Enter the Hype Machine

Bill Hicks was a funny guy. He had this one bit, went something like this:

"By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising…kill yourself. Thank you. Just planting seeds, planting seeds is all I’m doing. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself. You have no rationalization for what you do, you are Satan’s littler helpers. Kill yourself."

An angry sentiment, yes, but anyone who’s gone to see a movie by M. Night Shyamalamadingdong understands. Or, you know, people who went to see Prometheus. Man, that was a new classic, wasn’t it? Okay, maybe not.  But you have to give it to 20^th Century Fox; that was a hell of an advertising campaign. I’m pretty sure that for the entirety of spring 2012 there wasn’t a single day I wasn’t bombarded with trailers, viral clips, and countdowns for trailers for Scott’s would-be sci-fi magnum opus. They just kept coming. If I wasn’t watching cocky robo Fassbender bragging to me that anything I could do he could do better, I was watching Idris Elba pilot some funky quadruped version of Serenity as a prelude to that god-awful Inception inspired BOM-BOM racket that’s been prevalent in every damn trailer since 2010. 

Prometheus’s trailers were interesting in that they appealed to both your average cinema-goer, with stunning visual effects and the BOM-BOM. But several of those adverts also appealed to snobby cinema aficionados like myself by referencing the original Alien trailer with neat font tricks and sound effects:

                                                                                               

I was one of those cinema enthusiasts giggling with delight when I caught the references to the Alien trailer. I posted the link to the trailer on my Facebook and did my part contributing to the hype machine. I also began to push my anticipation into overdrive for what I thought was going to be an Alien prequel. Several days before the movie debuted, Scott was quoted as saying, “For all intents and purposes this [Prometheus] is very loosely a prequel, very.” It was too late, though. Even the director himself trying to let me down softly couldn’t damper my hopes for a proper Alien installment, which, again, is what I took the advertising for the movie to be suggesting.

Prometheus was something very different from what I had expected. There weren’t that many scares or obvious connections to the Xenomorph mythos or phallic aliens bursting forth from chest cavities, showering the cast in specs of flesh and rib cage. Disappointed? A tad. It was still a pretty good movie even though the story was a mess and it was a little too content to stir about in its own ambiguity and dumb, extraneous characters and...it was a good movie.  I think. 

Lots of people didn’t share the same perspective and were quite adamant about their disappointment at not getting their Alien prequel or, at the very least, a movie worthy of standing beside Scott’s  two other sci-fi  masterpieces. Shortly after the film debuted, bloggers and writers all over the net started branding the flick a disappointment and a victim of its own hype because that’s what writers do; we bitch, we whine, we spew hyperbole, mix metaphors, and do all sorts of war crime worthy things to punctuation and the English language.

We’re good at that. 

But let’s take a step back for a second and just examine the situation as objectively as possible. This surely isn’t the first time moviegoers have been wound up by a film’s advertising only to find out that the final product doesn’t come close to matching their expectations. How about The Lovely Bones, Peter Jackson’s tepid adaptation of Alice Sebold’s moving novel? Or Cloverfield?  How many times a year are movie lovers tricked into having inflated expectations by a cunning mixture of trailers, posters, and viral web videos? How often have you left a theater and thought to yourself “well, that was nothing like the trailer.” Too many times, right? We should probably do something about that. 

An honest trailer for Cloverfield would have bragged about its 85 minutes of non-stop motion sickness. Wonder why they didn't do that.

The answer is simple: kill all the advertisers.

Or not. I guess that plan is rather impractical. Okay, okay, how about this? We start trying to temper our expectations, which, I know, is an incredibly difficult thing to do. But just think about Prometheus from 20^th Century Fox’s standpoint for a moment. According to figures listed by The Hollywood Reporter, Prometheus’s budget was between “$120 million and $130 million.” The producers have to recoup that money at the very least and, ideally, make a nice profit off the investment. Frankly, they probably couldn’t give two shits about whether or not their advertising campaign was an accurate representation of the movie itself.  That’s not the goal of advertising a major motion picture. 

My point isn’t that you should have sympathy for 20^th Century Fox for initiating the hype machine for action-packed summer blockbuster OR the hip, soulful indie drama to such lofty heights.  Yes, the blame for crafting deceptive trailers and starting up that machine lies at the feet of a film’s producers. But whether or not you fall for those deceptive practices is all on you, the cinema-goer. Don’t like it? You could always abstain from going to the movies on the pessimistic assumption that every single movie with a kick-ass trailer is going to suck. Or you could do the research.  Why not combat misleading movie trailers by taking the time to read reviews? And I don’t mean skim user reviews on IMDB.  Actually find a critic or a blogger or someone who has written about movies you’re interested in and has, more or less, the same level of enthusiasm for those movies and start keeping up with their reviews. I read Peter Travers and Roger Ebert and usually find myself in agreement with their sentiments or at least understand their perspectives. I also often have a murky idea of what a particular cinematic experience is going to be but not enough to spoil it if I’m intrigued by the film.

I’m not saying that all of this is true for all movies. Some movies, particularly movies based on popular intellectual properties, live beyond their advertising and have certain expectations that go alongside that property. For example, you expect a Batman movie to have a somewhat gothic aesthetic, have adrenaline pumping action, and star a man who dresses up in a batsuit and fights crime. These are givens.

This is not a given.

Sometimes these movies fail to meet the watcher’s expectations regardless of the advertising, like Superman Returns, a movie that Kevin Smith summed up best as “the art house version of Superman, the whiny, emo Superman movie.”  Superman Returns is a boring film that is a bit too concerned with exploring Superman’s emotional toils and woes. Those aren’t bad areas to present to the viewer, per se, but when that character happens to be Superman—the guy who flies around and burns structures to ashes with his eye beams—you should probably strike a balance between those scenes of awkward silence where Clark Kent stares longingly at Lois Lane and scenes with Supes showcasing what makes him Superman (e.g., punching things). It’s kind of a bummer when the most exciting event in a Superman flick is Superman’s kid unexpectedly crushing Lex Luthor's henchman with a piano.

Granted, Superman Returns is better than Superman III, but that’s not saying much.

 It’s kind of like arguing Waterworld is better than The Postman and is a slightly better movie because of it. (It isn’t.)

Should the folks who cobble together these trailers and viral videos strive to give an accurate representation of the movies they’re trying to sell—if such a goal is hypothetically possible? Maybe in an ideal world. But in a society where money is the crux of everything, you’re probably better off accepting that the hype machine isn’t going away.

Now, you do have a choice whether or not you choose to support that machine and take part in keeping it running. Love the trailer for Avatar 2: The Return of Stephen Lang’s Jawline? Remember it’s just a trailer and then consciously mull over whether you’ll post it to Facebook or Twitter or forward it to your friends. Don't let it be a  knee-jerk response.

Don’t like being disappointed by films that had extravagant advertising? Just remember that when TV spots and viral videos for hot releases like Pacific Rim or Star Trek: into the Darkness begin to bombard you. Then decide if your anti-advertising stance is enough to keep you from giving money to the filmmakers. To be honest, such extremism seems kind of pointless but hey, enjoy your sense of moral superiority. I'll be over here in the theater, armed with a box of Nerds and somewhat tempered expectations as Lincoln begins.

NEXT: Wayne Spencer writes about snobbish hostility in geek culture.

Remember Me This Way

by M. Glenn Gore

The X-Files' Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman said that "Something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it." Granted, he also said "The Earth has a secret she wants to tell" and to "Leave the snakes alone today, for they will be angry." So, I think we're just going to focus on that first one.

Longevity. That's what we're talking about here. Not the life expectancy aspect of it but, rather, longevity as it pertains to media entertainment. I don't care what lies you tell yourself when you're alone in the dark and the demons come, but, as writers, longevity is what we're all searching for. It's the storytellers' Holy Grail. We all want to spin a yarn for the ages, something that will hopefully live on long after we've shuffled off this mortal coil, and who can blame us? True immortality is in what we leave behind. Sorry, Elves and Vampires.

So what is it that makes something endure? Quality? Obviously not. Michael Bay is still making movies, after all. Let's take music, for example. Music is incredibly subjective. Even an awful song (I'm looking at you, Rico Suave!) has the ability to attach itself to a specific moment in your life like a filthy barnacle, vastly and, oftentimes, ruthlessly extending its shelf-life in your fragile mind far beyond what any God-fearing human being would have preferred. It has that power.

Pictured: My ENTIRE fucking 8th-grade year!

But what about literature? Well, quality is of considerably more importance here. Dear, dead-as-hell William Shakespeare wrote the lion's share of his plays well over 400 years ago, and we're still reading them in school, still bringing them to both stage and screen, and still quoting them anytime we want to feel intellectually superior to others.

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy... bitch."

But why is that, exactly? Much of his work is undeniably brilliant, of course, but I don't think you can dismiss the importance of the audience in this case the way you can with music. Unlike music, the written word asks for your continued aid in helping it to live on. It doesn't crawl inside your head against your will and spawn, does it, Nickelback? Does it?! No. Ultimately, it's our love of The Bard that keeps his body of work relevant - in truth - what has kept him at the literary forefront for nigh-on half a millennium. We have a say in the matter.

So, we've established two elements of longevity, thus far: audience enjoyment and... auditory brainwashing, I guess. This brings us to the visual. While nothing can compete with the staying power of a good book, video games and film are certainly giving them a run for their proverbial money. Not all video games, of course. I mean, who can even remember the difference between Modern Duty: Call of Warfare Heroes 3 and Medal of Heroes: Honor of Warfare Duty 4. More importantly, who gives a shit?

Admit it. You can't even tell which one this is, CAN you?

No, I'm talking about video games with real stamina, games that don't have to fear surviving their subsequent sequels simply because they already have. Many of them more than once.

I'm talking about the video games with relentless playability and hypnotic, addictive properties so staggering they should be classified as Schedule One narcotics by the DEA. I'm talking about video games so instantly and endlessly engrossing that people have literally sacrificed jobs and marriages at their 8-bit altar. They are the timeless, world-renowned, eye-crack masterpieces of yesteryear.

I'm talkin' about the Pac-Man and the Tetris!

"Don't look at it, Marion! Shut your eyes!"

Long after the various and sundry Medal of Honors-es and the Calls of Duty are forgotten, Tetris will still walk the post-apocalyptic, irradiated wastes of Earth-That-Was in search of one worthy to direct its cruel, multicolored blocks of ever-increasing speed and vindictively unhelpful selection (That goddamned S-shaped one? Again?!) into geometrically appeasing rows, and, on that darkest day, who will be ready to take up the call? You, Mr. Gears of War? You, Lt. World of Warcraft? I think not!

But what about film, you say? Well, I'll tell you about film.

Film encounters an issue I haven't really experienced when it comes to music, books, or video games. The music I liked when I was sixteen still sounds good to me, for the most part, and while my taste has definitely refined itself over the years, I haven't just flat-out excised anything old from my collection. Well, maybe that one Limp Bizkit album, but that was a pretty dark time in my life, and I don't like to talk about it.

The books I loved as a child are still good, and if you handed me a copy of Super Mario Brothers 3 right now, I would turn this bitch off and go on a Goomba-stomping spree from here to Bowser's Castle the likes of which you haven't witnessed in your bleakest nightmares!

Ugh! The REAL Danger Zone was in the THEATER!

But movies are different. Now, please don't misunderstand. There are movies I will always love. Tons of them. But Hollywood seems to hold the record for highest number of times I believed I enjoyed something only to come back to it ten or twenty years later and discover that it was piss-miserable (Ahem! Top Gun, Die Hard 2, and Gone in 60 Seconds, you can all stand up).

And I'm not talking about old movies versus new ones. I don't mean like how From Russia with Love might seem dated (or even campy) without the proper frame of reference for its place in pop culture and film history, an appreciation for the mentality of the era it comes from, or a respect for how groundbreaking it was when it was first released - I mean movies I loved as a child that are just unforgivably awful, like Moonraker.

Conan the Destroyer did this, too. Not that watching a pre-View to a Kill Grace Jones go snakehouse on anybody within striking distance of her wasn't its own kind of fun, that movie simply was not good. And if you had told ten-year-old me it was crap, I'd have murdered you in your sleep!

And don't think Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome gets a pass, either, 'cause it don't. Again, at the impressionable age of ten, outside of Star Wars, you couldn't convince me there was a cooler movie than Thunderdome... and then I saw it on AMC a few years ago. My God! I watched that whole thing, and I still can't tell you what it's about! Mad Max pisses off Tina Turner's hairdo, man-wrestles with an S & M tag team inside a jungle gym, and then... does what, exactly? I remember there were some really dusty kids... and pigs factored heavily into the narrative, but, other than that, I'm at a loss.

Seriously! What the fuck was this movie ABOUT?!

The things I keep coming back to, the things that last, all share certain similarities. They are innovative, both for their time and now, they feature convincingly-depicted, relatable elements that allow me to believe that what I'm reading or watching could happen, regardless of how fantastic it may be, and they often play on an aspect of wish fulfillment that is essential in all earthbound humans.

I mean, The Neverending Story, at its heart, is a movie about the unlimited power of the imagination and the importance of nurturing your dreams, and it's for that reason alone that ten-year-old me and old-as-hell me are in agreement. We will never outgrow that movie because it has become a part of who we are. It, in tandem with many more, helped shape what we believe and became a compass on the road toward our goals.

The things that can capture that unquantifiable unknown are the ones that endure. They leave a piece of themselves with you always. They ask you not to simply be a spectator but to go on the journey with them. And if they can do that, they've built something that can never die.

NEXT: Javy Gwaltney joins the Ran(t)som Notes gang and tells us why the movies that promise us the world sometimes fail to deliver.
  

Brave New Worlds or the Same Old Ones?

by Brian Martin

Star Wars.  Just the mention of it sends a warm, nostalgic swell through my body.  It was a series that not only looked and sounded great, but made a young kid feel like anything was possible.  I, like so many of us, spent my youth playing with Kenner’s boundless line of action figures, dreaming up the further adventures of Luke Skywalker, Bib Fortuna, and Snaggletooth in that galaxy far, far away.  Hell, in middle school I even attempted to make a stop-motion sequel to Return of the Jedi, in which a newly christened Emperor Yoda was assassinated and J.J. from Good Times had to discover who was behind the plot.

They really did make an action figure out of everyone

Full disclosure: I do not hate the prequel trilogy.  I don’t believe that George Lucas “raped my childhood” with the prequels.  I think Lucas made three flawed movies that don’t measure up to the impossibly high standard I’ve held the original trilogy to for my entire life, but I would never even consider mentioning The Phantom Menace in the same breath as Battlefield Earth or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  It’s just not that bad.

The Star Wars prequels were always going to be problematic, because they had to end up in a specified place.  This is the reason that Revenge of the Sith turns into a checklist of events that have to transpire before Episode IV can start.  Anakin becomes Darth Vader?  Check.  Obi-Wan takes Anakin’s lightsaber?  Check.  Twins born?  Check.  C-3PO and R2-D2 are aboard the Tantive IV?  Well, it’s a little early, but check.  Yoda says his teary farewell to Chewbacca?  Uh…check?  All the pieces had to be put in a preconceived and widely understood place, completely eliminating the potential for suspense and surprise.  But now, with Episode VII, we’ll finally get a new Star Wars film that isn’t beholden to anything, one that can literally take us anywhere.  Why, then, are fans so opposed to that idea?  Not the idea of a new Star Wars film, mind you, but the idea that it should be, you know, new.

She kept that thing?  I did NOT see that coming!

We’ve been hearing it since 1991, really.  Ever since the release of Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, fans have been exploring what came to be known as the Expanded Universe, a series of ongoing tales set outside the events of the (then only) three films.  Zahn went on to pen two more novels to complete his trilogy, and fans almost immediately started saying the same thing: “They should just turn these into the next Star Wars movies.”  Sure, it might’ve been fun to imagine back then, when the prospect of any new Star Wars films seemed like a pipe dream.

Now, here we are two decades later and, due to circumstances my brain is still struggling to understand, a new Star Wars movie is getting made.  I had accepted the fact that the Lars family, looking out over the Tatooine sunset, was going to be the final cinematic image Star Wars ever gave us, but the world has changed.  As soon as the news sunk in, my brain started swimming in the possibilities of further stories, which is why I was so surprised when a large portion of the fan base simply went back to their 20-year-old default idea: “They should just make the new movies the Thrawn Trilogy.”  (Admiral Thrawn was the blue-skinned antagonist of the Zahn novels).

The fact that these folks typically use the word “just” in that sentence is a testament to the sheer laziness of the idea.  Really?  The first completely fresh Star Wars movie project in three decades and the best you can do is an adaptation of a novel that you read 15 years ago?  Granted, those books are pretty good.  My own exposure to the Expanded Universe doesn’t stretch far beyond Zahn’s novels, though.  I read the Dark Empire comics.  I played a few video games.  That’s about it.  But if there is one unifying thought I had while engaging with all of them, it was that I did not, under any circumstances, care to see them adapted for the screen.  I had already enjoyed them in their respective mediums.

This phenomenon isn’t even unique to Star Wars.  For years, people clamored for a fourth Indiana Jones movie, and a lot of them said the same thing: “They should make it an adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis,” which was a goddamn computer game!  This line of thought persisted throughout early development of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and, in the disappointment that followed the release of that movie, has morphed to become, “They SHOULD HAVE just made it Fate of Atlantis.”  Uh, no, they STILL shouldn’t have.  Kingdom of the Crystal Skull may have had its monkey-swingin', fridge-nukin', Shia-LaBeoufin' problems, but making it a video game adaptation was NOT the solution.  Even though filmmakers might not always know what’s best for a franchise, they can sure do a hell of a lot better than unimaginative members of the fan base.

For the life of me, I cannot understand the persistence of this line of thought.  You want the next movie in a franchise so near and dear to your heart to be one that you already know the entire story to?  No surprises?  No discovery?  Do you even remember WHY you fell in love with these movies to begin with?

Thankfully, Disney was quick to kill the very thought that a new film would be based on anything from the Expanded Universe and it would instead be an original story because they understand that that’s the only way to make the movie.  For every hardcore Star Wars fan out there who’s read every adventure of Mara Jade, there are about a million casual fans who have, I dunno, ONLY SEEN THE MOVIES.  Do a Wikipedia search for Star Wars novels.  Even the staunchest of fans might take a look at that list and burf a little in their mouth.  The last thing any studio or filmmaker with half a brain cell would do is make Star Wars Episode VII, the latest entry in a film series that doesn’t exactly pride itself on being impenetrably complex, IMPENETRABLY COMPLEX.  So brace yourselves, fans of Kevin Anderson’s Jedi Academy series—your holy text is about to get blown to hell.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that elements from those stories won’t be incorporated into the new films.  This has actually already happened once, with the inclusion of Coruscant (a planet established in Zahn’s trilogy) in the prequels.  That Leia and Han have twins seems like a no-brainer, and any movie that DIDN’T include a new member of the Skywalker bloodline certainly wouldn’t mesh well with what’s come before.  Luke will obviously have continued efforts to rebuild the Jedi order in the wake of Episode VI, and ignoring this in any future installments would, again, seem odd.  However, I have serious doubts that the filmmakers are going to be sitting down with detailed synopses of every EU story and saying, “Ok, how do we make our movie fit in here perfectly?”

Everyone is nervous about Star Wars VII for completely different reasons.  Some are afraid it will contradict the 900 novels, comics, and fever dreams that came before it.  Some are afraid it will include the original actors.  Some are afraid it won’t include the original actors.  Some directors are scared to get near the thing for fear of insurmountable expectations.  And I can’t be the only one who’s thought of the obvious: that this will be the first Star Wars film to open WITHOUT the 20^th Century Fox Fanfare?

Why is NO ONE talking about this?!  Sacrilege!!!

Whatever our fears, and whatever our expectations, two things are certain.  We will ALL be there.  And, once again, anything is possible.

NEXT: Mel will, seriously, talk to you about longevity.

I’ll have what she’s having…. And she’s having and she’s having…..

by Nate Bowden 

@ActionNate

Ah, the cliché. Is there a more potent obstacle for the screenwriter, the novelist, the ranter? It takes so many forms: cliché dialogue, cliché characters, cliché imagery, and just plain cliché storylines. Fuck if there isn’t another nerd out there right now planning a rant on how cliché my opening is.

We’re all writers here, we’ve all heard that there are only 7 stories and nothing’s original anymore, I buy into that. So now I’m gonna use a smart person word fer cliché… archetype.

A cliché is almost subjective. A matter of overuse or misuse of any given archetype but these are the tools we use as writers to craft our stories. When the pieces of the puzzle come together it’s called “a beautiful presentation of the hero’s classic journey," and when it doesn’t it’s called Van Helsing.

"What? Y- you didn't like it?"

Luke Skywalker is Clark Kent without the secret identity, and Comdr. Data is just Pinocchio. James Bond gets to create all his own clichés and act them out repeatedly. And Peter Parker’s just an everyman. Seriously, “everyman?” An archetype so cliché literally every man can fill it.

Our Herculean task then is to disguise these clichés with a great story, sure, but how about some fancy scenery? Scoring the big touchdown in the closing seconds against insurmountable odds (or coming up short if your story’s a coming-of-age piece), totally cliché. But what if the game is played in the air… and we call the football a bludger and everyone rides broomsticks? Bam! Hidden cliché, right? Well sure, but camouflage is tricky because blue furry people in space couldn’t distract me from the fact that Kevin Costner danced with wolves before Sam Worthington plugged his ponytail into a dinosaur.

"Fuck you! We did this shit in space!"      "Wait, what is that over there? Oh, sorry, it's just my seven Academy Awards."

Clichéd scenarios are largely built around where they occur. Two men, spies even, nonchalantly exchanging identical bags at the train station? Stop me if you’ve heard this one… but nonchalantly exchanging identical bags in the oval office? Sweet holy fuck, what is in that briefcase?

“Yeah _____ was great, but I liked it better when it was called ______.” Well, smart-ass, clichés have to work in order to become clichés in the first place. That’s true with character and dialogue.

How many times has Schwarzenegger played  John Matrix (Commando), and how many Die Hard movies have there really been? Rocky is just John Rambo in boxing gloves, but Balboa is compelling because Rocky is inspirational, while Rocky 4 is cliché, and then by Rocky 6…. inspirational again. Huh, how do you like that?

I’m sure the first guy to scream “NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” at the death of a loved one was breakin’ some new ground, but really? Even Darth Vader now? That straight badass doesn’t scream about anything. Fuck prequels.

Rob Reiner’s mother stole an entire movie with “I’ll have what she’s having…” The joke’s cliché now, but it wasn’t When Harry Met Sally.

So you know when something is really good because it becomes a cliché. Col. Nathan R. Jessup screamed “You can’t handle the truth!” and brought life to the climax of my favorite movie. And the fact that you’ve heard it elsewhere since then, in regular conversation no less, proves Sorkin got something right. Great things make it into vernacular and then get spit back out as clichés.

“I’m getting too old for this shit…” NO! Fuck you! Only Danny Glover is too old for shit! Damn it!

Now M. Glenn Gore on “longevity.” What makes that show we watched as kids a steaming dung pile now? … unless it isn’t!

Lost In Translation

By Nicole Angeleen  www.nicoleangeleen.com

Next summer, the world will be given another cinematic adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous novel, “The Great Gatsby.” It is brought to us by Baz Luhrmann, who should be perfectly suited for a story that features a nonstop parade of opulent parties during the age of prohibition, excess, and the disintegration of the American dream. Adding to my hope that this will be a good movie is Leonardo DiCaprio in the titular role, and God knows red-blooded American women love Leo.

Despite all that in favor of this being an enjoyable, successful version of “The Great Gatsby,” I can’t make myself believe that this is actually going to be a good movie. Like most of Fitzgerald’s work (I’m lookin’ at you, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), Gatsby is less of a story than it is an extended metaphor. Given the current tone of society, I don’t see how this can play as anything but a heavy-handed commentary about our own lopsided values.

Can't you fools see how your short-sighed obsession with wealth and shallow relationships will ultimately lead to your ruin? Also, look how handsome I am, just like decorative veneer of my pageless books.

Great “classic” books are packed with symbolism and barely concealed meanings (if you’re not much of a reader, just imagine it’s like if Adele wrote novels), and they simply don’t translate well to the silver screen. Who wants to sit through two hours of an expansive allegory? Aside from Terrence Malick fans, no one.

It's all so profoundly meaningful.  You just don't get it.

So why are legitimately good novels so often made into undeniably shitty movies? Let’s be clear. Good novels and popular novels can be two different things. Sometimes movies based on novels are terrible because the source material is utter drivel masquerading as legitimate fiction. Think Nicholas Sparks or the overwhelming mediocrity that is a John Grisham novel. Also, I’m not talking about movies that people think are bad because they wander too far from the original story. To me, that doesn’t make a movie bad. Prime example, other than the basic (flawless) premise of dinosaurs created from fossilized mosquitoes, the movie version of “Jurassic Park” strays considerably from the novel, but I love them both. No, here we’re talking about awesome books turned into steaming crap piles by the movie industry.

Pictured: Not in the book.

Bram Stoker’s revolutionary diarist format and slow building of a monster is obliterated by an overblown effort from Francis Ford Coppola. “The Scarlet Letter” as a movie rife with sex and temptation is insulting to Puritans, women, and Nathaniel Hawthornes everywhere. I still fail to see how “Timeline” and “Congo,” movies based on terrific novels by the incomparable Michael Crichton, managed to be such emotionless jumbles. Just this year, the most popular female fictional character of the first decade of the twenty-first century, Stephanie Plum, was ruined by an utter lack of humanity and imagination in the absurdly watered down “One for the Money.”

Then there are the worst offenders, the movies that raped my childhood. Like many of you, Dr. Seuss taught me how to read. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is not only a great book, it already had a lovely movie adaptation in its natural cartoon format. The Grinch is an unmitigated douchebag who has a heart two sizes too small and wants everyone to be as miserable as him. The perfect villain. That the 2000 live action version turns The Grinch into a victim of bullying is only one of the many reasons why this movie is just the worst. Add the weird sexuality, the disgusting gags, and you get a movie with a heart even tinier than the Grinch’s. Why? Why Ron Howard? I hold this movie personally responsible for what happened to Taylor Momsen.

There's nothing about this image that doesn't make me want to scream.

And the live action version of “The Cat in the Hat?” That sociopathic, creepy sonofabitch still haunts my nightmares. Seuss’s Cat is a whimsical, mischievous, fun-loving rascal rife with exuberance and well-meaning hijinks. Michael Myers’ Cat is hell-bent on destroying the lives of Sally and Sally’s brother (who the hell is Conrad, amiright?) and is overtly gross and malicious. It is an uncomfortable perversion of a series of books primarily designed to keep the attention of children while they learn the basic building blocks of reading. "It’s time to have fun, but you have to know how." If only the assholes who decided to create this monstrosity had actually read the book.

Hollywood loves doing this. They love turning groundbreaking original work like “Angels & Demons” into frenzied, disjointed nonsense. They love trying to film Toni Morrison novels (can't be done) or reinterpreting William Faulker (nearly uninterpretable in its original format). They think because the source material is “meaningful,” depth will automatically translate into their movie. But it doesn’t. Ever. Never ever. It’s hard to stress that enough.  Frankly, the opposite usually happens.  Words on a page and action on screen are different. For instance, the first-person, split narrative structure of “The Help” is lost in a movie version that is whitewashed and condensed to be made palatable to the masses, and “The Help” was a decent movie.

"Let's not confuse the audience by indicating in any way that working for these insufferable racists isn't our biggest aspiration in life.  Agreed?"

To me, the best movies based on novels are the ones that don’t try so damn hard to be fraught with significance and subliminal commentary or “revolutionize” what worked for a novel in the first place. Like any movie, just tell the story. If it’s based on a great book, that really ought to be enough. If it’s based on a crappy book, don’t expect a great movie (Twilight).

It’s not like it can’t be done. As always, I recommend reading the book first, but check out “Winter’s Bone” by Daniel Woodrell and/or “Gone Baby Gone” and “Shutter Island” from Dennis Lehane (who if you’re not reading, start now), then watch the adaptations; read “In Cold Blood” and then watch “Capote”; “The Green Mile” and “The Shawshank Redemption” were both based on Stephen King novellas; even some children’s stories are getting it right, just look at the books and movies for “Matilda” and “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”

Despite those hopeful examples, I’m still worried about “The Great Gatsby.” Fitzgerald was miserable in the final years of his life because financial ruin forced him to work in Hollywood, which he considered vapid and meaningless, and not much has changed. I have to think he would be scratching his head as to why they keep trying to adapt his least filmable novel.

And you know a film version of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” can’t be too far away. Ugh. I take it all back. Screw you, Hollywood.

Tune in next time when Nate Bowden beats a dead horse and really screws the pooch talking about cliches.

Nobody Eats Ketchup ALL the Time!

by Wayne Spencer

Sequels, man. Is there anything else, at once, so disgusting and appealing as the idea of a movie sequel? Don't answer that. I'm sure that there is.

The answer I was looking for is "No, friend. No, there is not."

What is a sequel anyway, but a little bit more of something you already like? Think about it like this: You just had a pretty sweet adventure with an unlikely kung-fu master, who has to figure out the secret of true power, face the hideous, seething legions of an evil arcade owner, rescue the people he loves and stand fast in the face of the unstoppable and charismatic shogun from Harlem. A shogun who only wants to dismantle him FOR NO GOOD REASON.

No good reason at all!

 Also imagine that after all of that harrow, you and the good-guys all make it out in one piece, by the skin of your proverbial teethses. Once you catch your breath and make sure that everyone in your party remains unharmed, your first couple of thoughts are probably going to be something like "Man, I hope they make another one of those." You get excited and optimistic when you hear that 'they' in fact will produce a second film in the series. Why, you might even blurgle a little. Indeed, you love this film.

This, friend,  is when it happens. Now is when the thing happens, and this is the thing: Upon further reflection, you feel a little downer in the city hall of your heart and you sigh your only hope. A hope which is "... they don't screw it up."

They never made that sequel, by the way.

So, sequels go wrong sometimes, is what I'm getting at. In the age of franchises, the road is littered with the corpses of those that went a little too big, got a little too cocky, dug a little too deep... and set something terrible loose.

Of course, there are good sequels, too. Among them are juggernaut-epics like the Harry Potters or Lord of the Rings-es, stalwart follow-ups that were solid and cool, like Back to the Future 2, or even House 2 and sequels that, while they didn't add a whole lot to the cosmology of the franchise, were serviceable and still enjoyable in their own way. Of this number, I would name Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze and its clumsy older brother, Ghostbusters 2.

"Come on, guys. It wasn't THAT bad!"

That's not what we're here to talk about though, is it? You came here for blood. You came here for blood, and I'm going to give it to you.

So where do sequels go wrong? Well in lots of places, but in the interest of time, we're going to focus on one key area. Do you remember the movie about the guy that found out that his boring, meaningless, workaday life was just a lie? It was just a lie and, indeed, he was actually the totally radical chosen one that everybody and their grandmas needed to save them from boring, everyday lives!

Also, trenchcoats. To be fair, that's a lot of movies, but I am specifically referring to the Keanu Reeves x Wachowski kung-fu/helicopter movie: The Matrix.

Now if only stopping The Matrix: Reloaded had been this easy.

 And what is this series' crime, you might ask? Well, there are a few, but the most egregious:

Forgetting what made the original great.

The Matrix is a fine film and a film that, in my estimation, has aged pretty well. It's about a regular guy falling into a situation that is nearly beyond his comprehension and finding out that he's not so normal after all. It's about questioning the status quo and figuring out what the universe is to you, you know, like personally. It's also about how accepting responsibility can be good for the people around you. There's also a love story in there somewhere, I guess.

The next two movies are about... hmm. They're about... well there's a lot of kung-fu fighting. Um, a guy jumps on a car like REALLY hard. Oh yeah, there are lots of Gundams shooting jelly fish.

"Never bring a mech to a spaghetti fight!"

I exaggerate, sure, but it's true that the cool action set pieces in the first movie were like a spice, or a condiment. They were an added bonus to already engaging things that were going on. The understated nature of the rest of the movie is a tremendous contrast to those moments, so when a crazy kung-fu fight breaks out and we just spent the last 15 minutes eating gruel and speaking softly, it's like "Whoa."

My point is, NOBODY EATS KETCHUP ALL THE TIME! But the over-the-top action, the cyber-mystic mumbo jumbo, those things became a main focus of the latter two films.

They are ketchup all the time, and they are ketchup to their detriment.

Look, there are good sequels and bad sequels and I'm not really sure if either one outweighs the other. But for the most part, ones that don't live up to whatever it is they are trying to recapture seem to have missed the point, or else-wise forgotten the point of why they were even bothering in the first place.

Sequels, man. 

NEXT: Nicole Angeleen tells us why many good books seem determined to become bad movies.