For better or for worse, Fungible Convictions has posted my official Revenge of the Sith review. I manage to be slightly less snarky than Anthony Lane in his The New Yorker review.
Progress on The Shiver(ing) of the Gate is slow (an understatement). But starting this week, I’ll have an extra day to work on it, which I hope will help get it going. As Neil Gaiman writes constantly in his journal, one simply has to Write (as opposed to Not Writing).
A few days before the release of Star Wars/Episode III/Revenge of the Sith/etc., Star Wars creator and certifiable megalomaniac George Lucas offered his opinion on why so many fans of the franchise were disappointed with the prequels. According to Lucas, “”The older [fans] are loyal to the first three films I made, and they are the ones in control of the media. The films that these people don’t like—which are the first two prequels—are fanatically adored by the under-25s. They are always at each others throats about it.”
That’s right, it’s not Jews who control the media, like the stereotype says; it’s the Star Wars fans.
Unfortunately, Lucas is wrong. The prequels may be better liked by kids, but that’s because they don’t know any better—I watched and loved a lot of crap when I was a kid (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, anyone?). No, George, there is one very good reason the older, wiser fans don’t like your new movies: they’re bad.
For the five or six people who don’t know what happens in this movie, here’s a summary: the big bad guy, called alternately Chancellor Palpatine and Darth Sidious depending on how much wrinkle cream he put on that morning, tempts Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) to the Dark Side. Anakin becomes very, very naughty, kills a lot of people, falls in lava and ends up in a big black suit with an inordinately loud respirator.
There are some great battles and a few effective scenes. Ian McDiarmid turns in a wonderfully hammy but effective performance as Sidious, a.k.a. the Emperor, and his seduction of Anakin to the Dark Side is actually somewhat convincing (from his side, at least—Christensen doesn’t offer much in the way of acting here).
As I’ve told many people—at length, and despite their pleas—I think the prequels could have written themselves. A problem with the prequels is that, according to the off-screen mythos established in the Star Wars lore (and Lucas takes all that stuff very seriously—he has an entire department devoted to “continuity” in the Star Wars universe of movies, novels, videogames, and so forth)—according to this mythos, Darth Vader hunted down all the Jedi and, presumably, slaughtered a lot of other people besides. So, by making the prequels about Anakin Skywalker’s rise and fall, Lucas was essentially giving us a story about the rise of a Hitler. It doesn’t help that the films are loaded with strange lessons like “fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering”—I won’t argue with the last one, but there is such a thing as righteous anger, and fear is a natural human emotion that should be understood, not suppressed.
The prequels should have been about Obi-Wan and his failure with Anakin, not Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, with Obi-Wan as a supporting character. But there was a point in this movie when I thought, “Well, they haven’t made Anakin that bad…maybe, other than a few Jedi and a few strangled Imperial captains, he wasn’t as evil as all that, which could make this whole thing work…”
…and then he killed some kids.
That was about it for me. Child-murderers do not deserve sweeping six-film epics devoted to them, period. Near the end of the film, after Anakin’s pregnant wife Padme (a hapless Natalie Portman, clearly aware of how terrible her lines are) has found out about the children, she still tries to talk him into running away with her and leaving the Dark Side, which—after the child-killing—makes her seem like one of those women who clings to her abusive husband. It’s creepy and disturbing, and it doesn’t help that Portman’s dialogue seems to have been cobbled together from Lucas’s copy of The Big Book of Clichéd Dialogue.
Allegedly Tom Stoppard gave the Revenge of the Sith script a once-over. I don’t believe it. Lucas apparently said that these films should be considered “silent films.” Great idea, George—I could imagine the characters were speaking interesting, subtle dialogue, rather than the laughably bad material Lucas came up with. Did he really sit in front of a computer, cup of coffee in hand, and ponder over lines like “I don’t know you anymore”?
The original films actually have a number of funny lines—mostly coming from C-3PO and Han Solo. The prequels, sadly, have no Han Solo character at all. Han Solo is the Everyman character of the original movies; he’s the one people can identify with. He has no supernatural powers. He consistently points out how ridiculous every given situation is. He has real motivations—early on, he’s in it for the money, and later, for love.
Rewatching the original films recently, I’ll admit that there’s a lot about them that hasn’t held up. But they’re still far, far better than the prequels.
And Han Solo is still the man.
Fungible Convictions, a new website for the artsy-indie crowd (run by my good friend and co-worker Andy Whitacre), has published my review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Watch for more of my writing on FC soon–including my official review of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and possibly a short story.
On a related note, I’ll begin the major writing on my novel–now tentatively titled The Shivering of the Gate–this week.
Dark Horse has released a four page preview of Mike Mignola’s upcoming Hellboy miniseries “The Island.” It’s the first Hellboy comic (not counting B.P.R.D.) since the movie came out (the last miniseries, “The Third Wish,” was published way back in 2002).
The pages are beautiful–Mignola’s style continues to evolve. Back when I first encountered Mignola’s art (in a Wolverine graphic novel titled The Jungle Adventure–it was much better than it sounds), I loved his sharply-defined, uncluttered style, but he was still using a lot more lines and detail than he does now. There’s more grace in his artwork now, with its smooth curves, inky shadows, and the crescent-shape of Hellboy’s head.
Mignola has promised that the story will deliver a smorgasboard of information about Hellboy’s identity, and in particular, what the Right Hand of Doom is (my guess: it’s the hand of an archangel, or perhaps a god–maybe Hephaestus).
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has been around. It started out as a BBC radio comedy series written by Douglas Adams. Adams then wrote the radio plays into a series of novels, which were in turn made into a short-lived television series, a very early computer game, and now, the crown jewel: a movie, the last great frontier for selling out.
I’ve read at least the first three novels, but it was years ago and I don’t remember very much about them, so forgive me for not being the diehard HHGTTG fan that, say, my Caltech-alumnus girlfriend is, or for that matter, anyone who went to one of the major left-brain universities. I’ve seen Adams-scripted episodes of Doctor Who more recently than I’ve encountered any of his Guide work (I’m going to refer to it as Guide, because the actual title is too long to write, and because Hitchhiker’s contains that annoying hyphen and I always have to think twice about whether there are two H’s in the middle, and because HHGTTG is also hard to remember).
I do know that the film, directed by relative unknown Garth Jennings (who has virtually no information on his Imdb entry), is based primarily on a script by Adams, and that the inclusion of a new character named Humma Kavula (John Malkovich) was Adams’ invention (and, I suspect, mainly a plot device to remove Zaphod Beeblebrox’s extra head, which Adams no doubt realized would be a difficult and perhaps annoying special effect in a live-action film–which, indeed, it was).
The storyline of Guide is ostensibly simple: the Earth is accidentally destroyed to make way for some sort of interstellar highway, and the only humans to escape is one Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) and Trillian (Zooey Deschanel). Arthur is rescued by Ford Prefect (Mos Def), an alien traveler who works for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, making Ford the intergalactic equivalent of a Let’s Go writer. The two escape the destruction of Earth and end up on a spaceship piloted by Zaphod Breeblebox (Sam Rockwell), the President of the Galaxy and a complete flake, who has also spirited Trillian away. The last member of this motley crew is Marvin the Paranoid Android, who is voiced by Alan Rickman, with Warwick (Willow) Davis in the robot suit.
The rest of the plot concerns something about figuring out the meaning of the universe, which is apparently the number 42 (beloved reference of nerds everywhere). All sorts of strange things happen, revelations are…revealed, and the marvelous Bill Nighy shows up as designer-planet-builder Slartibartfast (who gives my favorite performance in the film).
So the screenplay is messy, even taking into account the story it’s based on. It’s also a little rushed, but I wouldn’t advise trying to follow the plot too closely anyway. Instead, sit back and enjoy the weirdness and the performances, most of which are top-notch. Zooey Deschanel continues her quest to take Reese Witherspoon’s place in the celebrity cosmogony. Martin Freeman makes a fine Arthur Dent. Mos Def looks nothing like I envisioned Ford Prefect, but few actors (with the exception of Tim Quill) would, and Def does fine with the role. Rockwell’s Zaphod is suitably annoying, and Rickman and Davis unsurprisingly steal the show.
The humor is hit-and-miss. The Macromedia Flash-style cut scenes from the Hitchhiker’s Guide are pretty reliably amusing, and the film does some wonderful things with the Infinite Improbability Drive, which allows Zaphod’s ship to travel instantly across time (with the unfortunate side effect of temporarily turning the ship into animals, flowers, and in one amusing case, fabric sculpture). And anything with Marvin is funny.
The film makes an effort to make more of a romantic arc with Arthur, Trillian and Zaphod–allegedly something Adams wanted into the film version. I’m not entirely sure it works, however; all too often, the romantic moments feel a little perfunctory.
But the film offers some lovely eye candy, and the performances ensure that fans are satisfied and non-fans are entertained. The end of the film makes it clear that we’ll be seeing more of Arthur & friends, so in parting I’ll say, see you at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Given the name of this site, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point this out:
Jaws: the Videogame
To my knowledge, there’s only been one other JAWS-based videogame: a 1987 Nintendo game based on the terrible JAWS: The Revenge (which actually had the tagline “This Time, It’s Personal”–on a side note, I’m curious whether this is the origin of that particular action-film bromide). To be honest, I loved the NES game as a kid, but there’s no question it was pretty inane.
You played a diver who was trying to kill Jaws, but most of the game involved shooting crabs and jellyfish to collect conch shells. Jaws only showed up once in a blue moon–and the sad thing was, if you swam to the very top of the waves, he couldn’t hit you.
It looks like the makers of this new game are doing it right–the only way a JAWS-based game could be fun, really: you play the shark. It’s your job to destroy as many boats and eat as many people as possible. It seems like an aquatic version of Grand Theft Auto, minus the hookers (unless a few of them are on vacation, I guess).
The game features a number of locations from the film and its sequels, and in the game trailer I think I saw the Universal Studios ride being destroyed.
The game comes out in August and is pre-selling for only $40, so it sounds like one of those games that’s priced just about right–it’s no Halo 2. But it will allow me to play out one of my childhood fantasies–that of being a huge, man-eating shark.
What, doesn’t every kid dream about that at some point?
Robert Sheckley, one of science fiction’s most beloved elders, is very ill in Russia, and is having problems with medical insurance. Friends and fans have set up a Paypal donation drive at:
http://www.multiverse.org/postp40822.html#40822
It just goes to show, no matter how great and respected a writer becomes, wealth is never a sure bet (Stephen King notwithstanding).
The acronym for Revenge of the Sith is “ROTS.” I just wanted to point that out.
So I saw Lucas’s latest tour de Force. For the record, I hadn’t planned to see it for at least a few weeks, being entirely unenthusiastic about the prospect. But as it turned out, my girlfriend was seeing it (not necessarily voluntarily) with the rest of her lab at grad school on opening day; and since I would have found it annoying for her to have seen the film and me not to, I decided to get it over with.
My conclusion? The line I’ve been giving people is, “I don’t like the storyline Lucas went with for the prequels, but if they’d all been like this movie, I wouldn’t hate him so much.” Faint praise, I know. The dialogue is painful–Lucas’s ear isn’t tin, it’s titanium. Several scenes–in particular, anything between star-crossed lovers Anakin (Hayden Christensen) and Padme (Natalie Portman)–consist entirely of the worst, hoariest cliches in the book.
But there are a number of exciting scenes, and I enjoyed Ian McDiarmid’s hammy-but-effective portrayal of Palpatine, the chancellor and Sith Lord who would be Emperor. But before he can get there, he has to seduce Anakin to the Dark Side, which he does in fairly unconvincing fashion (but for that, I blame the writing and portrayal of Anakin, rather than anything to do with Palpatine).
I’m just glad this whole prequel mess is over. Now, if the united Star Wars Nation can just convince Darth Lucas to release a “Star Wars Classic Edition” DVD set, consisting of the same versions of the original films as seen in the pre-Special Edition VHS set that came out around 1995-6 (or the laserdiscs from the same era), I’ll be all set.
Personally, I’ve always felt that Lucas made a number of wrong decisions from the very beginning. First, the prequels have no Han Solo character. Han was the most human character in the prequels, the Everyman who had no supernatural powers (a la Luke) and wasn’t royalty (a la Leia). He was easy to identify with, and was played by Harrison Ford, an actor with a gift for playing a regular guy in strange worlds. But most of the major characters in the prequels are Jedi–that is, sorcerers and superheroes–so we can hardly identify with them.
Worse, the ostensible protagonist of the films is Anakin Skywalker, a character who, as we know ahead of time, will grow up to be an intergalactic Hitler. I think this was a big mistake. It would have been much wiser to make Obi-Wan Kenobi the hero of the films, and use Anakin as a buddy-turned-antagonist. The prequels should have been about Obi-Wan’s failure, not Palpatine’s boring political machinations and Anakin’s predictable, yet still unconvincing seduction to the Dark Side.
Then there’s Yoda. In the original films, Yoda serves as the archetype of the wise old master, the hermit who lives out in the middle of nowhere. The idea with that sort of character is this: if your instructors have taught you all they can, but think you show promise of more, they send you off to the 900-year-old hermit.
Fine. But what Lucas is asking me to believe is that at the spring chicken age of 880, the Aged Master isn’t out on the mountaintop, but serving as Dumbledore in the School for the Force-Sensitive. I don’t buy it–enjoyable as the Yoda fighting scenes were, I don’t buy it.
Worse, the prequels are loaded with coincidences. It seems everyone in the universe has met R2D2 and C-3PO, despite Kenobi’s line in Star Wars that he doesn’t “recall ever owning a droid” (a line that is now yet another lie, or at the very least, a misleading truth–he knows who Artoo and Threepio are, unless he’s had his memory wiped as well). Oh, and…
(spoiler warning)
…Chewbacca’s met Yoda. Right.
(end spoiler)
As I’ve gotten older, I have to admit I’ve become a bit less enamoured of Star Wars as a whole, including the original films. Back in 1999, science fiction author David Brin wrote an article called “Star Wars despots vs. Star Trek populists” which I think makes some pretty good points (though, to be fair, I’m not as fond of his Lord of the Rings critique).
Star Wars has been called “science fantasy”–but it’s mostly just fantasy. As several reviewers have pointed out, we’re dealing with a civilization that can cross galaxies in days, but apparently doesn’t possess ultrasound technology. For all its galactic politics and incredible technology, the world of the Republic is no more evolved than that of ancient Rome–and no more morally complex than a Saturday morning cartoon.
That’s fine for a series of fun movies intended to evoke the spirit of the old matinee serials (and you’ll note no one ever harps on the Indiana Jones movies). But for something that has grown to such enormous, bloated cultural significance as the Star Wars franchise, even a fan like me has to admit it’s a bit disconcerting.
Never let it be said that I don’t provide a play-by-play of the life of the wanna-be writer.
My recent submission to a fantasy magazine was rejected. The editor’s reasons were sound, and I have no qualms. However, his comments have, once again, made me question the merits of my project and my writing as a whole. When it comes to fantasy writing–at least, traditional fantasy, i.e. fantasy set in a time of primitive technology–my mind may be hopelessly muddled by genre conventions and cliches.
Many writers tend to degrade their own writing, while secretly thinking it’s much better than a lot of what they read. I’ve never been sure either way. I’ve gotten praise and a good helping of criticism for my writing. The one thing I can be sure of is that I simply haven’t done enough writing, and certainly haven’t paid my dues by submitting continuously and involving myself in the industry.
Complicating things is my mild tendency toward obsessiveness. I’ll often become intensely interested in a topic or genre, start some long epic–often a novel–in that genre, then lose interest months, weeks, or even days down the line. I have at least five or six unfinished semi-novels, all in the 50-100 page range. I almost invariably return to the interest later, but I have difficulty juggling two interests at once. However, if I can sustain the interest long enough to complete a project, the results tend to be fairly good.
I suppose there are many people who have this problem to some degree, but I find it hard to be in, say, a science fiction mindset, then casually switch to fantasy or horror. I tend to prefer to be immersed in one or another. I’ve worked on this over the years, but it still happens (on a more modest level).
I wonder whether there are other people out there who struggle with this, particularly writers. I emailed a well-known author recently, who works in many different genres, who told me he can work on a fantasy novel, a science fiction novel, and a superhero comic script in the same day.
I just can’t do that. At least, not yet. But we writers are an idiosyncratic bunch. Some are nonstop workaholics who can write in a dozen different genres, others put out one book every five years (if that). I suppose, for me, the trick will be learning to harness the obsessiveness and manipulate it properly (which I’ve learned to do somewhat), rather than just trying to fight it.
It’s always fun to learn a new word that means exactly what you were looking for. I was working on a story today and needed to describe an old man’s arm as “leathery.” But I didn’t like the word “leathery”–it seems cliched, and besides, I was already using it enough to describe real leather objects in the story. That, and whenever I read the word “leathery” now, I can’t help but mentally associate it with an essay in Michael J. Nelson’s Mind Over Matters, in which he uses the adjective to refer to the appearance of certain private parts of very old men in gym locker rooms.
So I checked the thesaurus and came up with “coriaceous.” It’s worth noting that this word is so obscure that Microsoft Word didn’t recognize it, though any dictionary I consulted had it. So I went with it. Yes, it will probably send more than one reader looking for their dictionary, but as a reader I always enjoy meeting a new word (I picked up “coolth” from Fritz Leiber, who used it as an alternative to “warmth”), so hopefully my readers will feel the same. It doesn’t evoke quite the same immediate visual imagery as “leathery,” but I’m not too concerned about that in this particular description.
The story I’m working on is a short fantasy tale for a contest. The characters in it are new, but I haven’t yet decided whether it’s set in Atreval or not. If I do decide to set it in Atreval, I may set in a period before the events in Tales of Atreval–perhaps long before. But as of now, I’m thinking I’ll leave it ambiguous in this particular story and make the decision later.
This has made me realize that I need to flesh Atreval out even more. I’ve been thinking I could get away with minimal world-building, as Leiber did with Nehwon in his Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser stories. But he wrote his stories for individual publication in the 1950s and ’60s, before huge fantasy novels became the norm in the post-Tolkien era.
The first thing is a map. A friend of mine drew one years ago, but I haven’t been able to get my hands on it, so it looks like I’m going to have to put pen to paper myself.
What I’m reading: I finished reading the first three stories in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, the first volume in Del Rey’s excellent collection of Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales. I’ve picked up the style of them, as I needed to, and I may take a break and move on to something a bit longer that I haven’t read before–perhaps Gene Wolfe’s Shadow and Claw, or Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana. I’ve recently started taking suggestions from posters on the discussion forums at SwordandSorcery.org. I’ve heard good things about Steven Erikson’s “Malazon Book of the Fallen” series, though I’m hesitant to start another epic until I’ve at least finished the published volumes of George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” books.
It’s also quite possible I may just re-read E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros.