylum. Or at least, that’s what we assume she’s done: a machine that looks like a very old, very simple photocopier is shown in Blue’s office, and if Sweet Pea was only going to draw a copy – a lengthy and improbable option – she wouldn’t need to take the original off the wall.

But these are all nitpicks when placed against the bigger problem: understanding how anything in either fantasy world possibly corresponds to the real. In the bordello level, for instance, Baby Doll dances to distract the men while the other girls steal each item – but what does the dancing represent? Sex? Are we witnessing a calculated seduction of all the male orderlies as expressed through Baby Doll’s decision to dance for them, or is she taking advantage of their ongoing coercion? When Amber takes a lighter from one of the men, giggling in his lap while Baby Doll dances nearby, what is actually happening in the real world? Either way, Baby Doll is meant to be so distracting that the men don’t notice the other girls sneaking around – and that’s before you factor in that Baby Doll’s dance is always the cue to segue into the higher fantasy world.

During the botched theft that results in Rocket’s death, for instance, we switch back to the bordello from the fantasy to witness two interpretations of the same event. In the fantasy battle, Rocket is blown up by a bomb on a speeding train, unable to escape because her jetpack is broken. In the bordello, we see her stabbed by the cook, dying in Sweet Pea’s arms while finishing the conversation they’d  started on the train. At no point do we drop down into the real world – because, of course, doing so would reveal the entire action to make no sense at all. If the bordello-dance is already a layer of metaphor, then how do we explain a reality in which Baby Doll distracts the cook in his tiny, cramped kitchen so effectively that he doesn’t notice that four other girls are occupying the same space? The final break with reality comes when Blue kills both Amber and Blondie in the bordello world, with Gorski and several other orderlies as witnesses. Clearly, the girls must die by Blue’s hand in the real world, too: and yet, despite this overwhelming evidence of his savagery, Blue remains in charge. In fact, his next act is to try and rape Baby Doll, who defends herself by stabbing him in the shoulder. So total is the dissonance between the bordello world and reality that when, much later, real-world Gorski is explaining Baby Doll’s history to the lobotomist, she mentions that yes, the patient did stab Blue, but omits to mention that Blue is a murdering rapist. And lest we think she’s simply glossing over a tragic, traumatic event, in the very next scene, we see that Blue is still working at the asylum. As, for that matter, is the equally murdering cook.

Let me repeat that, in case you missed it: three girls have been killed by two staff members in the space of a week. Two of the murders took place in front of multiple staff witnesses. And yet neither man is disciplined, or queried, or imprisoned or suspected or anything until – cue the Narrative Convenience fairy, and also the fairy of Unbelievably Stupid And Offensive Plots – just after Baby Doll’s lobotomy.

Oh, yeah. She gets lobotomised at the end. Apparently, the fifth thing Baby Doll needed was to sacrifice herself so Sweet Pea could escape instead. And by “sacrifice herself”, I mean “get lobotomised”. By a doctor who didn’t really want to do it. In a way that makes no sense. Or, sorry: in a way that makes even less sense than you might already think, because in order to get Baby Doll lobotomised, Blue had to forge Gorski’s signature on the paperwork. Except that Gorski, who is standing right there throughout the procedure while holding the paperwork, objects to the lobotomy taking place. And presumably, if Blue had to forge her signature to get it done – this is, after all, what Baby Doll’s father bribed him to do – then only Gorski has the authority to authorise lobotomies. So you could be forgiven for wondering why, at some point prior to Baby Doll getting lobotomised, she didn’t stop to look at the fucking paperwork and question why the lobotomy was taking place. Oh, no – that particular revelation is saved for three seconds after an irreversible procedure has already happened. Which is also when, all of a sudden, the other orderlies suddenly declare that they don’t want to help Blue hurt the girls any more. Oh, but they’re still willing to leave him all alone with a newly lobotomised girl they’ve just helped strap to a chair – it’s just that they’ll feel bad about it now.

And then the cops come – literally, they reach the place in about two seconds – and arrest Blue, just in time to stop him molesting Baby Doll (well, molesting her more, anyway – he still gets a kiss in). And not because he killed Amber and Blondie, though. Heavens forbid! No: Gorski has dobbed him in for falsifying her paperwork. 

Capping off this carnival of narrative errors and continuity gaffes, we come to the final scene: the newly escaped Sweet Pea at a bus station, trying to find her way home. As the bus doors open, the police appear and try to question her on the suspicion that she is, indeed, an asylum escapee. It looks like she’s doomed, but wait! Who should the bus driver turn out to be but the Wise Man himself?That’s right: the figment of the girls’ collective dissociative imaginations who commanded them through their battles is actually a bus driver, that is to say, a person previously unknown to them who actually exists in the real world. And of course he lies to the police, telling them that Sweet Pea has been on his bus for miles now, when of course he’s never seen her before (But has he? Wait, no, because that makes no fucking sense) and so they let her go, and on she gets, right behind a young male passenger whose face, as it happens, we’ve also seen in the fantasy world, fighting in the trenches of the zombified World War I. Which also makes no sense.

Yeah. About that.

3. Context

Speaking in a recent and undeniably sympathetic interview, Zack Snyder said that Sucker Punch was “absolutely” a “critique on geek culture’s sexism.” Regarding two early moments of metatextual dialogue, he has the following to say:

“She [Sweet Pea] says, “The dance should be more than titillation, and mine’s personal,” and that’s exactly a comment on the movie itself. I think 90% are missing it, or they just don’t care… As soon as the fantasy starts, there’s that whole sequence where Sweet Pea breaks it down and says, “This is a joke, right? I get the sexy school girl and nurse thing, but what’s this? A lobotomized vegetable? How about something more commercial?” That is basically my comment on the film as well. She’s saying, “Why are you making this movie? You need to make a movie more commercial. It shouldn’t be so dark and weird.””

In some ways, this is a perfect explanation of the film’s failure. Snyder has tried to be ironic in his handling of sexiness and objectification, taking schoolgirl fetishism, harem fantasies and sexy nurses and putting them in a situation which is decidedly unsexy -that is to say, a deeply misogynistic environment rife with violence, rape and abuse of power – in order to make his male audience members feel guilty about finding the girls attractive, and thereby forcing them to realise that their lusts align with those of the villainous male characters. To quote the same interview:

“Someone asked me about why I dressed the girls like that, and I said, “Do you not get the metaphor there? The girls are in a brothel performing for men in the dark. In the fantasy sequences, the men in the dark are us. The men in the dark are basically me; dorky sci-fi kids.””

It’s a self-aware sentiment – and yet, the film itself is anything but self-aware. Despite his intentions, Snyder has created a film which systematically disenfranchises its women in order to teach men a lesson about not disenfranchising women. Which, you know, would seem to defeat the purpose. Certainly, it’s possible to empathise with the characters, despite how thinly they’re drawn – but that’s because the entire film is engineered to paint women as victims and men as abusive bastards. What Snyder sees as a dark, edgy ending, perhaps even a cautionary tale about the dangers of male lust – that is, Baby Doll’s lobotomy and the deaths of all her friends bar Sweet Pea – actually reads as a story of victimisation: the girls couldn’t save themselves. Even in the very depths of their fantasies, they still needed a male general to formulate their plans and give them orders. I understand the sexy costumes of the bordello realm, to an extent – it’s a logical leap of dissociation, given the culture of sexual abuse – but why, then, would the girls still imagine themselves in titillating outfits during the second realm’s fantasy battles? The answer is, they wouldn’t: those scenes are there as fanservice, not to make a disquieting point about fetishism and rape, and however much Snyder might have wanted the film to rebuke exactly the sort of objectification its merchandising provokes, the Hollywood factor means that in the end, it can’t help but reinforce the very cultures it attempted to satirise.

In the end, Sucker Punch is a sexist wasteland: a ham-fisted attempt to make chauvinist geeks care about rape by luring them in with action scenes. The idea of creating strong, competent, interesting female characters whose looks play no part in their marketability is apparently too radical for Snyder, who might have saved himself a lot of bother by watching Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof and seeing what real girl action heroes can do, if only you don’t embrace the “rocks fall, everyone dies” approach to storytelling. Because, look: when your five main female characters are all being raped, wrongfully imprisoned and generally abused; when the only names they have are diminutive, sexy-sounding nicknames bestowed on them by rapists, which they then use even among themselves; when you dress them in sexy outfits, call it ironic and then merchandise statuettes of the characters wearing those outfits to your male fanbase; when your female resistors, even in their deepest dissociative fantasies, must still take all their orders from a Wise Man; when all your girls bar one are either murdered or lobotomised at the end, and that selfsame Wise Man calls it a “perfect victory”; then you have not created a film which is empowering for women. Instead, you have taken the old, sexist trope of hurting female characters to motivate goodness, chivalry and protectiveness in their male counterparts to a new and disturbing level: that is, you are hurting female characters to motivate goodness, chivalry and protectiveness in the male audience. And I’m sorry, but I just can’t bring myself to see that as an improvement. Because of how, you know. It’s not.

Great soundtrack, but.

Tron: Legacy

A lot has been happening recently, what with the upcoming move to Scotland, our recent trip to Sydney and the general madness of the season, but I’m not going to blog about that, partly because it was exhausting the first time around, but mostly because writing about packing boxes is only slightly less interesting than reading about packing boxes. So! Instead, you get a long, spoilery review of Tron: Legacy, which we saw this evening, because unpacking the weirdness of Hollywood cinema is like candy unto my soul, with the added bonus of not involving boxes of any kind.

It is worth noting from the outset that I am yet to see the original Tron. Saying so out loud, where “out loud” can be read as “on the internet”, makes me feel something of a traitor to my own geekhood. More importantly, this means that, while there were clearly a multitude of references to the first film in Legacy, I was in no position to gauge how faithful they were, or how meaningful: instead, I can simply vouch that they were there, and didn’t appear to add much.

The main gambit of Legacy – wherein a technological/scientific maverick father either dies, vanishes mysteriously, becomes a crazy recluse or is killed along with his equally brilliant wife (assuming she hadn’t already died of unspecified causes some years previous), leaving their genius offspring to grow up in isolation from the grand and noble calling that is their birthright until such time as Our Story Starts – is a stalwart backbone of the SF/F genre. This is where Batman, Tony Stark, Astro Boy and Luke Skywalker all got their motivation, and as such, I’m not about to knock it as a premise. However! It is also, as such, a plotline that comes with baggage. Either the Absentee Maverick Dad serves as a key-but-background motivator for the protagonist, or Uncovering What Really Happened That Fateful Night is the driving force behind the story. That’s a black and white way of doing disservice to a complex and potentially powerful plot device: what I mean to say is, movies have time limits. Unlike in TV shows, serial comics or novels, films have a very limited space in which to disseminate key information, particularly as regards backstory, and unless an extremely cunning and original scriptwriter/director team is at the wheel – or possibly unless they have the well-defined space of a trilogy in which to operate – it behoves moviemakers to pick one version or the other and then stick with it.

Legacy does not do this, which is why a comparatively simple three-act narrative has ended up with a runtime of just over two hours. We begin with the traditional Bedtime Story scene, wherein the Maverick Parent – here computing legend Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) – imparts the Secret Of What Is To Come in the form of a fairytale to his wide-eyed, cherubic spawn. Then, of course, he ups and vanishes, leaving us to watch as the Company That Was His Brainchild Is Taken Over By Unscrupulous Businessmen Who Do Not Share His Dream. In fairness, these early scenes were some of the best in the film: they did a good job of introducing us to protagonist Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) and created a strong build-up to the main event. Unfortunately, once Sam enters the world of Tron – emphasis on world, for reasons that will hopefully become apparent – this tension is soon lost.

Even to moviegoers completely lacking in narrative presience, it should be obvious that any danger faced by the protagonist before the halfway point will not – cannot – prove fatal, and instead must only serve to move the plot forward. Under those circumstances, only secondary characters are at risk, and at this point in Legacy, there were none. So when Sam is instantly thrust into the gladiatorial games portion of the Tronverse, it is very, very hard to feel anything even vaguely like apprehension. Yes, those scenes looked lovely in 3D, but twenty minutes later, the only thing to have been achieved was, finally, the introduction of Clu, aka Evil Jeff Bridges, whose next move as the villain – having first decided not to execute Sam in order to talk at him for a bit – was to send him back into the games so that the two of them could fight, on bikes, with matched teams of Nameless Dudes. At which point, I started to hear Scott Evil yelling in my head about how stupid Doctor Evil is for repeatedly trying to kill Austin Powers using a ridiculously slow-moving torture device instead of just shooting him on the spot. But, whatever. It’s not like Legacy is alone in having this fault, and it’s certainly never stopped me from enjoying James Bond. I dealt with it and moved on.

Not unsurprisingly, the following action scene involves the glittery, exploding-into-pixels deaths of all Sam’s fellow bike-riding Namless Dudes, about which I did not care because they were henchmen written into the plot for the sole purpose of being rent asunder. And then – lo! – we have the introduction of Hot Chick, aka Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who performs the ever-so-textbook Heroine Rescuing A Hero Only He Doesn’t Know She’s A Girl Yet Because She Is Mysterious And Wearing A Helmet shtick by driving her all-terrain quad-jeep-bike-thing into the grid and yanking him out of harm’s way. Once they’ve put some distance between them and the bad guys, she takes off her voice-distorting helmet (which we never see again) and reveals herself, to the requisite jaw-dropped approval of our hero.

It is at this point, gentle reader, that we start to run into difficulties.

You see, when Sam looks back over his shoulder and remarks on the fact that Evil Jeff Bridges and his Orange Evil Henchmen are not following, Quorra replies that this because they can’t – unlike their own vehicle, which has special grippy tyres for traversing rocky terrain, the bikes used by their enemies won’t work off grid. Which would be fine and dandy, if they were not actually inside a digital environment where tyres do not matter, and even if there was a good reason for this to be so, Evil Jeff Bridges totally has like a million badass flying devices, surely he can chase them somehow, etc. But again, whatevs, let us move forward to the bit where Sam has a Touching Reunion With The Real Jeff Bridges, his dad who has been trapped in the Tronverse for quite a while now, and who is all zen and hippyish and continually refers to his own son by saying things like, ‘listen, man’ and using the word ‘jazzed’ unironically. At this point, my inner movie-referencing monologue switched from Austin Powers to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, because there is something decidedly chessboard about the Tronverse. It’s not just the Colours As Alignments thing or the fact that, ultimately, we are meant to be in a gamespace: it’s that Maverick Dad, dressed in yogic white and living in a totally white house, likes to stand on his balcony and stare wistfully at the Dark And Brooding Lair of the Evil Jeff Bridges while espousing a theory of passive non-violence a la Anne Hathaway’s White Queen. Which is, if you dwell on it for too long, a deeply weird comparison to make.

And then they all have dinner.

There are so many problems with this.

Now, I get the point of this scene. I do! It is cute and unexpected and sort of sweetly awkward while also providing a striking contrast between the stark, futuristic decor and the homeliness of three people sitting down to a medieval meal of roast suckling pig. (Seriously.) But again, as with the tyres: we are in a computer world. Admittedly, it is a sketchily defined computer world into which the physical bodies (rather than just the minds) of Maverick Dad and Sam have been magically transported, but given that the only other occupants of said world are computer programs, and given also that the world itself appears to be restricted to a nebulously defined cityspace surrounded by blank rock and deep water, and given again that Maverick Dad’s powers in this world are limited to the ability to manipulate what he himself has created, and given finally that any food made in this world must be made of code, which is presumably ill-suited as a form of human nourishment, then where did the goddam pig come from and why the hell can they eat it?

Yeah.

And then, then we have the explanation of what Maverick Dad was so excited about all those years ago: within this digital realm, a race of sentient computer-beings called isos had spontaneously came into being, creatures whose very existence would have changed the face of absolutely everything ever if not for the fact that Evil Jeff Bridges, who was originally designed as a program-copy of Maverick Dad to run the world of Tron, viewed them as a chaotic threat to his perfect order and wiped them all out in a hideous genocide known as the Purge. (Anyone who does not instantly recognise that Quorra must be the sole surviving iso gets a smack on the wrist, for that is how this story goes, forever and ever, amen.) Timewise, we are now at about the halfway point – that is to say, about an hour or so in – when we finally learn what is meant to be happening. Evil Jeff Bridges paged someone in the real world so that Sam would come to Tron, which was the only way of opening the portal to the outside world. There is, of course, an ever-narrowing window before the portal closes again, prior to which Sam wants to take Dad and Quorra and get the hell out of Dodge. But! If they use the roads that lead to the portal, Evil Jeff Bridges will catch them and steal Maverick Dad’s disc, which contains all his knowledge on how to operate the Tronverse, thus allowing him to escape into the real world and wreak havoc (think the end of The Lawnmower Man, but in reverse). Dad is also unwilling to try and reprogram his evil twin, because this will result in both their deaths. For some reason. So instead, he wants to sit tight until – wait for it! – the native programs revolt and overthrow the government.

It is one thing to rely on traditional plots and narrative devices to bump your story along and bulk out your characterisation. Indeed, in action movies, it’s sort of the point, because of that whole lack-of-time thing we talked about earlier. But a complete abandonment of causal, emotional and narrative logic? Is not even in the same ballpark.

How about this for a suggestion: Maverick Dad destroys his disc, on account of how he doesn’t need it to live or utilise his awesome powers or remember anything about the Tronverse, whips up a goddamed super-speed plane seeing as how he is sort of the god of this universe and also a kickass engineer, flies all three of them to the portal, and then deletes Evil Jeff Bridges from the outside as Sam keeps suggesting they do? This is not so hard. Instead, he refuses to do anything, which is the cue for Quorra to sneakily help Sam by giving him the coordinates needed to find a rabble-rousing program named Zeus who can help him get to the portal. Maybe. If anyone can. (Dramatic chord.) So Sam steals his dad’s Awesome Grid Bike and rides it straight down the road that connects their hideout to the centre of the city, seriously you would think the bad guys might have noticed that before getting scared away by their lack of grippy tyres. And then? Then he trades the bike for a cloak so he can escape detection by going into a fashionable club where the first thing Zeus does is identify him loudly in front of everyone.

A moment of pause, dear readers! Because my constant use of italics might be leading you to suspect that I was sitting in my cinema seat, teeth clenched and frothing at the mouth with every successive outrage. In fact, this was not so. Yes, I spotted these things, and yes, they irked me. But despite its complete and utter lack of sense, there was something sort of charming about the plot, and after so much drifty, father-and-son-reuniony chat, it finally felt like we were getting somewhere. I have a very high threshold for bullshit in my cinema. Specifically, I do not care how ridiculous a plot might be, provided it is not endeavouring to take itself too seriously. This tends to make me a very charitable watcher of trash, and a very scatching watcher of anything intellectual, because if you are going to make a film whose sole purpose is to try and wring me out emotionally so as to Connect With The Big Issues Of Our Times, you had damned well better not go and break the logic which sustains your heartfelt premise by, say, setting a snake on fire. All of which is a long way of saying that, up until this point, I had been relatively on board with the whole (as my husband dubbed it afterwards) electro-opera thing.

Then the bad guys found the Awesome Grid Bike, and announced that now, finally, at long last, they could trace it back to its point of origin – the hidden lair of Maverick Dad.

Um.

Early on in Legacy, there was a scene where Evil Jeff Bridges steepled his fingers and expressed a desire for Maverick Dad to make the next move, as though the two of them were perennially locked in a game of wits over dominion of the Tronverse – not an unreasonable supposition, given that Maverick was trapped there for twenty years with only Quorra for company. What with the grid-bike road leading right to his house, the Evil Citadel being visible from the Maverick’s balcony and the fact that the whole point of bringing Sam to the Tronverse was to simultaneously open the portal while luring Maverick into the open, I’d sort of assumed that the bad guys knew where he was, but couldn’t penetrate his defences, given that creators tend to be fairly good at defending their home turf in a hostile universe which also they made themselves.

BUT NO.

He was hidden! All this time! Just a short ride – or, presumably, walk – away! In a straight line! Down a road! With no defences whatsoever! Holding the one thing that Evil Jeff Bridges really wants! With nobody looking for him! Ever!

UNTIL THEY TOTALLY FOUND HIS BIKE AND SOMEHOW COULD TELL WHERE IT CAME FROM, EVEN THOUGH THAT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.

A lot happens after this. By which I mean, not a lot happens at all, only it takes another hour. The bad guys go to the hidden lair and poke around only to find that (duh) Maverick Dad and Quorra have already gone to go help Sam, which results in Quorra getting part of her arm cut off, Maverick’s disc being stolen and the supposedly good rabble-rouser guy being revealed as TOTALLY A VILLAIN SURPRISE! (Hint: this was not a surprise.) And then they all hitch a lift on a magic goods train, which goes through the sky looking pretty and glowy for about a bajillion years while Sam catches his dad up on the war in Iraq and wifi and is in turn told that yes, Quorra is an iso who has never seen a sunrise ever and it is at this point, dear reader, that I realised exactly what was causing Legacy’s problems, viz: it is an epic fantasy movie in every important respect and not, in fact, sci-fi, because while even soft SF and space opera dignify their worldbuilding by saying, ‘Alien technology!’ or ‘Telekenesis!’ or ‘Unobtanium!’ or ‘Lightsabres!’, Legacy was basically just shouting, ‘Magic!’, but without anything that backs it up.

Take a moment to consider the plot thus far in terms of fantasy tropes. You have a Maverick Dad who, in the Time of Backstory, discovered a portal to another world, one where a rigidly enforced class divide between the rulers and ruled had resulted in a tradition of violent gladiatorial games for the amusement of the masses. Befriending a sympathetic fighter, the two of them overthrew the regime and installed a democracy, with the Maverick’s trusted lieutenant left in charge while he commuted between worlds. But then, a coup! The lieutenant went insane and ordered the genocide of hundreds of thousands of innocent newcomers to their territory, crowning himself king. Appalled and with no means of escape, the Maverick turned to mystical contemplation and confinement in an ivory tower, until the imminent fruition of the Evil King’s plans caused his now-grown son to reopen the portal. Stranded in a world whose rules he knew from the fairytales and bedtime stories of his childhood, the son did battle in the gladiatorial games of old, fell in love with the last survivor of the genocide and, together with his father, plotted the downfall of the Evil King, who – we are about to find out – has built an army of drones with which to invade Earth. Having finally captured the magic secrets of the Maverick in the previous battle, the enemy is now on the brink of success. Only by exploiting his mystical bond with the Evil King – the destruction of which results in both their deaths – is the Maverick finally able to save both his son and female protege, who return to our world as guardians of the secrets of this second, magic realm, and who will totally have makeouts in the not-too-distant future after she sees her first Earth sunrise.

Also, yes: that is bascially how the film ends.

There’s still some other random silliness packed into that scenario, the chief insult being that Quorra inexplicably decides to throw herself at the enemy to … do something. We’re not quite sure what, because the enemy hasn’t spotted their group, nobody else knows she’s an iso yet and she’s not trying to heroically distract the guards so the menfolk can sneak by (or at least, if she is, it’s not explained as such). So far as I can tell, the only point of this scene is to stretch the film out by another fifteen minutes with damsel-rescuing, ensuring that Quorra’s introduction as a Kickass SF Chick is completely undermined by the end of the film. Because after that first rescue scene, where she’s all awesome and mysterious? No skills whatsoever. Even the scene where her arm gets snapped off contrives to make her a damsel rather than a fallen warrior, and only seems to happen so that Maverick Dad could regrow it while she slept and thereby demonstrate her magical iso-ness to Sam. Plus and also: the genocide timeline is screwy. Only a day passes on Earth after Maverick Dad first discovers the isos before Evil Jeff Bridges kills them all, but when Quorra tells the story, she’d been living in a city for some time when it happened, and had to flee her home as everyone she knew was killed around her, at which point Maverick effected a Miraculous And Poorly-Explained Rescue That Makes No Sense.

So, yes. Tron: Legacy is a fantasy film in denial, which, given the SF context, becomes very problematic very quickly. Take that as you will. There’s a few nice moments packed in there amidst all the senseless plotting, and a weird consistency in the background details that belies the total lack of logic elsewhere. These include: fireworks that explode in geometric pixel designs rather than soft circles; the Maverick Dad’s use of 80s slang, which, while naff, makes sense when you consider that he’s been in a computer for twenty years reading zen texts and therefore hasn’t had cause to update his argot; and an enemy program picking up one of the Maverick’s books by the corner and then flipping through it sideways, because he’s obviously never seen one before. The 3D is nice, but only really gets a workout during the action scenes, which are surprisingly few and far between. The bulk of the film is dialogue, with not a lot going on and not a lot of sense to string it together. But, as has been mentioned previously, I have low standards. It was fun. The music was truly awesome. And at least it gave me a lot to think about.

Also, as a bonus for those who are curious, I started thinking about stories where the genius child of the absentee Maverick Parent is a daughter rather than a son, and was able to come up with three examples: Ritsuko from Neon Genesis Evangelion; Kimiko Sarai Kusanagi, aka Kim Ross from the webcomic Dresden Codak, and Deunan Knute from Appleseed. The two other uses of the bedtime story technique which sprang to mind are Inkheart and National Treasure. If you can think of any others in either case, I’d be interested in hearing about them!

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

My husband and I went to see The Sorcerer’s Apprentice yesterday afternoon. On the basis of the trailers, it looked like it might be decent fun, if not exactly a life-altering future classic. And, for the most part, it was fun: Jay Baruchel and Nicholas Cage had a decent on-screen repartee, there were some genuine laughs, the magic looked beautiful, and if Baruchel was convincing as a hopeless-but-really-not physics nerd, then Cage, with his dishevelled wizard-hair and giant leather coat, was unexpectedly, well, hot. (Doubtless that’s a minority view, but I’m sticking to it.)

That being said, and even taking into account my low expectations, it was a film that niggled. The opening voiceover scene, wherein the entire backstory is explained in such detail as to moot all later reveals, was both cheesy and redundant. None of the female characters had any character development or personality whatsoever, their sole purpose apparently being to serve as narrative justification for certain actions of the male protagonists. Disney films, for all their faults, usually manage to pass the Bechdel Test – but not The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And then there was the Merlin issue – a personal bugbear which never fails to set my teeth on edge.

In the opening spiel, we learn that Merlin, greatest of all wizards, had three apprentices: Balthazar (Nicholas Cage), Victoria (his love interest, who gets two lines at the end of the film) and Horvath (the villain), to whom he taught his secrets. Their enemy was Morgana, aka Morgan le Fay, who wanted to cast the Rising, a terrible spell that would raise an army of undead sorcerers and allow her to conquer the world. Horvath, of course, betrayed the Good Guys, during the course of which Merlin was killed and Morgana imprisoned. As his master lay dying, Balthazar was charged with finding – wait for it – the Prime Merlinian, a powerful sorcerer who would one day defeat Morgana, and who Balthazar could identify through his affinity with Merlin’s magic ring. Ignoring the fact that this massive infodump occurs in the first five minutes, I am so sick of lazy writers namedropping Merlin as a means of stealing narrative legitimacy. Merlin has his own awesome, complicated mythos: either adapt it intelligently – which isn’t that hard! – or go out on a limb and do something else. Similarly, while Morgan le Fay doesn’t come off well in the Arthurian legends, she was still a complex, powerful character. Using her name to avoid the necessity of actual characterisation is a cop-out: if your ultimate villain only appears at the very end to deliver a handful of Stereotypical Bad Guy Threats, the least you could do is build up some sort of motive for her character in the interim, as opposed to letting everything rest on She Is Morgana And Therefore Evil.

Also, the lack of coherent worldbuilding? So irksome. Note to Hollywood scriptwriters: if you’re going to have two immortal wizards kicking around for thousands of years in opposition to one another, they are probably going to train some acolytes! Because this is what wizards do. I refuse to believe that Balthazar’s quest to find the Prime Merlinian prevented him from training a single Goddam ally, especially as Horvath and the Morganans have been proliferating for the same length of time. And riddle me this: if all wizards except the Prime Merlinian are unable to use their powers without the aid of a magic ring, then who made the rings in the first place? Violating casaul logic is not, generally speaking, considered to be a helpful narrative attribute. But then again, during the big climax scene, wherein dead Morganan sorcerers are raised from their graves all over the world, you were stupid enough to show a couple coming out of the damn pyramids – that is to say, buildings which predated both Morgana and the Arthurian myths by thousands of years. So clearly, chronological integrity wasn’t high on the list of must-haves.

Other minor points: that trope about magic coming from the other, unused ten percent of our brains was old in the 90s and is now in danger of becoming an antique. Find another explanation. The thing with the Tesla coils was new, but still lame. And please, for the love of God, do not make the love interest’s sole basis of attraction the fact that she’s pretty and blonde – some species of personality would be appreciated!

Ultimately, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was never going to be a spectacular movie. The fact that I still managed to get any enjoyment out of it was testament to the fact that quirky nerd heroes as played by the likes of Shia LaBouf, Justin Long, Michael Cera and now Jay Baruchel, while fast becoming a new stereotype, are still fun to watch on screen. And the magical effects really were lovely to look at. But with the Pixar team and studios now a part of their empire, regular Disney needs to lift its scriptwriting game. Audiences for young adult films, regardless of their age, have been taught to expect more. Either put up, or shut up.

Angels & Demons

Firstly: Major spoiler alert!

Secondly: I am a sucker for trashy action/thriller/fantasy flicks, which perhaps explains why I exist in a state of near constant debt to the local video store for failing to return Hellboy or Journey to the Centre of the Earth on time.

Thirdly: The DaVinci Code was on TV the other week. In accordance with the aforesaid suckerishness, I’d seen it at the movies, but seeing as how the TV was already on, and the remote was all the way over there, and I was just mucking around on the laptop anyway, I ended up watching most of it again.

Which is why, last night, my husband and I shelled out something in the vicinity of fifty bucks to see Angels and Demons, no less than seventeen dollars of which paid for two medium drinks and a packet of peanut M&Ms. Out of morbid curiosity, I had the popcorn jockey, who looked about nine, explain the individual pricings to me in a slow voice. There should be some kind of Goddam law prohibing the sale of readily attainable junk at 200% markup, or maybe I just need a radioelectric shock collar that activates when I and my wallet come within a ten meter radius of the candybar, which, by the way, is a stupid American word that I resent using.

Anyway.

So, Angels and Demons. If you want to see Tom Hanks explaining why male statues in the Vatican have had their penises replaced with fig leaves, it’s really your best bet, although contrary to one review I read, there are no exploding priests. Which isn’t to say it’s dull: the plot moves along swiftly, there are several nice lines, the cast is well-picked and Ewan McGregor does a fantastic job as the Camerlengo. The physics is complete and utter rubbish, of course, and even had I not been able to tell for myself, it was confirmed by a friend whose father is a senior engineer at CERN. Fortunately, any attempts at scientific explanation take a backseat to Ayelet Zurer being anxious about battery life and hurrying a good deal. There’s a lot of exposition, but the run-time, though long, didn’t feel inappropriate, and as a nice touch, there were no strawmen among the religious characters.

The biggest problem comes from Dan Brown’s tendency to reuse the same twist. Thus, one can summarise both Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code as follows: The Superficially Good Guy Is Actually The Bad Guy, While The Superficially Bad Guy Is Really Just A Zealous Police Officer Trying To Do His Job. Which means, if you are even slightly cynical, that the entire film is spent waiting for Ewan McGregor to stop being helpful and start snarling – which, true to form, he eventually does. Though disappointed, I salvaged some cheering geekery from the notion of Obi-Wan Kenobi playing an essential Palpatine, wielding power through his benign visage and a Sith Lord’s talent for deception. My husband rolled his eyes and reminded me that not everything can or should be reduced to Star Wars, but in this instance, I begged to differ. 

Angels and Demons is not a bad film. Neither is it brilliant. Unless you’ve got a yen for the big screen, you’re probably better off waiting for DVD, but  if you go, you’ll at least  have something to talk about afterwards. And often, that’s the best part of any film.

Watchmen

Warning: Spoilers ahoy!

As is always the case when someone takes a cult story and makes it into a film, there’s going to be problems. All creative endeavours are open to dislike, but beloved masterpieces are trickier still. It’s not just about fidelity: it’s about emphasis, interpretation. One Watchmen review described this phenomenon thusly: that “every adaptation must be some kind of betrayal.” It’s a poignant observation, and one which applies equally to the act of criticism. More than at any other time, reviewing such a film declares our own biases, our own view of the original narrative, and lays the issue open to yet more disagreement, emotive or otherwise. I’ve come quite late to the Watchmen party – just in time to ensure that my husband, too, had read it before today’s screening – but even so, my attachment to the story is considerable. I went in feeling sceptical, but lightly optimistic. I hated 300, director Zack Snyder’s other big comics-originating blockbuster, with a fiery vengeance, but for reasons of plot as much as for the ludicrous stylisation. Then again, Sin City (by 300‘s Frank Miller) and V for Vendetta (by Watchmen’s Alan Moore) are two of my favourite narratives ever. In other words, I was ready to be persuaded.

The opening scene of Watchmen – the murder of Edward Blake, the Comedian – made me angry. Being a long-time connoisseur of trashy action flicks, I’m hardly averse to either gore or gratuitously choreographed fightscenes, but this one left a sour taste. Apart from Dr Manhattan and, to a vastly lesser extent, Ozymandias, none of the watchmen are anywhere near approaching superhuman. Rather, they’re a squad of Batman-men: fit, fast, experienced and well-trained, but physically human. More importantly, Watchmen itself is a dark and gritty tale which, despite several violent protagonists, never makes violence seem cool. Combine these two facts, and Snyder’s lengthy, stylised combat betrays a profound misunderstanding of the source material, not just in the opening scene, but throughout the film.

It’s worth mentioning that Watchmen closely follows the arc of the graphic novel: precious few scenes are displaced from their original order, while a vast majority of the dialouge comes straight from Moore. The casting, effects and costuming, too, are brilliant: Billy Cruddup is excellent as the otherworldly Dr Manhattan,while Jackie Earle Haley’s Rorschach is chillingly superb. Nonetheless, for every moment of narrative satisfaction – Archimedes, Mars, the journal – there is another of jarring dislocation. The bizarre, overlong sex-scene between Dan and Sally is one such offence; the introduction of the energy crisis plotline is another. The most awful moment, however, comes as a giant Dr Manhattan stalks the fields of Vietnam, exploding VietCong to the thunderous chords of Ride of the Valkyries, at which point the desire to strangle Zack Snyder and demand to know why anyone, even the man who made 300, would think that Good Morning, Vietnam! was an appropriate point of reference. If a single scene could be said to epitomise the failings of Watchmen, then this is it.

Even so, it still came as a shock to reach the end and realise that, despite their by-and-large adherence to Moore’s work, the writers had taken it upon themselves to change the ending. I don’t mean millions of people didn’t die: I mean there was no psychic blast from a giant, dead, genetically-modified abomination of science. Rather, Ozymandias simply harnessed the power of Dr Manhattan and disintegrated citizens in cities around the world. From a distance, perhaps, this might seem neater, more personal, but up close, it robs us of the dead. It mutes the horror of cataclysm into something clinical, devoid of corpses, and instead of the world realistically banding together against the threat of creatures from another dimension, they unrealistically band together against a single American who, up until that point, had been publicly vaunted as both patriot and weapon. The psychology simply doesn’t hold: crazy and mad-science though the monster was, its purported origins ensued that no world power could be blamed for spawning it, while the choice of America-as-target humbled not only that government, but all who’d previously fought against them. Following the logic of Snyder’s version, given that multiple nations were attacked by (they believed) an essentially rogue American weapon, it seems decidedly counter-intuitive that they sue for peace rather than place blame. After all, Moore’s Watchmen is nothing if not a study in human nature. Take away his understanding of people, and you rob the story of its soul. 

Which, ultimately, is the film’s real problem. It looks, speaks and sometimes moves like Watchmen, but with every misstep, the realisation grows that some other, vastly less subtle intelligence is steering: even Rorschach’s name, phoenetically spelled in the book as raw shark, is mispronounced as raw shack. Great adaptors understand the betrayal of their actions, such that, rather than merely echoing form, they build on substance. Their changes respect the heart of the story, acknowledging that appearances, no matter how important, are still secondary. Snyder, by contrast, effects his changes clumsily, keeping the veneer at the expense of structural integrity. In this sense, his dedication to replicating Moore feels less like tribute and more like an acknowledgement that his own interpretation isn’t strong enough to stand alone. Scenes run long, slow and awkward in the transition between mediums, introducing cameo characters whose roles, though apparent to those of us who’ve read the comic, would doubtless confuse and frustrate a novice audience. As in recent adaptations of other books, notably the Harry Potter series, a not inconsiderable number of scenes in Watchmen count on the pre-existing knowledge of the viewer, rather than striving to be self-contained.

In a way, the absence of the Black Freighter Tales is symbolic of the film’s failure. Although this subplot – a comic within a comic – was always going to be extraordinarily difficult to reference cinematically, it perfectly mirrors the twisted actions of Adrian Veidt, showing us the rotten underbelly of Moore’s 1985 and epitomising the dark, uncertain morality of the minutemen. There’s moments of real enjoyment in Snyder’s work, and the length, despite the peg-legged gait of certain scenes, does not seem unduly, even though it nears the three hour mark. As a superhero film – an action film – it works, and many people will doubtless enjoy it on that level.  Certainly, there is no crime in doing so. But as a replication of Moore’s ethos, it fails. Like Dr Manhattan, the body is there, but the spirit is missing, evident only in occasional, haunting echoes. And for me, that says it all.

The Very Embodiment of Cultural Loathing

Dear America,

I’m thrilled you elected Obama. I really am – lord knows, you’re well overdue for a leader with smarts and social priorities. For the first time in long time, you’ve got a certain hefty percentage of world sympathy on your side. We’re happy for you.

But there’s something we need to discuss.

First, it was The Office. Remember that show? It didn’t always star Steve Carell. Then there was Kath and Kim, a beloved pair you left in tattered ruins. More recently, there’s been Life On Mars, a truly spectacular TV offering that, once again, you failed to comprehend. And now,  just now, I see you’re already planning a US version of Let The Right One In, a Swedish vampire flick that has only just come out.

Are you struck by this information? Does it seem odd to you that, apart from an endless parade of nation-specific reality TV spin-offs or the occasional new take on a old idea, you are the only ones who consistently remake viable, up to-date television in your own image? If there was a language barrier, perhaps you’d have an argument: successful dubbing is rare. But that’s not the case.

Back in the nineties, lots of people were worried about the influx of American television into Australia and the UK. Critics argued that it was killing off local product, while others fretted about the kids they saw wearing baseball caps and trying to talk like the Fresh Prince. They were worried about cultural identity, but ultimately, that turned out to be a teething phase. Once the novelty wore off and local producers started getting back in the game, we shrugged our shoulders. You make some damn good TV, after all. Why stifle ourselves by forcibly ignoring it?

But now, your cultural hegemony isn’t the issue. Cultural isolation is.

Because we learned from what you showed us. Seeing LA, New York, the ubiquitous ‘hood, even the soft-lens airbrushed worlds of the daytime soapies were like windows into America. Cracked and dirty windows at times, or maybe the glass was warped, but sometimes, it shone beautifully clear, and we could see you. We learned how you saw yourselves.

But America, you won’t look at us. You don’t want to learn about the rest of the world, our slang, our peculiar humour, or even gaze down on our unfamiliar streets and wonder what it might be like to walk them. Instead, you turn each potential window into a mirror. And you see nothing but yourselves.

And this, when non-Americans get together and whinge about your country, this is what bothers us: more than the wars and more than the politics, if we’re honest, because those things are distant, as incomprehensible to the average us as to the average you. But our shows, their characters, are personal. We love them. Because of that love, we want to share them. And yet that step into the unknown, into renouncing your nationhood for just a half-hour to be someone else, consistently proves too frightening. Instead, you look away.

America, what you’re doing isn’t healthy. You need to see new things. And not all of you are to blame, I know that too – it’s the network executives who choose the content, who decide to remodel rather than import, but the time has come to stand up to them. Speak. Be brave. Watch something new. Watch something unAmerican. See us as we see ourselves.

And let that be a good thing.

 

Yrs sincerely, 

Foz

St Trinian’s

I wanted many things from the latest St Trinian’s adaptation – black humour, a visual hats-off to Ronald Searle, a vague resemblance to Timothy Shy’s book, knuckledusters – but mostly, given its abysmal 5.6 rating on IMDB, I wanted it not to suck. For this reason, it’s a film I’ve had to gear myself to see, bracing against every possible atrocity modern cinema could unleash on such an absurdly wonderful premise. Like a mantra of hope, I found myself muttering the names of Stephen Fry, Colin Firth and Rupert Everett, clinging to my conviction that, surely, no film featuring all three could fail utterly.

And you know what? I was right.

From the opening credits, St Trinian’s slams the audience into the world of Searle’s belovedly crazy schoolgirls and runs with riotous insanity through ten-year old twins with dynamite and a vodka distillery, Rupert Everett as an alcoholic headmistress hitting on Colin Firth, an art heist, Stephen Fry on drugs and hockey sticks akimbo. At times, it’s hysterical. The modern elements – such as emos, geeks, randy royals and YouTube pranks – all blend seamlessly with the original stock of violence, explosives, skulduggery and drunk teachers; so much so, in fact, that anyone not familiar with Searle’s comics could be forgiven for wondering just how many liberties had been taken.

In fact, the biggest weakness is character development. In order to keep the pace cracking, much has been sacrificed in the way of individual nuance, so that many girls are little more than names or distinctive faces. It’s hard to say whether this fact is worsened or ameliorated by the archetypes in play: the audience can still readily tell Chivas from Posh Totty, but the girls belonging to each group are deliberately bounded by these definitions, so that even though nothing is lost in translation, neither is anything gained. Still, it’s a flaw that sits well with the original material, given that Searle’s comics featured no recurring characters, and anyone familiar with Shy’s novella can spot La Umbrage in Everett’s persona, the sly minx in Kelly.

All in all, St Trinian’s is a rare and hilarious remake, one that sticks entirely to the spirit of the original without sacrificing modernity. Throw in an awesome soundtrack, and you’ve got a recipe for success. IMDB hath spoken wrongly: rent it and see for yourself!

Aliens, Dogs & Human Nature

At my Long-Suffering Husband’s insistance, we rented The Invasion last night. I’d read more than one dud review and was therefore sceptical, but the end product, if not blindingly original, was at least well-executed and entertaining. Based on Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, the premise is classic sci-fi horror: humans infected by an alien host become little more than emotionless copies of their former selves, spreading malaise through the populace while a few savvy protagonists fight back. Morally, the film queries the fundamental nature of humanity, asking whether our innate predeliction for violence could ever be removed without rendering us a different species. In this respect, the execution is strongly reminiscent of the main plot-arc of Angel, Season Four, which culminates, in the penultimate episode Peace Out, in an almost identical scenario: a declaration of world peace after an alien, assimilatory force takes control on a global scale, followed by the successful application of a vanquishing panacea. In both instances, our heroes are left with uncertainty as to whether restoring the human race was actually the right choice; and in both instances, this uncertainty is validated by the fact that the invading force was comparatively benign, leaving the memories and personalities of the populace intact, but removing all aggression.

It’s worth taking the comparison further. Jasmine, the assimilatory power in Angel, requires the loss of two human lives to enter the world. While manifest, she consumes approximately ten lives every few days, but these are willing victims whose deaths involve a painless, beatified moment of transcendence. In The Invasion, the only alien violence is towards those who are immune or still human; it is implied, but not demonstrated, that the former are killed, while the latter are purposefully rounded up and infected. Similarly, Jasmine’s acolytes seek to kill the few who resist; the remainder are peaceably converted.

Within the context of both narratives, the heroes are justified for several reasons: there is no freedom to reject the change; hostility is shown to outsiders; deaths are accepted as part of the process; and in each instance, the alien/assimilatory claim that those changed are still fundamentally human is challenged by the emergence of a hive-mind, not quite on par with, say, the Borg, but nonetheless profoundly different to the usual human experience. On the other hand, Jasmine and the Invaders also seek justification: any deaths they cause as part of assimilation are minimal compared to the daily injury humanity wreaks upon itself, and are in any case a one-off; human personalities remain; all religious differences are eradicated; and global violence has, effectively, ceased. Post-victory, it is these arguments which cause our protagonists to doubt the wisdom of their choice.

Objectively, it’s an interesting moral dilemma. As a species, we prize personal freedoms even when they grant individual licence to be unpleasant, vindictive and ignorant, because we struggle to find a workable moral basis from which to allow positive freedoms while disallowing their negative counterparts. This is further compounded by the fact that, particularly as regards culture and religion, we’re far from a universal definition of ‘positive’ freedoms – sexuality is a particular sticking point, both in terms of orientation and practice. Even more challenging is the fact that freedom of and from religion becomes innately problematic if sublimated to a set of universal human rights: as things stand, and as they are likely to remain standing, it is impossible that any such code not infringe on individual belief, which opens a whole new can of worms. Inevitably, our greed for personal freedom denies the idea that, as part of the bargain, we might have to change our minds; and yet, day to day, this is exactly how the world works. It’s a system we simultaneously laud and resent, finding balance in the margins and grey areas: small wonder, then, that the idea of some powerful, all-encompassing assimilatory force sweeping in and wiping the slate clean both lures and terrifies.

Historically speaking, we’re rightly mistrustful of any human agency attempting what Jasmine and the Invaders almost succeed at, Hitler, Stalin and Robespierre having demonstrated what atrocities such plans necessitate in the hands of our own kind. But when we put an alien or external agency in charge, the hypothetical becomes more serious: not only are we removing the possibility of the new order being destabilised by human malcontents, as such dissention cannot actually exist, but we’re voiding ourselves of blame. Proportionally, our main fear is a kind of technical genocide: if none of the social, cultural or behavioural hallmarks of humanity remain – or at least, if lack of violence and passion irrevocably alters their application – then has humanity been destroyed? It’s an uneasy thought, as well as discomforting: that our innate selves are fundamentally tied to our aggression. Even if this is one factor among many, to lose it would be to absent a crucial aspect of ourselves. Which begs the (much harder) question: in a world where, potentially, we can be a less-violent other species, is being human for the sake of being human actually a defensible choice?

The problem, as with all hypotheticals, is that we have no test scenario: along with violence, we don’t know what else we’d lose. Anecdotally and, to a certain extent, culturally, there’s a belief that our aggression stems from the same place as our creativity and passion: that without anger, we couldn’t love, or dream, or hope. Emotionally – and we are emotional creatures – it’s a compelling fear, and one which, on an intuitive level, is hard to combat. In an odd way, it’s a bit like the dilemma of the criminal justice system: let a guilty man walk to save innocents, or condemn innocents to be sure of incarcerating the guilty? Ultimately, I’d opt for the former: for better or worse, I’d rather keep our flaws than lose our virtues, and so – I believe – would most of us.

Narratively, however, we still need reassurance on this point: which is why both Jasmine and the Invaders are selected against by subtle, but deeply intuitive, markers. Beneath her human face, Jasmine has the appearance of a monster: only those with immunity to her powers can see it. The metaphor is one of rottenness, internal corruption; if she isn’t truly beautiful and conceals the fact, then she cannot be trusted, and so – horrifically, in one sense – we feel better about her destruction. Similarly, dogs don’t like the Invaders: they bark, whine, growl, attack and are subsequently killed for their trouble. After tens of thousands of years of co-evolution, it’s deeply ingrained in the human psyche to trust the intuition of dogs: as part of our family pack, they warn us of threats. You’d be hard-pressed to find a story in which our canine companions happily lick the hands of attacking aliens; and so, because we trust the wordless sense of dogs, we know the enemy are Bad.

In the end, we justify our species by providing a pro for each con: love for anger, passion for rage, creativity for cruelty. But that, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, is the fundamental essence of humanity: where the falling angel meets the rising ape, we are what’ve always been. 

Half angel. Half devil. All human.

Garfield Minus Garfield

I’m not quite sure what mindset leads an individual to digitally erase the protagonist from one of the world’s most renowned comic strips, but damned if I don’t want in.  

The resulting creation – Garfield Minus Garfield – is hilarious on several different levels: the absurdity of the idea, the knowledge of what (or who) is missing, and the fact that Jon Arbuckle is clearly weirder than a bucket of mixed frogs. It’s this last point which really startled me: the idea that, once you remove Garfield from the picture, Jon’s comedic value switches from clowning to pathos. Maybe the presence of a sentient, anthropomorphised cat distorts reality to the extent that Jon, by contrast, can only ever appear as a punchline – more akin to Odie than Garfield, who ends up the only ‘person’ we sympathise with.

But Jon hasn’t actually changed. Half the dialogue has been erased, but not half the conversation – because Garfield doesn’t talk. Instead, his internal commentary, often on Jon’s behaviour, has ceased to be the focal point of the strip, with the result that we now see Jon as he actually is: a bizarre, lonely man with a fetish for pairing socks. Which, in an odd way, should shame all those people – myself included – who laugh at normal Garfield strips. Jon Arbuckle clearly needs help, and what do we do? Mock him.

Thinking about it, there’s almost a Fight Club-esque relationship between Jon and Garfield. Like Tyler Durden, Garfield lives the life that Jon – our story’s Ed Norton – only dreams of. He sleeps in, finds contentment in simple pleasures, breaks the rules, has luck with the ladies, picks on Jon, gets along with the Arbuckle family, and generally has a good time. Sometimes, Garfield speaks for Jon. And, like Tyler Durden, when considered objectively, it seems more likely that Garfield doesn’t actually exist: that all we’ve been watching is the Jekyll/Hyde transformation of a deeply unhappy man. Liz the vet, Jon’s long-time almost-paramour, even looks like Helena Bonham-Carter.  

Of course, Jim Davis and Chuck Palahniuk might disagree. But who asked them?