GEEK
CRAP. No good movies open until August 13th! NOOOOOOO! "Scott Pilgrim" FTW!!!
NOT GEEK
CRAP. No good movies open until August 13th! NOOOOOOO! "Expendables" FTW!!!
Friday, July 30, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The Trilogy Principle
This is the third blog. The second one got a bit long, but a writer I trust told me, "It doesn't matter if you're not in the mood to write-- write. Writing will put you in the mood."
You know what puts me in the mood to write? Physical labor.
NOT GEEK
What? Last week was fine. We need more scary movies. "Paranormal Activity 2" is destined to suck, though. Accountants remain stupid.
GEEK
Speaking of that, the worst movies I've ever seen are Short Circuit 2, Problem Child 2, Blair Witch 2... I didn't see Speed 2, but I have it on good authority that's pretty awful as well. Human stories are just built to be told in three acts. Shakespeare went with 5, but he had a lot of time to fill; no one in his audience was in a rush to get home and tweet about how good/bad the play was. Three acts, in and out, bam bam bam. Star Wars. Matrix. Back to the Future. Um... the Godfather. And let's say Alien. Good thing there were only three Alien movies, yep yep. And only three Superman movies. SHUT UP.
A good sequel isn't "What's next?" it's "What else?"
The greatest sequel of all-time, The Godfather Part II (with apologies to the New Testament) did not simply say, "Well the first movie was from A to B, so this next movie is B to C." No. Fuck that. Mario Puzo was a goddamn genius of 20th century literature, and yanked the rug out from under us before we even noticed there was a rug. "Bite me," he laughed. "The first movie? Fooled you. THAT was B to C. The Godfather Part II shall be A to D. DID I JUST BLOW YA MIND???"
Yes.
Which is why that's the only exception; every other example of a Part 2 just feels tacked on; we dealt with the aftermath of the ending of the first move... that gets talked about in the first ten minutes. Then it's 90 minutes of who-gives-a-crap. Which is why you'd need a third movie to tie everything together-- three-act structure.
Lord of the Damn Rings.
Friday the 13th.
No seriously, hear me out. I've never bothered to write this down, but you can actually seriously annoy someone at a cocktail party with this:
Friday the 13th isn't mindless rambling sequels into infinity. IT'S THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Okay, not really. Sort of. LOTR was one story ("The Hobbit"), followed by a trilogy that used the first book as a jumping off point, but told its own story within that universe. It's not that different from Greek literature (Tolkien was a professor, if THE MAN is to be believed), where you'd have three serious dramas and then one light-hearted comedy, just to give everyone something to laugh about. Which is not to say "The Hobbit" was a comedy, but it sure did have a lot of singing and dancing. And dragon-incinerations. But I digress.
Friday the 13th - This is a standalone story. The killer is Jason's mother (spoiler alert!). At the end of the movie she dies; the final shot of the movie may or may not be a dream sequence in which her drowned son, Jason, jumps out of the lake and kills our heroine. Credits.
Friday the 13th 2-4 -- TRILOGY. Jason is some kind of freak of nature who goes around murdering teenagers for violating core conservative principles (see previous blog). You even see his face once or twice, under the hockey mask... he looks sort of like a Garbage Pail Kid crossed with Sloth from The Goonies. He even laughs like some 8-year-old. In one of the movies, one of the kids finds Jason's room, a shrine to his dead mother. At the end of part 4, Jason dies. No, not ha-ha, wink wink, maybe a sequel... but he DIES. He's fucking dead. The end. Game over.
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning -- Spoiler alert! That's not Jason. It's some copycat douchebag. Despite the plot still being the same, this remains the Halloween III of the series. Let us never speak of it again. Standalone movie. Copycat gets killed, and we presume buried in an unmarked grave, under an Arby's.
Friday the 13th 6-8 -- ZOMBIE TRILOGY. Part 6 (the most technically well-made film of the entire series) opens with our hero from part 4, all grown up (and played by a different actor) checking Jason's grave to make sure he's really dead. LIGHTNING STRIKE. Jason is now no longer an idiot manchild, he is now ZOMBIE JASON, as is evidenced when he rises from the grave and kills Horshack. I am not making this up. He dies once, he dies twice, he goes to Manhattan, he melts in toxic waste. The end. He's fucking dead. Game over.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday -- In theory this is a sequel to part VIII, just because it was released next chronologically, but they make zero effort to explain how Jason got from toxic waste to back at the lake killin' folk. I don't mean, they give a lame excuse, I mean THEY NEVER EVEN MENTION IT. Jason is just there, like girl scouts in the fall. How'd he get there? We don't know. Just ACCEPT IT, BITCHES. He is Jason, your own personal lord and savior, and MAN ARE HIS STANDARDS HIGH.
So that's a standalone movie, with the film that takes place both immediately before and after not linked to it in any way, other than a hockey-mask, some obscure legend of some dude named Jason, and maybe a Crystal Lake, if you feel like mentioning it. Then comes "Jason X" in which Jason is mysteriously alive AGAIN (despite being forever definitively killed at the end of JGTH), and then goes to THE FUTURE. I can't even be bothered to wiki that one, but sufficed to say, the movie doesn't end with Jason 2.0 being sent back to the past. And yet, "Freddy vs. Jason" is back in the present. WHAT THE FUCK EVER, HOLLYWOOD. It's this kind of lack of attention to detail that got us from "Batman" to "Batman & Robin" in 3 easy steps. And Tim Burton from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" to "Planet of the Apes."
So post Jason in Manhattan, how many standalone films is that? THREE. That's THREE movies of essentially well-funded fan-fiction (seriously. the writer of Jason X named characters after his friends from Diablo Online. Google that shit). One standalone. One trilogy. Another standalone. One different yet upgraded trilogy. Then a trilogy of standalones.
Even Freddy got in on that action, with part 1 being a great standalone, part 2 being a really gay standalone (I do not mean that in a disrespectful way, I mean it in a "this movie is about a young man's homosexuality" way, and the lead actor agrees with me), and part 3-5 actually were a trilogy of their own, containing their own continuity and even keeping some characters in common alone the way. Freddy's Dead was just a standalone to wrap it up; Jason Goes to Hell same story. Pity no one ever sent Freddy into the future... but then Wes Craven came back and made "New Nightmare," which is not only the single most underrated movie on his resume, but it completes the second trilogy. Three movies of fanfiction once again, but one of them was actually written by the creator of the damned character. And when we can cast them onto the trash heap of history; it's time for Chucky vs. Leprechaun, bitches.
See? Everything's a three-part structure. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish up my screenplay for Speed 3: Anti-Lock Brakes.
You know what puts me in the mood to write? Physical labor.
NOT GEEK
What? Last week was fine. We need more scary movies. "Paranormal Activity 2" is destined to suck, though. Accountants remain stupid.
GEEK
Speaking of that, the worst movies I've ever seen are Short Circuit 2, Problem Child 2, Blair Witch 2... I didn't see Speed 2, but I have it on good authority that's pretty awful as well. Human stories are just built to be told in three acts. Shakespeare went with 5, but he had a lot of time to fill; no one in his audience was in a rush to get home and tweet about how good/bad the play was. Three acts, in and out, bam bam bam. Star Wars. Matrix. Back to the Future. Um... the Godfather. And let's say Alien. Good thing there were only three Alien movies, yep yep. And only three Superman movies. SHUT UP.
A good sequel isn't "What's next?" it's "What else?"
The greatest sequel of all-time, The Godfather Part II (with apologies to the New Testament) did not simply say, "Well the first movie was from A to B, so this next movie is B to C." No. Fuck that. Mario Puzo was a goddamn genius of 20th century literature, and yanked the rug out from under us before we even noticed there was a rug. "Bite me," he laughed. "The first movie? Fooled you. THAT was B to C. The Godfather Part II shall be A to D. DID I JUST BLOW YA MIND???"
Yes.
Which is why that's the only exception; every other example of a Part 2 just feels tacked on; we dealt with the aftermath of the ending of the first move... that gets talked about in the first ten minutes. Then it's 90 minutes of who-gives-a-crap. Which is why you'd need a third movie to tie everything together-- three-act structure.
Lord of the Damn Rings.
Friday the 13th.
No seriously, hear me out. I've never bothered to write this down, but you can actually seriously annoy someone at a cocktail party with this:
Friday the 13th isn't mindless rambling sequels into infinity. IT'S THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Okay, not really. Sort of. LOTR was one story ("The Hobbit"), followed by a trilogy that used the first book as a jumping off point, but told its own story within that universe. It's not that different from Greek literature (Tolkien was a professor, if THE MAN is to be believed), where you'd have three serious dramas and then one light-hearted comedy, just to give everyone something to laugh about. Which is not to say "The Hobbit" was a comedy, but it sure did have a lot of singing and dancing. And dragon-incinerations. But I digress.
Friday the 13th - This is a standalone story. The killer is Jason's mother (spoiler alert!). At the end of the movie she dies; the final shot of the movie may or may not be a dream sequence in which her drowned son, Jason, jumps out of the lake and kills our heroine. Credits.
Friday the 13th 2-4 -- TRILOGY. Jason is some kind of freak of nature who goes around murdering teenagers for violating core conservative principles (see previous blog). You even see his face once or twice, under the hockey mask... he looks sort of like a Garbage Pail Kid crossed with Sloth from The Goonies. He even laughs like some 8-year-old. In one of the movies, one of the kids finds Jason's room, a shrine to his dead mother. At the end of part 4, Jason dies. No, not ha-ha, wink wink, maybe a sequel... but he DIES. He's fucking dead. The end. Game over.
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning -- Spoiler alert! That's not Jason. It's some copycat douchebag. Despite the plot still being the same, this remains the Halloween III of the series. Let us never speak of it again. Standalone movie. Copycat gets killed, and we presume buried in an unmarked grave, under an Arby's.
Friday the 13th 6-8 -- ZOMBIE TRILOGY. Part 6 (the most technically well-made film of the entire series) opens with our hero from part 4, all grown up (and played by a different actor) checking Jason's grave to make sure he's really dead. LIGHTNING STRIKE. Jason is now no longer an idiot manchild, he is now ZOMBIE JASON, as is evidenced when he rises from the grave and kills Horshack. I am not making this up. He dies once, he dies twice, he goes to Manhattan, he melts in toxic waste. The end. He's fucking dead. Game over.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday -- In theory this is a sequel to part VIII, just because it was released next chronologically, but they make zero effort to explain how Jason got from toxic waste to back at the lake killin' folk. I don't mean, they give a lame excuse, I mean THEY NEVER EVEN MENTION IT. Jason is just there, like girl scouts in the fall. How'd he get there? We don't know. Just ACCEPT IT, BITCHES. He is Jason, your own personal lord and savior, and MAN ARE HIS STANDARDS HIGH.
So that's a standalone movie, with the film that takes place both immediately before and after not linked to it in any way, other than a hockey-mask, some obscure legend of some dude named Jason, and maybe a Crystal Lake, if you feel like mentioning it. Then comes "Jason X" in which Jason is mysteriously alive AGAIN (despite being forever definitively killed at the end of JGTH), and then goes to THE FUTURE. I can't even be bothered to wiki that one, but sufficed to say, the movie doesn't end with Jason 2.0 being sent back to the past. And yet, "Freddy vs. Jason" is back in the present. WHAT THE FUCK EVER, HOLLYWOOD. It's this kind of lack of attention to detail that got us from "Batman" to "Batman & Robin" in 3 easy steps. And Tim Burton from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" to "Planet of the Apes."
So post Jason in Manhattan, how many standalone films is that? THREE. That's THREE movies of essentially well-funded fan-fiction (seriously. the writer of Jason X named characters after his friends from Diablo Online. Google that shit). One standalone. One trilogy. Another standalone. One different yet upgraded trilogy. Then a trilogy of standalones.
Even Freddy got in on that action, with part 1 being a great standalone, part 2 being a really gay standalone (I do not mean that in a disrespectful way, I mean it in a "this movie is about a young man's homosexuality" way, and the lead actor agrees with me), and part 3-5 actually were a trilogy of their own, containing their own continuity and even keeping some characters in common alone the way. Freddy's Dead was just a standalone to wrap it up; Jason Goes to Hell same story. Pity no one ever sent Freddy into the future... but then Wes Craven came back and made "New Nightmare," which is not only the single most underrated movie on his resume, but it completes the second trilogy. Three movies of fanfiction once again, but one of them was actually written by the creator of the damned character. And when we can cast them onto the trash heap of history; it's time for Chucky vs. Leprechaun, bitches.
See? Everything's a three-part structure. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish up my screenplay for Speed 3: Anti-Lock Brakes.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Horror... The Horror
NOT GEEK
I think the first movie I really remember scaring the ever-loving bejeezus out of me was either "Superman II" or "The Muppet Movie."
In the former, our hero Superman goes through some sort of highly-stylized, Satan's-James-Bond-opening montage transformation in which he really does nothing more than lose his powers, but at the time I was rather on the young side and just saw a bunch of red lights and skulls and scary noises, with the upshot being, "There's a big scary light and all you can do is stand there until you're weaker than you were before." Certainly something to look forward to, when you're six.
In the latter, the climax involves a mad scientist putting Kermit into something akin to an electric chair and nearly pulling the switch, but thanks to some wacky hi-jinks, the evil, malicious scientist gets the metallic-looking upside-down bowl on his head instead, and then goes bye-bye (again, six years old here). I've of course seen both movies since, and of course quite obviously realize that a) Superman II, though groundbreaking, was really mostly silly, and b) that "mad scientist" was actually Mel Brooks. Though I still hold a grudge for "Dracula: Dead and Loving It."
I never really had a taste for scary movies much as I got older; not that they scared me away, I just didn't see the point of them. "Hey, let's go watch people get killed." (this was the 1980's, after all) ... so? You've seen one death, you've seen 'em all. Plus there's Ghostbusters and that's awesome.
The first time I really appreciated a horror movie, I was well into my 20's... I'd seen plenty as I got into high school, of course, but it was in my early 20's where I finally realized I'd never seen the original "Halloween," and one October night, decided to rectify that situation.
It was awesome.
What made it awesome was precisely the fact that I HAD seen many other slasher movies by that point. The body count of the original "Halloween" was only, as I recall, five, far and away dwarfing that of its successors (even its own sequels). But it was the scariest, tensest thing I'd ever watched to that point. It was about the mood, not about the kills. Why splatter someone if you can get a reaction just by having the killer stand across the street... unseen by the main character, but in full view of the audience?
Scary.
It was Hitchcock who posited something along the lines of, if you have two people talking over a table at a cafe, that scene can be very boring. But if you let the audience know there is a ticking bomb under that same table, all of a sudden their conversation becomes extremely tense and dramatic, without changing the interaction of the actors at all.
Of course, there are plenty of movie-goers these days who might see such a scene and complain in their blogs or facebook pages, "OMG this movie is SO boring... is the bomb gonna go off or not? Get to it!!" ... this is, of course, to miss the entire point of the scene in the previous example, but it's a natural by-product of the way modern movies are made... and the way the slasher (or rather, "horror") movie has evolved. I admit that the slasher movie is only an offshoot of the genre that is/was "horror," but certainly "slasher" is the only offshoot of it that continues to survive. But I think we can still safely assume that most people can immerse themselves in the world of a movie based on subtlety and cinematic convention, given that ten years ago "The Blair Witch Project" rang up $100 million in ticket sales, and movies like Saw, and Hostel, while doing well, have certainly never become the event-movie that BWP became all those years ago. Niche vs. Culture-as-a-whole. BSG vs. Lost. For example.
What do we have nowadays? Saw Seven? Hostel 3? (the latter is straight-to-DVD, by the way. Hilarious). Is it just the slasher movie that's dead, or is it horror altogether? "Scream" was really more a parody of the genre, once upon a time, though it did bring back the horror movie in a big way... for a little while. Now it's all remakes, reboots, and all the truly bloody movies are more about people being tortured than the good ol' classic "Teenagers running through the woods and getting splatted" classics. Good lord, man, how on earth are you supposed to get a girl to jump into your lap at the movie theater anymore?
It should be noted, though, that (a) I have not seen Paranormal Activity, and (b) That being true, the scariest movie I've seen in the last ten years was the American remake of "The Ring." And that was PG-13. (Not because it's not scary or because I'm a pussy, because it is and I'm not, but because there just wasn't any blood, and that's the kind of ignorant organization the MPAA is). Maybe I just need to watch more Japanese-horror. Or invent my own genre. Of horror. BOO!
GEEK
Pussssssssyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
By your own admission, the scariest movie you ever saw was "The Blair Witch Project," because it creates that tension that people with imagination adore and people without imagination are confused by. Kind of like how only people without imagination could actually vote for Sarah Palin. Gravitas is its own reward, but if you don't see it, no one can explain it to you. Rather like the appeal of "Lost." Or Doctor Who.
For the record, I dislike Lost and could never get into it, but that's an entirely different entry. Back to the point:
The slasher genre is indeed a sub-set of the horror genre, and the horror genre is nothing new. From Dracula to Frankenstein to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, people like seeing scary movies because they are freaking scary. Sneaking up behind someone in the dark and going "boo!", going on a roller coaster, having sex in a public place... we all get our thrills somehow, and we've all tried at least one of those things. It's the shock, the moment of surprise... it's impossible to tell what the primal attraction is, maybe it's just the endorphins in the moment after your friend or sibling shouts "Boo!" and you realize you're perfectly safe... or if you're the Boo-er, maybe just that power to make someone jump. In any event, it's awesome.
And so in the early 1970's we get the book "Jaws," which Spielberg turned into a movie (see previous blog), which was essentially a symbol for its time, and a slasher movie all at once. Scary, unseen monster, preying on the unsuspecting, one at a time.....
Halloween did it again, 3 years later. In that movie, Michael Myers was punishing his "evil" sister over and over again, having killed his actual sister for being all slutty at the beginning of the film (when he was still five years old), then killing others whom he perceived to be either her, or the boy she was with, for the remainder of the movie. That, not Jaws, was the birth of the slasher movie.
We can see it right through the sequels to Halloween, the sequels to Friday the 13th, and most of the sequels to "A Nightmare on Elm Street" -- it's even explained, point-blank, in 1996's "Scream." If you are having sex, you are a target. If you are doing drugs, you are a target. If you're doing pretty much any of the behavior your adult-peers wouldn't approve of, LOOK OUT. OR THE BOOGEY-MAN WILL GET YOU.
And yet, the Boogey-Man never kills adults. Only teenagers who are up to the kind of shenanigans our ultra-conservative overseer, Ronald Reagan, would not approve of. Does this mean no adults were doing drugs, or having sex outside marriage? Well, apparently it did. Cuz there sure were a lot of teenagers dying in these movies, and the virginal "good girl" always seemed to survive until the end. Be good kids, and the killer will spare you.
But that was a 1980's thing. Times changed and politics mellowed, Bill Clinton coming into office and taboos relaxing (particularly ones involving cigars), the budget was balanced, and America was by and large a much happier, less-repressed place. The boogey-man was no longer coming to get anyone.
And yet teenagers were still dying... in movies. What was killing them?
As we learned from the original "Scream" .... themselves. The killers in the first movie just wanted to be famous, after all; the original reality TV wanna-bes. Scream 2 just turned out to be a petty revenge story (the boogey man again.... er, woman), but she was only doing it BECAUSE some teenagers had killed her teenager in the first place. Never mind that he'd been a psychotic killer. An eye for an eye, as they say.
The killer in the third film was a teenager again, or at least had been, when he got the idea... and by the time we get to Saw and Hostel, there's no in-the-shadows Boogey-man at all. The very subjects of the movie are forced to hurt themselves, and hurt others... in order to survive. Because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or because someone else is expressing their urges to make themselves happy... at the expense of others. In "Hostel," some rich foreigners cut up Americans cuz they're bored, or something... not really sure what's going on there, but the original made an awful lot of money for torture-porn... amusing, considering the premise used for ACTUAL porn would've been way more fun. "Hello, I'm Inga. I have paid the top dollar to have the secks with yuu pretty America boy...."
Saw has 6 movies in the franchise and counting, and in each some innocent bystander must commit some horrible atrocity against some fellow human being in order to go on with their lifestyle.
Thank goodness most of us just buy a Prius instead.
I think the first movie I really remember scaring the ever-loving bejeezus out of me was either "Superman II" or "The Muppet Movie."
In the former, our hero Superman goes through some sort of highly-stylized, Satan's-James-Bond-opening montage transformation in which he really does nothing more than lose his powers, but at the time I was rather on the young side and just saw a bunch of red lights and skulls and scary noises, with the upshot being, "There's a big scary light and all you can do is stand there until you're weaker than you were before." Certainly something to look forward to, when you're six.
In the latter, the climax involves a mad scientist putting Kermit into something akin to an electric chair and nearly pulling the switch, but thanks to some wacky hi-jinks, the evil, malicious scientist gets the metallic-looking upside-down bowl on his head instead, and then goes bye-bye (again, six years old here). I've of course seen both movies since, and of course quite obviously realize that a) Superman II, though groundbreaking, was really mostly silly, and b) that "mad scientist" was actually Mel Brooks. Though I still hold a grudge for "Dracula: Dead and Loving It."
I never really had a taste for scary movies much as I got older; not that they scared me away, I just didn't see the point of them. "Hey, let's go watch people get killed." (this was the 1980's, after all) ... so? You've seen one death, you've seen 'em all. Plus there's Ghostbusters and that's awesome.
The first time I really appreciated a horror movie, I was well into my 20's... I'd seen plenty as I got into high school, of course, but it was in my early 20's where I finally realized I'd never seen the original "Halloween," and one October night, decided to rectify that situation.
It was awesome.
What made it awesome was precisely the fact that I HAD seen many other slasher movies by that point. The body count of the original "Halloween" was only, as I recall, five, far and away dwarfing that of its successors (even its own sequels). But it was the scariest, tensest thing I'd ever watched to that point. It was about the mood, not about the kills. Why splatter someone if you can get a reaction just by having the killer stand across the street... unseen by the main character, but in full view of the audience?
Scary.
It was Hitchcock who posited something along the lines of, if you have two people talking over a table at a cafe, that scene can be very boring. But if you let the audience know there is a ticking bomb under that same table, all of a sudden their conversation becomes extremely tense and dramatic, without changing the interaction of the actors at all.
Of course, there are plenty of movie-goers these days who might see such a scene and complain in their blogs or facebook pages, "OMG this movie is SO boring... is the bomb gonna go off or not? Get to it!!" ... this is, of course, to miss the entire point of the scene in the previous example, but it's a natural by-product of the way modern movies are made... and the way the slasher (or rather, "horror") movie has evolved. I admit that the slasher movie is only an offshoot of the genre that is/was "horror," but certainly "slasher" is the only offshoot of it that continues to survive. But I think we can still safely assume that most people can immerse themselves in the world of a movie based on subtlety and cinematic convention, given that ten years ago "The Blair Witch Project" rang up $100 million in ticket sales, and movies like Saw, and Hostel, while doing well, have certainly never become the event-movie that BWP became all those years ago. Niche vs. Culture-as-a-whole. BSG vs. Lost. For example.
What do we have nowadays? Saw Seven? Hostel 3? (the latter is straight-to-DVD, by the way. Hilarious). Is it just the slasher movie that's dead, or is it horror altogether? "Scream" was really more a parody of the genre, once upon a time, though it did bring back the horror movie in a big way... for a little while. Now it's all remakes, reboots, and all the truly bloody movies are more about people being tortured than the good ol' classic "Teenagers running through the woods and getting splatted" classics. Good lord, man, how on earth are you supposed to get a girl to jump into your lap at the movie theater anymore?
It should be noted, though, that (a) I have not seen Paranormal Activity, and (b) That being true, the scariest movie I've seen in the last ten years was the American remake of "The Ring." And that was PG-13. (Not because it's not scary or because I'm a pussy, because it is and I'm not, but because there just wasn't any blood, and that's the kind of ignorant organization the MPAA is). Maybe I just need to watch more Japanese-horror. Or invent my own genre. Of horror. BOO!
GEEK
Pussssssssyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
By your own admission, the scariest movie you ever saw was "The Blair Witch Project," because it creates that tension that people with imagination adore and people without imagination are confused by. Kind of like how only people without imagination could actually vote for Sarah Palin. Gravitas is its own reward, but if you don't see it, no one can explain it to you. Rather like the appeal of "Lost." Or Doctor Who.
For the record, I dislike Lost and could never get into it, but that's an entirely different entry. Back to the point:
The slasher genre is indeed a sub-set of the horror genre, and the horror genre is nothing new. From Dracula to Frankenstein to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, people like seeing scary movies because they are freaking scary. Sneaking up behind someone in the dark and going "boo!", going on a roller coaster, having sex in a public place... we all get our thrills somehow, and we've all tried at least one of those things. It's the shock, the moment of surprise... it's impossible to tell what the primal attraction is, maybe it's just the endorphins in the moment after your friend or sibling shouts "Boo!" and you realize you're perfectly safe... or if you're the Boo-er, maybe just that power to make someone jump. In any event, it's awesome.
And so in the early 1970's we get the book "Jaws," which Spielberg turned into a movie (see previous blog), which was essentially a symbol for its time, and a slasher movie all at once. Scary, unseen monster, preying on the unsuspecting, one at a time.....
Halloween did it again, 3 years later. In that movie, Michael Myers was punishing his "evil" sister over and over again, having killed his actual sister for being all slutty at the beginning of the film (when he was still five years old), then killing others whom he perceived to be either her, or the boy she was with, for the remainder of the movie. That, not Jaws, was the birth of the slasher movie.
We can see it right through the sequels to Halloween, the sequels to Friday the 13th, and most of the sequels to "A Nightmare on Elm Street" -- it's even explained, point-blank, in 1996's "Scream." If you are having sex, you are a target. If you are doing drugs, you are a target. If you're doing pretty much any of the behavior your adult-peers wouldn't approve of, LOOK OUT. OR THE BOOGEY-MAN WILL GET YOU.
And yet, the Boogey-Man never kills adults. Only teenagers who are up to the kind of shenanigans our ultra-conservative overseer, Ronald Reagan, would not approve of. Does this mean no adults were doing drugs, or having sex outside marriage? Well, apparently it did. Cuz there sure were a lot of teenagers dying in these movies, and the virginal "good girl" always seemed to survive until the end. Be good kids, and the killer will spare you.
But that was a 1980's thing. Times changed and politics mellowed, Bill Clinton coming into office and taboos relaxing (particularly ones involving cigars), the budget was balanced, and America was by and large a much happier, less-repressed place. The boogey-man was no longer coming to get anyone.
And yet teenagers were still dying... in movies. What was killing them?
As we learned from the original "Scream" .... themselves. The killers in the first movie just wanted to be famous, after all; the original reality TV wanna-bes. Scream 2 just turned out to be a petty revenge story (the boogey man again.... er, woman), but she was only doing it BECAUSE some teenagers had killed her teenager in the first place. Never mind that he'd been a psychotic killer. An eye for an eye, as they say.
The killer in the third film was a teenager again, or at least had been, when he got the idea... and by the time we get to Saw and Hostel, there's no in-the-shadows Boogey-man at all. The very subjects of the movie are forced to hurt themselves, and hurt others... in order to survive. Because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or because someone else is expressing their urges to make themselves happy... at the expense of others. In "Hostel," some rich foreigners cut up Americans cuz they're bored, or something... not really sure what's going on there, but the original made an awful lot of money for torture-porn... amusing, considering the premise used for ACTUAL porn would've been way more fun. "Hello, I'm Inga. I have paid the top dollar to have the secks with yuu pretty America boy...."
Saw has 6 movies in the franchise and counting, and in each some innocent bystander must commit some horrible atrocity against some fellow human being in order to go on with their lifestyle.
Thank goodness most of us just buy a Prius instead.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Post-Modernist Symbolism in Nimrod Antal's "Predators," or, "I Ain't Getting Laid This Week."
This is my first one, so I'm still playing with the concept/format a bit. Also it may be a bit long. If you have not seen the new movie "Predators," please don't read this, as I spoil the everloving shit out of it.
GEEK:
The first film professor I ever had was a middle-aged hippie woman who didn’t comment on the films she showed her classes; she just showed the films. Sure, she’d say, this one is French Impressionism, or that one is American Noir, but mostly she let the films speak for themselves. Every film student should have a professor like that, because a constant diet of whatever Blockbuster carries certainly removes a sense of history, and allows what would have been talented filmmakers to turn into people like Michael Bay.
The second film professor I ever had told me, the first day I ever met her, that “Jaws” was a metaphor for the Vietnam War.
I was 22 at the time, and I nodded, said something like “Hm, really?” while simultaneously in my head I was laughing, laughing, unable to wait to tell my friends what this woman had just said to me. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. Over the next several years I would remember that often, while at the same time learning more about the world around me, including the world as it was in 1975. And of course I watched the film again on my own, more than once… because, no matter how you look at it, that’s a great movie.
The simple truth is, while yes, you can apply most ANY metaphor like that, to any movie, we can also agree that, were Jaws made today, there would be certain differences in a 2010 Jaws vs. a 1975 Jaws. Most obviously, the shark would be replaced by CGI. But there would certainly be other changes, if not to plot than to casting… three white guys as the main characters? In 2010? That’s not very PC, is it? Better put a woman on that boat. And make one of the men non-white, we’ve got to sell tickets, after all…
In 1975, the shark was communism. I’m certainly not trying to imply (though I’m unsure if Film Professor II was or wasn’t) that Spielberg, or author Peter Benchley, consciously set out to make a movie about Vietnam, that would be ludicrous. But it was the people of the early 1970’s who made that book a best-seller, and the people of 1975 who made that movie one of the top-grossing movies of all time. And it was about an unseen force, slowly creeping up on our borders, infiltrating our territory at the very edges (the beach), where we felt most safe… taking our children one by one.
No one will believe they are at risk. The chief of police (Sheriff Brody) wants to close the beaches; the local government WANTS the families out there. There’s no danger, after all. Let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s err on the side of our financial livelihood.
And so there are a few more deaths, and who has to go out into the sharks’ own environment—travelling, as it were, “in country” – but the blue collar hero (fisherman and ex-marine, Quint), the white collar hero (well-funded researcher Hooper) and the representative of a government agency, Sheriff Brody.
The blue-collar character dies, then the government kills the shark. Clear symbolism. Though in the book, Hooper gets it, too. Our government will save us, you see. That’s something we can all relate to. In 1975. Here in the 21st Century, our relationship with the government is a little different.
So that’s “Jaws.” That’s what turned me off being a film major forever; I managed my degree in theater and only needed one more film class to graduate. It was years after I graduated that I finally heard a film explained in a far, far more hilarious manner: “Predator” (yes, that one), was a metaphor for the gay man’s struggle against AIDS.
These things manifest themselves in subtle ways, you understand. Predator is another great movie. Sit back, relax, watch the powerful, unexplained alien pick off sweaty, oiled-up beefcakes one by one. I’ve watched this happen many times (in the movie, I mean). Jesse Ventura is a “goddamned sexual tyrannosaurus” and even he gets taken out relatively early in the movie. This is serious business.
It was 1987, and though doctors had already begun diagnosing the disease that would come to be called HIV, the federal government was uninterested in making any such announcement about it. It would take 3 more years—when Magic Johnson announced publicly he had the disease—that anyone outside the gay community seemed to take it seriously, at least at on a national, cultural level. And it had been going on for a DECADE by then. This would be like, say, a terrorist attack taking place on U.S. soil, and the president doing nothing for months, before finally explaining nothing to the people and just attacking the wrong—wait, no, okay, bad example. It would be more like, say, the worst natural disaster in the history of America nearly destroying one of its great cities, and then the President ignoring it and letting the under-funded, overworked bureaucratic government agencies deal with it instead…. Well, okay, another bad example, but that’s just the point. The government doesn’t do its job, and we notice it… because we live in this country. It’s hard to miss.
The Predator is AIDS and picks off the overly-close boys club one at a time. It attacks our heroes directly, right where they are at the time, so unlike the shark in Jaws. Also unlike Jaws, every single death is a main character, except for Arnold, who we see achieve victory in the end, when our soldier covers himself with latex, I mean mud. We all learned a valuable lesson that day. Other than “don’t go to Guatemala.”
Which brings us to “Predators,” the film released this month as not a reboot, but a sequel, altering the title slightly because “Predator 3” would just call unwanted attention toward “Predator 2,” and nobody wants that. The sequel to “Alien” was called “Aliens” anyway, and was a wildly different genre. “Predators” is still an action movie... but it’s 23 years after the original. Cultures change. The monster is neither creeping up on our own territory, nor has it arrived someplace we didn’t expect to find it. It has brought us to the fight, starting the battle before a single shot was even fired. It has kidnapped our heroes, taken them away from their homes, and left them to fend for themselves in an environment that is simultaneously familiar, yet not.
In the newest version, is the Predator terrorism? Certainly not, as our main characters don’t seem particularly afraid. They’re not sure where they are, or how they got there, but when they learn of their alien environment they soldier on, because they are a politically-correct band of multi-ethnic (and multi-gendered) soldier, representing We, the People, in this new politically correct post-1980’s America. Viva le Revolution.
It is halfway through the movie that we realize our Common Men (and Woman) are up against not one brand of Predator, but two (hence the title). We have our classic Predator, all scaly-skin and snapping jaws from the original film… and we have our taller, meaner “Larger Predator,” which has another name in the film , but “Black Predator” certainly isn’t very PC either. So we’ll stick with “LP” and “OP.”
So our common citizens must now unite against a common goal—escaping this situation they find themselves in. Our hero, Adrien Brody, has an idea. The LP’s, in their blood feud with the OP’s, have captured an OP and have tied it up in their camp. Our fearless leader (Brody) is going to free it, and in doing so forge a friendship that will get them home.
Upon doing so, the OP reluctantly seems to agree, but is soon attacked by the remaining LP, which proceeds to fight the OP to the death. LP wins. The “escape” vehicle, the spaceship, takes off, and we think our hero is aboard. LP destroys it. Back to business.
The only two forces, we can reason, that are actively fighting against the common We the People, would of course be our American two-party system, the Democrats and Republicans. Alone and tied to a relic, the Democrat begrudgingly agrees to help our hero. It is not happy to do so, of course, but it is honor-bound. It is then decapitated in short-order by a Larger Predator, which presumably brought everyone to this alien planet in the first place… it has an agenda and it will stop at nothing to achieve it. It is there to kill humans, it has wasted its resources to transport its prey thousands of miles, simply to be killed. It repeatedly ignores its own in quest of its goal. And, not for nothing, it does kill the first minority it sees.
Seriously.
The character identified as Mexican (Danny Trejo) is the first to be killed by a Predator. The African is the second to go. At the end of a glorified cameo, Laurence Fishburne runs into a Larger Predator, armed with little more than a flare, and is instantly gunned down, despite the predators supposedly having honor and not attacking unarmed prey. Twenty minutes later, another one crosses paths with a member of the Japanese Yakuza-- the man armed only with a sword, and the two fight as equals. The Japanese man up until this point has been quiet, a watchful observer, and one of only two members of the humans not wearing battle fatigues. He is only carrying a simple handgun, and is missing three fingers. Certainly a slight disadvantage, but he relies on his culture to carry out his last stand. Because we took their guns away at the end of WWII, so that is a way Americans would accept the fight.
Those two fight to the death (both die), and the earlier NP was also taken out by self-sacrifice—that time by a Russian soldier. Two superpowers, two deaths. The American does not die, however… well, one does, but he turns out to not be a soldier, but a psychopath. Predators among us. The American soldier, his Israeli female companion (who grew up in Guatemala) survive, but do not get off the planet. They’re stuck in the same shit they always were.. . it is they, themselves, who must find a way out of their situation, as no one is going to help them.
NOT GEEK:
The opening shot is of Adrien Brody falling through the air. Though not as horrifically bloody as the first movie, there are a handful of memorable deaths, and the Predators stay true to the two previous films which featured them and only them as they bad guys.
Where any other actor would stand around and look buff, or dispatch bad guys with witty repartee, Adrien Brody is a skilled actor, and makes the most of motivating his characters meager dialogue. While the stereotypical action fans won’t appreciate the subtlety, it’s still new and refreshing to hear your leading man quote Hemingway to another soldier. Just as it’s refreshing to hear a character say, “If we survive this, I am going to do SO much fucking cocaine.”
The original Predator is an action classic. Directed by John McTiernan one year before he directed “Die Hard,” it continued the great Schwarzenegger tradition. Predator 2 was directed by a glorified TV director (whose only previous hit had been “A Nightmare on Elm 5”), and starred Danny Glover as the cop on the edge, Gary Busey as the bad guy, and Maria Conchita Alonso as the requisite “Latina who is not killed by the Predator” character (one of those shows up in all three movies. Seriously).
“Predators” is not as good as the first (not enough memorable lines, not enough memorable kills), but light years better than the second. In fact, it’s the second-best movie ever made that contains the word “Predator” in the title. Definitely something worth picking up on DVD… and while it’s rated R, I couldn’t help but remember wishing, as the credits rolled, it has been rated -MORE- R. Oh well. Times they are a-changin’.
GEEK:
The first film professor I ever had was a middle-aged hippie woman who didn’t comment on the films she showed her classes; she just showed the films. Sure, she’d say, this one is French Impressionism, or that one is American Noir, but mostly she let the films speak for themselves. Every film student should have a professor like that, because a constant diet of whatever Blockbuster carries certainly removes a sense of history, and allows what would have been talented filmmakers to turn into people like Michael Bay.
The second film professor I ever had told me, the first day I ever met her, that “Jaws” was a metaphor for the Vietnam War.
I was 22 at the time, and I nodded, said something like “Hm, really?” while simultaneously in my head I was laughing, laughing, unable to wait to tell my friends what this woman had just said to me. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. Over the next several years I would remember that often, while at the same time learning more about the world around me, including the world as it was in 1975. And of course I watched the film again on my own, more than once… because, no matter how you look at it, that’s a great movie.
The simple truth is, while yes, you can apply most ANY metaphor like that, to any movie, we can also agree that, were Jaws made today, there would be certain differences in a 2010 Jaws vs. a 1975 Jaws. Most obviously, the shark would be replaced by CGI. But there would certainly be other changes, if not to plot than to casting… three white guys as the main characters? In 2010? That’s not very PC, is it? Better put a woman on that boat. And make one of the men non-white, we’ve got to sell tickets, after all…
In 1975, the shark was communism. I’m certainly not trying to imply (though I’m unsure if Film Professor II was or wasn’t) that Spielberg, or author Peter Benchley, consciously set out to make a movie about Vietnam, that would be ludicrous. But it was the people of the early 1970’s who made that book a best-seller, and the people of 1975 who made that movie one of the top-grossing movies of all time. And it was about an unseen force, slowly creeping up on our borders, infiltrating our territory at the very edges (the beach), where we felt most safe… taking our children one by one.
No one will believe they are at risk. The chief of police (Sheriff Brody) wants to close the beaches; the local government WANTS the families out there. There’s no danger, after all. Let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s err on the side of our financial livelihood.
And so there are a few more deaths, and who has to go out into the sharks’ own environment—travelling, as it were, “in country” – but the blue collar hero (fisherman and ex-marine, Quint), the white collar hero (well-funded researcher Hooper) and the representative of a government agency, Sheriff Brody.
The blue-collar character dies, then the government kills the shark. Clear symbolism. Though in the book, Hooper gets it, too. Our government will save us, you see. That’s something we can all relate to. In 1975. Here in the 21st Century, our relationship with the government is a little different.
So that’s “Jaws.” That’s what turned me off being a film major forever; I managed my degree in theater and only needed one more film class to graduate. It was years after I graduated that I finally heard a film explained in a far, far more hilarious manner: “Predator” (yes, that one), was a metaphor for the gay man’s struggle against AIDS.
These things manifest themselves in subtle ways, you understand. Predator is another great movie. Sit back, relax, watch the powerful, unexplained alien pick off sweaty, oiled-up beefcakes one by one. I’ve watched this happen many times (in the movie, I mean). Jesse Ventura is a “goddamned sexual tyrannosaurus” and even he gets taken out relatively early in the movie. This is serious business.
It was 1987, and though doctors had already begun diagnosing the disease that would come to be called HIV, the federal government was uninterested in making any such announcement about it. It would take 3 more years—when Magic Johnson announced publicly he had the disease—that anyone outside the gay community seemed to take it seriously, at least at on a national, cultural level. And it had been going on for a DECADE by then. This would be like, say, a terrorist attack taking place on U.S. soil, and the president doing nothing for months, before finally explaining nothing to the people and just attacking the wrong—wait, no, okay, bad example. It would be more like, say, the worst natural disaster in the history of America nearly destroying one of its great cities, and then the President ignoring it and letting the under-funded, overworked bureaucratic government agencies deal with it instead…. Well, okay, another bad example, but that’s just the point. The government doesn’t do its job, and we notice it… because we live in this country. It’s hard to miss.
The Predator is AIDS and picks off the overly-close boys club one at a time. It attacks our heroes directly, right where they are at the time, so unlike the shark in Jaws. Also unlike Jaws, every single death is a main character, except for Arnold, who we see achieve victory in the end, when our soldier covers himself with latex, I mean mud. We all learned a valuable lesson that day. Other than “don’t go to Guatemala.”
Which brings us to “Predators,” the film released this month as not a reboot, but a sequel, altering the title slightly because “Predator 3” would just call unwanted attention toward “Predator 2,” and nobody wants that. The sequel to “Alien” was called “Aliens” anyway, and was a wildly different genre. “Predators” is still an action movie... but it’s 23 years after the original. Cultures change. The monster is neither creeping up on our own territory, nor has it arrived someplace we didn’t expect to find it. It has brought us to the fight, starting the battle before a single shot was even fired. It has kidnapped our heroes, taken them away from their homes, and left them to fend for themselves in an environment that is simultaneously familiar, yet not.
In the newest version, is the Predator terrorism? Certainly not, as our main characters don’t seem particularly afraid. They’re not sure where they are, or how they got there, but when they learn of their alien environment they soldier on, because they are a politically-correct band of multi-ethnic (and multi-gendered) soldier, representing We, the People, in this new politically correct post-1980’s America. Viva le Revolution.
It is halfway through the movie that we realize our Common Men (and Woman) are up against not one brand of Predator, but two (hence the title). We have our classic Predator, all scaly-skin and snapping jaws from the original film… and we have our taller, meaner “Larger Predator,” which has another name in the film , but “Black Predator” certainly isn’t very PC either. So we’ll stick with “LP” and “OP.”
So our common citizens must now unite against a common goal—escaping this situation they find themselves in. Our hero, Adrien Brody, has an idea. The LP’s, in their blood feud with the OP’s, have captured an OP and have tied it up in their camp. Our fearless leader (Brody) is going to free it, and in doing so forge a friendship that will get them home.
Upon doing so, the OP reluctantly seems to agree, but is soon attacked by the remaining LP, which proceeds to fight the OP to the death. LP wins. The “escape” vehicle, the spaceship, takes off, and we think our hero is aboard. LP destroys it. Back to business.
The only two forces, we can reason, that are actively fighting against the common We the People, would of course be our American two-party system, the Democrats and Republicans. Alone and tied to a relic, the Democrat begrudgingly agrees to help our hero. It is not happy to do so, of course, but it is honor-bound. It is then decapitated in short-order by a Larger Predator, which presumably brought everyone to this alien planet in the first place… it has an agenda and it will stop at nothing to achieve it. It is there to kill humans, it has wasted its resources to transport its prey thousands of miles, simply to be killed. It repeatedly ignores its own in quest of its goal. And, not for nothing, it does kill the first minority it sees.
Seriously.
The character identified as Mexican (Danny Trejo) is the first to be killed by a Predator. The African is the second to go. At the end of a glorified cameo, Laurence Fishburne runs into a Larger Predator, armed with little more than a flare, and is instantly gunned down, despite the predators supposedly having honor and not attacking unarmed prey. Twenty minutes later, another one crosses paths with a member of the Japanese Yakuza-- the man armed only with a sword, and the two fight as equals. The Japanese man up until this point has been quiet, a watchful observer, and one of only two members of the humans not wearing battle fatigues. He is only carrying a simple handgun, and is missing three fingers. Certainly a slight disadvantage, but he relies on his culture to carry out his last stand. Because we took their guns away at the end of WWII, so that is a way Americans would accept the fight.
Those two fight to the death (both die), and the earlier NP was also taken out by self-sacrifice—that time by a Russian soldier. Two superpowers, two deaths. The American does not die, however… well, one does, but he turns out to not be a soldier, but a psychopath. Predators among us. The American soldier, his Israeli female companion (who grew up in Guatemala) survive, but do not get off the planet. They’re stuck in the same shit they always were.. . it is they, themselves, who must find a way out of their situation, as no one is going to help them.
NOT GEEK:
The opening shot is of Adrien Brody falling through the air. Though not as horrifically bloody as the first movie, there are a handful of memorable deaths, and the Predators stay true to the two previous films which featured them and only them as they bad guys.
Where any other actor would stand around and look buff, or dispatch bad guys with witty repartee, Adrien Brody is a skilled actor, and makes the most of motivating his characters meager dialogue. While the stereotypical action fans won’t appreciate the subtlety, it’s still new and refreshing to hear your leading man quote Hemingway to another soldier. Just as it’s refreshing to hear a character say, “If we survive this, I am going to do SO much fucking cocaine.”
The original Predator is an action classic. Directed by John McTiernan one year before he directed “Die Hard,” it continued the great Schwarzenegger tradition. Predator 2 was directed by a glorified TV director (whose only previous hit had been “A Nightmare on Elm 5”), and starred Danny Glover as the cop on the edge, Gary Busey as the bad guy, and Maria Conchita Alonso as the requisite “Latina who is not killed by the Predator” character (one of those shows up in all three movies. Seriously).
“Predators” is not as good as the first (not enough memorable lines, not enough memorable kills), but light years better than the second. In fact, it’s the second-best movie ever made that contains the word “Predator” in the title. Definitely something worth picking up on DVD… and while it’s rated R, I couldn’t help but remember wishing, as the credits rolled, it has been rated -MORE- R. Oh well. Times they are a-changin’.
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