subscribeStar Wars, Inception, and how a small child made my brain hurt.
Wednesday July 21, 2010
First of all, kids are brilliant. Especially curious, thirsty kids who ask a dozen questions a minute. I was one of those kids, and in every child-related job I’ve had I’ve worked with kids who are like that. I enjoy answering questions with as much patience, honesty, and thoroughness as I can muster.
But this can become complicated. It’s also led to some fascinating discussions with four, five, and six year olds. This discussion one called into question why I love Star Wars and why Inception is too complicated to be a kids’ movie. (Don’t worry, there are no spoilers.) Pretty heady for a five-minute conversation with a small child.
The six-year-old: “Monsters vs. Aliens is probably my favorite movie ever. Ever, ever. Well, maybe Cars, but that didn’t have monsters or aliens. What’s yours?”
“Star Wars.” I paused, wondering at my automatic response. Is Star Wars my favorite movie? I’ve certainly seen it enough to quote it — but by that criteria, I can also rank Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future up there with Star Wars. (All right, I admit it: the accompanying films in their respective trilogies, too, though I have Opinions about them.) What other criteria are there? A movie I would willingly watch on repeat all day long? (Under that category I can add most Disney and/or Pixar animated films; every Miyazaki film; a handful of Oscar nominated films of the last fifteen years and The Sound of Music; a handful of record-breaking blockbusters both of the critically-acclaimed and the revel-in-the-mediocrity variety.)
“Yeah,” I said, “Star Wars.”
“So why do you like Star Wars so much?” he asked. He knows exactly what movie I’m talking about although he’s never seen it. His friends have Clone Wars backpacks. He has a Star Wars: Heroes and Villains Young Reader book. He went to a birthday party where the theme was Star Wars and he brought home a lightsaber as his goody-bag prize. He knows who Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are. He understands Jedi and Sith. But he has never seen this movie.
“Luke is a farm boy who becomes a hero by rescuing a princess, eluding Darth Vader, destroying the Death Star, and saving the galaxy.” Another pause. Not only did I just give an example of Joseph Campbell‘s hero theory in a happy nutshell, but that same plot is also that of a ton of books and movies (just substitute different nouns).
He stared at me, skeptically, as if to say, “That’s all? Lame.”
I found myself compelled to add, “It’s not just the story. The characters are memorable, the action is great, and there are spaceships, blasters, lightsaber fights, and a really awesome world. It’s got the whole package.”
As I said this, I realized that part of the entire reason I love Star Wars is because it started what became a phenomenon, spawning sequels, prequels, merchandise, books (so many books!), video games — it’s a part of culture, a nerdy subset of American media culture that has influenced a generation (or two, by now) and helped pave the way for better technologies (ILM, THX, Skywalker Sound) that have influenced the way film and media have evolved in the past three decades. Not to mention Star Wars’ pop culture influences. (Just look at the Wikipedia articles.) So it’s not simply the first movie, or the first trilogy, but the entire technological and cultural phenomenon of Star Wars that makes it something I love, something I value and appreciate. I can no longer separate Star Wars the single film from Star Wars the cultural beast. As I realized this, I also realized that while I can admit the original Star Wars isn’t stylistically or artistically the best movie I’ve ever seen (and let’s not discuss the prequels, mmkay?), I can’t separate the film from the context of its time and its place in cinema history. It’s like trying to separate Dickens from nineteenth century London, or New York from its skyscrapers. For a fan of science fiction and fantasy, it’s impossible to separate Star Wars from the consciousness of American media and culture.
I think, at this point, the six-year-old was wondering why I was looking so lost. I was having something of a revelation — Do I love Star Wars because of what it represents more than the film itself? How can I even answer that? — but of course all he saw was a blank look. I have a tendency to get lost in my head and I think by now this six-year-old understands that.
“Oh, okay,” he said. His question had been answered to his satisfaction. “So what was the last movie you saw?”
“Inception,” I said. Without really thinking. Why do I do that?
He frowned. “What does that word mean?”
“Well. In the movie, the ‘inception’ is the idea of planting an idea in someone else’s head. In their dreams.”
“Did you like that movie?”
“Yes. A lot.”
“Why isn’t that movie your favorite movie, then?”
I stalled. That’s actually a good question, I thought. Stylistically, aesthetically, in terms of the effects and the vision, it was pretty excellent. Is it too new to be in my top favorites? Is it too controversial? In the days since, I have read quite a few reviews about it. I’m still wondering what to think, how to interpret it. I kept guessing throughout the movie, throwing my theories against the inside wall of my brain only to see the plot shoot them down later in the film. In a word, though, it was brilliant. “I don’t know. I’ve only seen it once,” I said.
“So it’s about dreams,” he said, going back to what I’d said earlier — did I mention he’s a very smart kid? — “dreaming and ideas?”
“Yep.” And, because I had only just seen it that same morning and I was still itching to talk about it to someone, I added, “It’s about what happens if people can go inside other people’s dreams and change them.”
He grinned. “Oh! It’s a kids’ movie!”
“Oh. No. It’s not.”
“But it’s about going inside other people’s dreams. That’s cool. That could be a kids’ movie.”
I imagined, for a moment, Inception as a kids’ movie and had a wild notion of kids playing with dreamscapes and getting in trouble. Star Wars, I thought, is something of a kids’ movie. But not Inception. Could I explain it to him somehow? Then I recalled the time when the six-year-old, at age five, asked me to explain multiplication and division to him. He’s a math whiz, so I did. I struggled to conceptualize it in a visual way for him to understand. Explaining about dividing apples among children as my example, he understood the principle of division — but didn’t want to try it in practice. (He was five. That’s okay.) Multiplication, though. That was hard. So to explain the complexity of this film to a young audience? One would have to be terrifically gifted or terrifically crazy.
“Maybe. But this one isn’t. It’s too complicated.”
“Too complicated how? You can explain it! Come on, come on, please?”
I really wanted to find a way to level with him, that impulse of being straight and honest with all kids as much as I can. But sometimes, it’s better just to give the simple answer. “I can’t explain it. Why don’t you go set up a game to play?”
“PLEASE!”
I sighed, seeing the look. The I-won’t-give-this-up-because-I-need-to-know-PLEASE-tell-me look. “It’s not a kids’ movie because it’s a grown-up movie. Okay? That’s just what it is.” Christopher Nolan, I thought, you have just made me give a blow-off answer to a small child because of your dastardly fascinating film. Why couldn’t Inception’s plot have been as simple as Star Wars’? But then, I wondered, would I have loved Inception so much had it been simple — would anyone have loved it? Its beauty is in its complexity, as perhaps Star Wars‘ is in its simplicity.
“Aw, okay, fine,” he muttered, then went to set up Connect Four.
Kids these days, I tell you. They make my brain hurt.
The low-brow and high-brow of fantasy books… and movies.
Wednesday October 22, 2008
I just discovered Limyaael’s rants, thanks to a friend’s suggestion, and I’ve read through a ton of them today. I’m so much more random than she is in my blog posts and rants (and exponentially more prone to tangents), but it’s absolutely refreshing to read someone well-read, thoughtful, and full of really well-substantiated complaints, rather than just a rant for the sake of a rant. It’s so rare to meet someone as obsessed with fantasy who also works or has worked within the confines of the typical university English department. So many English students at the undergrad and grad level are utterly disdainful of fantasy literature. Probably fewer now than a decade or two ago (and certainly exponentially more than a generation ago) but still. Thinking fantasy fiction isn’t valuable in any literary sense is still too widely held an opinion for me to be happy… but that’s tangential to my point here.
Anyway this post got me thinking more and more about Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind. I’ve both bashed and defended them on this blog, pretty recently, too, and her utter evisceration of them led me to two interesting revelations about my own opinions of them and fantasy in general: I am really haughty and elitist (or really, really contemplative?) about fantasy literature, what I like about it, what I hate, and what I write — but I do so enjoy the B-movie (or C-movie) novel or series every now and again. The part of me that in a very hick, low-brow manner really, really enjoys a movie the high-brow folks tell me I should disdain, or enjoy a fantasy book that the academic nerd part of me wants to beat remorselessly until it’s beyond dead. I’m that way with movies, too.
The first time (and subsequent second two times) I read Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World (the first book in his Wheel of Time series), I loved it. I still, deeply, do enjoy it. I read it when I was 15; I was in 10th grade social studies class when the kid behind me said, “You like fantasy books, right? You’d probably like this book.” And pointed it out to me. I went, bought it, finished it, and bought the second… and third… up to the eighth, which was all that existed in paperback at the time. The ninth was coming out soon in hardcover, but I was cheap. Anyway I devoured them during the spring of my 10th grade year, amid jeers of my high school softball team compatriots who thought I was a complete and total nerd for reading 800-page books. (Some thought I was insane, others were incredulous, others nodded and said really complimentary things that embarrassed me and my loath-to-brag-about-my-high-grades attitude; I was rather the reluctant good student in 10th grade as opposed to the bitter elitist I became as a senior in high school.) At the point I was at in my life, those books really made a difference to me. They were, now that I think of it, the first major epic fantasy series I read. (I read Tolkien for the first time almost eighteen months later.)
Goodkind was more of an accident. I stumbled upon Wizard’s First Rule in the bookstore (or was it on Amazon.com?) in the desperation of one looking to move their addiction from one drug to another. I stand by what I said a few weeks ago — I did enjoy Wizard’s First Rule. I devoured it and the subsequent five or six books — with a bit more pain and reluctance, each time. In fact, Wizard’s First Rule was the book that helped bring Bryan and I together — I saw it sitting on the desk in his room at college and pointed it out, saying I’d read it and enjoyed it, and we bonded over it. (Long story short, he never actually ended up reading beyond the third book, I think.) However, in re-reading it years later, in the fall of 2006, I stopped after a few chapters. I cringed. I’d been fully immersed in English literature and Creative Writing classes at college by then, and I’d also read a lot more fantasy. A lot. Not only fantasy but other genres as well; I’d discovered the 18th century, too, a century I’d somehow mysteriously skipped in my education in high school and college up until the fall of 2005.
I now, in 2008, have come to agree with Limyaael’s assessment, that the books are more or less full of excess, badly disguised tropes, and annoying, annoying things. (I’ve always been a hater of the Sisters of the Light, but I didn’t start disliking the Aes Sedai until later.) I think a lot of Jordan fans (speaking from experience as a former active member of a Robert Jordan fan site) idealize the books far beyond their merit, and in addition a lot of them take the framework of the books (which is more or less fun) and use it to imagine their own worlds, characters, and doings, all of which are a lot more interesting than what Jordan came up with. Also, there are a few particular characters (all female) that had me gnashing my teeth, probably Faile in Jordan’s chief among them. Oh, Faile and Perrin. Shoot me in the foot. Not to mention Rand and the three ladies, which me, the mostly liberated woman, found irritating for its sheer implausibility based on a bad characterization substantiation rather than its concievability as a basic concept. I’m all for well-written open marriages or polygamy, or what have you, but it has to be well-substantiated and based in concrete characters. When your characters are flimsy, which Elayne (sorry) mostly is (Aviendha was always a favorite until she started being all cuddly with Elayne in a manner that was so blatantly not the Aviendha we all know and love)… oh, on and on.
But I still think of them fondly, for all of that! I find I’m embarrassed. I too am embarrassed somewhat by how inordinately excited I am by the upcoming Legend of the Seeker series based on the Sword of Truth books. (There was a half hour preview on TV this past Saturday; I was all geeky about it. Gosh, I am really geeky.) I’m also excited about the movie Twilight, even given how much I’ve criticized the books on this blog. Why? Maybe it’s that I find I have a personal stake in the genre, and I am really emotionally connected to how well those series/movies portray their source material as well as how well they do financially.
(I always find myself wondering what I’d do if someone options my stuff. Depending on the contract I’ll probably have little say or choice but still… I just hope it doesn’t turn into a Seeker: The Dark is Rising atrocity. ATROCITY. They ruined Susan Cooper’s book! Not that the twelve year olds ever heard of the Newbery Honor-winning book The Dark is Rising before that film, but…)
True Blood, HBO’s series based on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books, is terrifically true to the books (as far as Sookie’s plot is concerned), but it also takes its own liberties in creating interesting, new subplots (Tara and her mother, Tara and Sam, Jason and his addiction) that aren’t in the books at all — but the show does it well, while still staying loyal to the source material. I’m also fascinated by the adaptation process (and Hollywood versus independent means (Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) versus television, both cable and network). Twilight is likely to be either decent or bad (it can’t be better than the book unless it halves the angst and quarters the melodrama, which from the trailer I can’t imagine it doing), and Legend of the Seeker looks, well, good. I doubt it’ll be amazing (even Sci Fi’s excellent take of the Dune novels wasn’t amazing, though I do own it on DVD, teehee). I don’t watch a lot of amazing television, but I do watch a lot of decently good television — more than I did in college, anyway. Fringe, Pushing Daisies — they’re not perfect or out-of-the-heavens wonderful (they’re not the pure, unadulterated nerdgasm that is 30 Rock, for instance), but I do enjoy them. And what, may I ask, is wrong with that? Nothing, I hope.
I was thinking earlier that this has to be one of the reasons I’ve always been compelled to be a writer. I’m a nit-picker, a perfectionist, one who constantly enjoys picking out things that don’t jive with me and explaining what would work for me and why. But rather than stop there (or merely point out what doesn’t work for me and bemoan the state of the world), I write. When I saw Disney’s Pocahontas as a 5th grader and was up-in-arms pissed and self-righteous about how utterly inaccurate it was, I knew I wasn’t like all the other kids. Or, even, some of the adults. (Yeah, I was over-dramatic from the cradle, ask my mother or my 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Galdeau. They’ll tell you.) As a kid, I’d read a book about a male protagonist and the whiney female he saves and initially love it. The older I would get, the more I would question it. I’d wonder what if it’d be like this or what if that had happened instead. Eventually I’d get to the point where I’d get pissed and go write my answer to it. (Harry Potter evoked that in me. I was 13 and hopelessly annoyed at it after I was initially bubbling with giddy joy over it.)
As I’ve read more of the canon, as I’ve learned about writing, re-writing, hacking and slashing, editing, and all of the details, I find myself needing and demanding further complexity of myself, of my characters. I find my plots twisting in ways I’ve never seen in a book before, characters doing things I haven’t seen characters in books do before. I keep asking myself the questions. What if, what if. Why be confined to stereotypes or tropes? I’ve studied Campbell inside and out (and have the thesis to prove it) and knowing the formula I feel I’ve full license to break and bend it and find new ways to explore it based on the trends my characters take and the answers to the questions I find myself inescapably asking. Naturally someone’s done everything before in one way or another; I mean, there are only 36 basic plots and Shakespeare wrote most of them. I don’t know how much I really believe that. Our world is constantly changing. Our literature, our fantasies, should, too.
I write things that intrigue me — I don’t write to make myself happy. I’m not easily made happy. I enjoy challenges, being made to think, and yes, while I hate seeing myself mess up, I do it all the time. With enough hindsight, I look back on my mistakes, blunders, and unexpected happenings, and I learn from them. Or, ideally, I hope I do.
Upcoming movies: the hype, the adrenaline, and the potential disappoinments…
Thursday July 3, 2008
I’m probably — strike that, I am — behind the times when it comes to the news and hype surrounding the upcoming film Twilight, based on Stephenie Meyer’s novel. For instance, I learned today that its release date is in December, where I had originally (read: in February) heard August. So, good. Um. Yeah. Also, I found this clip by browsing Twilight‘s IMDB page. So, I sort of want to complain about how, um, not exciting that scene looks… but. (Spoiler: It’s the climactic scene. CLIMACTIC. Why did they use that as the spoiler scene? Why?)
That scene just ruins pretty much the entire movie for me. Because now, I’m not interested in it beyond mild curiosity appeased through a Netflix rental. Wow. Monumentally sad. But the funny thing is — like when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was made into a monumentally awful movie back in 1999 — people will flock to it, because it’s the first movie adaptation of a bestselling book series. And because people will flock, the producers will have incentive to make the sequels, which means they have the potentiality to get better. (Azkaban continues to be an excellent movie, and the fourth and fifth Potter films really surprised me. The screenplays are still not the best adaptations — though five’s was pretty decent — but the direction and acting have steadily and happily improved.) I hope so. I also hope that the director’s vision is a little more artistic in some of the more interesting early scenes than it was in that particular scene, which was nothing more interesting than an episode of Charmed. Though with the plot being what it is, it’s a character-driven story, so a lot falls on the actors’ shoulders, too, so it’s not fair for me to criticize that scene without having “gotten into it” by seeing the whole movie first. I suppose. But I’m not going to say “That clip has enthralled me even more and I can’t wait to see it!” because that’s not true. If anything that press has turned me off from the film unlike all of the press around The Dark Knight, which makes me salivate. (Perhaps Christian Bale is more my type than Robert Pattinson, anyway.) Gah, look at me trying to be fair and hold off judgment until later. But it’s… it’s… so… hard!
In other news, Hancock opens this weekend. Well, yesterday, actually. I’m interested, I have to admit. Interested for more than one reason. Will Smith does good films. Will Smith always tops the box office. Will Smith has owned Independence Day weekend since the film Independence Day, and it’s a fact that he’s probably the most bankable actor in Hollywood. I’m curious about this film not only because it’s a superhero action film, and you know I’m a sucker for those, but because it’s a Will Smith film, and its plot is unusual. From the trailer I’d guess it’s not amazing — they have pretty much revealed the ENTIRE plot across two or three trailers — but it’s at least worth an eventual rental. Entertainment Weekly usually has the number on a film (so does the NY Times, but they liked it, ish, but then again it was Manohla Dargis and not A. O. Scott, who I like better for reviewing the scifi/fantasy/action films) and they don’t seem to like it all that much. Curiouser and curiouser.
An article I was reading the other day further interested me, linking Will Smith with Scientology through a school he and Jada are funding, and by extension, questioning his motives in making a film like Hancock which — so the article espoused — has themes of Scientology in it. (I’d link it but I cannot for the life of me find the article again.)
Furthermore, another article actually features and quotes a professor from Carnegie Mellon who is somewhat famous for being a debunker of Scientology by saying,
But critics contend that the school is not being honest about its links to Scientology. David S. Touretzky, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, created a website that dissects study technology and asserts that it is Scientology religion disguised as education.
Touretzky said many phrases and concepts on the school’s website are specific to Scientology. For example, the school lists a “Director of Qualifications” and another teacher who is an assistant in the “Qual” department. The “Qual,” said Touretzky, is where people who have completed a Scientology counseling, or “auditing,” session or a course in the Church of Scientology are tested by a qualifications teacher.
“There is no reputable educator anywhere who endorses [study technology],” said Touretzky, a critic of Scientology. “What happens is that children are inculcated with Scientology jargon and are led to regard L.R. Hubbard as an authority figure. They are laying the groundwork for later bringing people into Scientology.”
Fascinating stuff, eh? I think the whole “cult of Scientology” thing is interesting. I like to watch it fom afar with mild interest because come on, a religion based on the teachings of a science fiction author? You have to know I’d be interested, at least academically, in people’s reactions to that.
So it’ll be an interesting two weeks until The Dark Knight comes to sweep us away from the dreariness of not having an amazing film since Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (For the record, I LOVED Iron Man — Robert Downey, Jr. was amazing; The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian was great; and Indy totally made my decade. I felt like a kid in a candy store. It was like I was seeing Star Wars Episode I all over again, minus the terrible-ness of parts of that film — cough, Jake Lloyd, cough.) Aaron Eckhart looks amazing as Harvey Dent and I’m a big Maggie Gyllenhaal fan — so happy they replaced Katie Holmes. So. Excited. For. More. Christian. Bale. As. Batman. AND HEATH LEDGER AS THE JOKER! The trailer sent shivers down my spine. I can’t wait. Can’t wait. Can’t wait!
Indy!
Friday December 14, 2007
The new poster for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull looks awesome — it’s old school painted like the classic Indiana Jones movie posters. What I like best is the comment underneath the poster: “I can’t decide if I would like it more or less if Shia was poking his head out of an eye socket, giving a thumbs up or something.” Touché, salesman.
Also, The Dark Knight‘s poster is out, too. Bryan saw the first 6 minutes of the movie ahead of I Am Legend last night and practically flipped out. He says it looks awesome. I am so frickin’ excited for both of these movies! Oh, gosh, 2008 will be such a good year for movies…
the latest updates
