Lessons of the summer, so far
Between deadlines, travel and wedding plans, I haven’t had the chance to blog about this first batch of summer movies, and more importantly, What We Can Learn. So before I get any further behind, let’s pick three of the most notable films to date.
(Mild spoiler warnings throughout.)
Heroes are more important than villains
Iron Man spent 85% of its storytelling energy on Tony Stark. It had the requisite set pieces, all of which were well-staged, but for an action movie it didn’t really break new ground. Where it succeeded was in creating a funny, flawed hero who propelled the story by his own ambitions. He wasn’t just responding to outside threats.
Did the villain get short-changed? Yes — to the degree that his motivations didn’t really make sense. Did it matter? Not much. In order to better establish the villain, we would have needed to spend more time away from Stark, which would have been counter-productive.
The lesson: There’s no equal-time rule for antagonists.
Leo ex machina
Price Caspian featured a terrific and surprising defeat at the movie’s mid-point, which gave me hope that the movie would transcend its kid-lit roots. But when another lengthy battle sequence1 also ended on the south side of success, my worst fears were confirmed: the fricken lion suddenly showed up to save them. And teach them humility. Or something.
Yes, I know: it’s a Christian parable. But that doesn’t make it any less maddening. If it weren’t based on a famous book, no screenwriter would ever get away with that ending.
The lesson: Let your heroes succeed or fail on their own merits.2
Why is he doing that?
I don’t want to pile on the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hate-parade. But beyond the tonal issues, I was often at a loss to say why Indy was doing what he was doing. Is he trying to take the crystal skull to the cave, or keep it out of the cave? Does he think Mac is a traitor, an ally, or not really care one way or the other? (Sadly, I think the last option is probably correct.)
It’s this kind of granular motivation I’ve written about before. It’s not psychoanalysis. It’s making sure the audience understands what’s happening in any given moment, so they can anticipate what might happen next. Without this ability to anticipate, the audience is just flung around helplessly, wondering why the great Indiana Jones is just standing there watching special effects.
The lesson: Every scene, every moment, ask the question: What is my hero doing, and why? If it’s not obvious, stop and rethink it.
- I call shenanigans on that PG rating. It may be the most violent “family” movie ever. ↩
- And without interference by supernatural beings who could have shown up in the first reel, sparing a few hundred lives. Thanks. ↩
Articles
June 6th, 2008 at 9:09 am
No Sex and the City? And do I see you praising your own rewrite, i.e. Iron Man and criticising the rest?
June 6th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Well said. I believe Indy fell short in the opening but then gained some momentum. Your thoughts on Narnia are dead on, particularly the footnotes.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Haven’t seen Sex and the City. And what I’m praising about Iron Man was fundamental to the script long before I got there, and further developed after I left.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:24 am
You’re absolutely right about Caspian’s rating, there’s no way in hell they should have got away with a PG for a movie that’s virtually all battles.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Film critic (and novelist) Kim Newman pointed out this about the “Tomb Raider” movies (he’s probably the only critic to take a serious look at why those two movies don’t work): Near the beginning of both films, Lara Croft finds an artifact or map that leads the way to a source of ultimate power that could destroy the world. But instead of destroying the map, leaving the source of ultimate power undiscovered (and ending the movie in the first act), she leads the bad guys to the source of ultimate power and THEN destroys it.
But even if that made sense, Lara Croft is a Tomb Raider – she takes things from tombs, presumably to put in museums and further our knowledge. But instead she spends both films trying to stop other people tomb raiding. It’s false advertising.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Very good, clear insight into the mess that is “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of man this is a really long friggin’ title”. As much as I wanted to like the film, I can’t believe we all had to wait 19 years for that. 19 YEARS!! (I wonder what Darabont’s version would have been like.)
At least we have a new term for ‘jump the shark.’ can everyone now please adopt ‘nuke the fridge”?
June 6th, 2008 at 9:40 am
John, I like you a lot. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be visiting this site. I asked because sometimes I don’t know if you are so enamoured of your work to keep praising/mentioning it constantly (I’m still recovering from The Nines posts) or are you genuinely trying to help people by pointing to certain things. I think it’s the latter. :-)
June 6th, 2008 at 9:53 am
hey John, nice piece. just curious about the Iron Man process. Do you know how much of Millar/Gough’s work, if any, made it through to the finished film? I mean, was their draft totally tossed out, or are there at least a few ideas of theirs (as well as yours) in there?
Just curious… I kinda want to believe that Tony Stark is the man he is today because of 3 Starkies :)
June 6th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I was bothered by the Mac situation, in that it simply didn’t make sense for Indy to trust him again, and I have to say there were a lot of things that bothered me about the movie, so much so that by the end, they had pretty much lost me. For example, [spoiler] all 13 aliens were in the tomb, yet they had found the body of one of them which you saw at the beginning. The only thing missing was one skull. I understand introducing the alien at the beginning makes the ending less of a shock, but it hurt the suspension of disbelief.
And what’s the deal with so many scenes taken from other movies, including the ending taken from The Abyss? And the scene with the monkeys seemed SO forced. Okay, end of rant.
June 6th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Any film that opens with a cgi gopher is doomed to fail. What is this, a remake of caddy shack?! And then they use the bloody thing THREE MORE TIMES, because, well somebody spent a truckload of money on the cg model. Pathetic. Especially considering this was directed by the spielberger. Who follows this lackluster opening gag with a superkinetic title sequence that sets up the time but does fuck all for the story. As far as Indy’s motivation is concerned, I thought it was obvious he was desperately trying to stumble from one draft, I mean REEL to the next without dropping the skull. I did however dig the fact that these weren’t aliens, but interdimensional creatures who look like the archetypal alien AND zip around in flying saucer type craft. Now THAT’s original! Anyway, I shall withdraw to the space between spaces and ponder Mac’s ability to self-heal. Or did the skull possess healing powers? Or maybe the ruski vixen?! Was THAT her purpose, to psychically heal Mac’s broken nose?? Is that why she didn’t have the wherewithall to remote-view Indy’s whereabouts after he escaped the rumble in the jungle mayem? So many questions. I’d go see the film again but want to wait for the special edition dvd – I hear the bullwhip will be replaced by red licorice…
June 6th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Tim, for argument’s sake, the alien body wasn’t one of the thirteen. He was “from that air force thing in ‘47.” Meaning Roswell.
There were interesting aspects to the story, but in the end it was just completely absurd. And far too many crotch jokes.
June 6th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I actually think it’s nice to see the PG rating actually getting some use.
The PG-13 rating has almost become a genre unto itself.
June 6th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Haven’t seen Narnia but what you’re saying about Iron Man and Indiana Jones is so true. That’s kinda funny because I couldn’t figure out on myself what exactly felt wrong about Indy — I didn’t hate the movie but some many scenes seemed just… odd.
I think, it’s partly because we know the character from the previous films, so we can guess his motivation or we believe to understand his motivation in one scene, but in the next scene we realize we don’t.
June 6th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
“Heroes are more important than villains.” I would agree, although Joker does look pretty damn sweet in the Dark Knight.
June 6th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Brad, I also highly anticipate the Joker, but I like what I’ve read in recent interviews with the cast and crew. This is still Bruce Wayne’s story. The Joker doesn’t have an arc. He’s just a force of anarchy weaving through the film. (Interestingly, Harvey Dent appears to have an arc, but I imagine his is meant as a contrast to Wayne’s).
June 6th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Hey John,
You mentioned your upcoming wedding – congrats. I didn’t get a chance to post a congratulatory comment on that blog post. My partner and I are getting married 7/26.
Enjoy the day!
Pol
June 6th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Regarding Narnia, why is it that good guys can kill hundreds of nameless bad guy henchmen, but when they get to the Big Bad (you know, the one who probably actually deserves some terrible fate), they always refrain from killing because they won’t stoop to his level?
Of course, you could talk for hours about the loose morality and logical fallacies in that movie…
June 6th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I’ve noticed since around The Matrix, successful action films are driven by an existential question instead of a plot MacGuffin. In the Matrix it was “Where am I?”. The Bourne Films where “Who Am I?. Superhero films like Batman Begins, Spider-Man, Iron Man I think are driven by the question “What am I?”, as in “What Kind of Man will I be?”. An interesting shift in focus which adds depth to traditional action movie heroics, and another reason I think Indiana Jones rang a bit hollow this time.
June 6th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
batutta -
Not at all, Indiana’s existential question was “What the fuck am I doing in a movie featuring CGI gophers?!”.
June 7th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Yep, they rooned Indiana Jones. In the first three movies, even the widely criticized Temple of Doom, there was some level of conflict–usually Indy vs. himself–that made the characters more interesting than just fighting Nazis or Kali worshippers. Beyond a couple of nice, though forced, nostalgia moments, and the fun part with the ants, this was a mess of fights and non-escapes.
I agree with other posters’ points above–from here on out, “nuke the fridge” tops “jump the shark”. That and the waterfall scenes even beat TEMPLE OF DOOM’S life raft ride from a crashing plane down a mountain for silliness. And I was also taken out of the film by Mac’s insta-healing nose and why Indy was so blase’ about Mac’s shifting loyalties. And the mess with the skull left me saying “whatever”. There was never a point where Indiana seemed like he was outsmarting anyone, or even trying to–just along for the ride, acting as tour guide for the other characters. blech.
I wish I could read Darabont’s version to see what could have been. I’m guessing there was a plot that made sense, a layered conflict, and a reason to care what happened to Indy, Marion and family. Anyone know if it’s posted anywhere?
June 7th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Maybe with Indy it would have been okay had Elvis been replaced with Kenny Loggins and somewhere in the waterfall sequence Mutt had played the “Baby Ruth” prank on Oxley. Then then maybe I could have taken all the cheese at cheese value.
June 7th, 2008 at 9:04 am
I just realized a Lucas Trilogy Syndrome – STAR WARS was great, so was RAIDERS. The sequels were much darker (TEMPLE OF DOOM and EMPIRE). And in each case the third film relied a lot more on comedy and rehashed old ideas (The Nazis of Raiders return in Crusade, and the Death has an encore in Return of the Jedi). Beyond that, the next movies suck ass and ruin everything that was great about the originals. Interesting pattern. At least when you’re hungover.
June 7th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Meant to write Death STAR – what happened to the edit tool?
June 7th, 2008 at 9:41 am
That “nuke the fridge” expression is just perfect!
June 7th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Interesting analysis. I definitely agree that the hero’s motivation will overshadow the villain’s. I haven’t seen Indy or Narnia but two thumbs-up to Ol’ ShellHead.
I loved how it didn’t drag his motivation through the whole film. I hate that. The hero’s motivation should be carried through each scene naturally.
Once you say, “I want this because…” every scene should test the hero’s resolve to see it through no matter what.
June 7th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
“most ‘violent’ family movie ever”? dude – i know some families with kids as young as five who watch “The Passion of the Christ” every Easter.
June 7th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Hm. I thought the why’s of Indiana was pretty clear. His objective was to bring the skull to the lost city in order to reveal the treasure. And at the same time keeping the Russians from getting it. Can’t be simpler than that.
The problem was that this premise was laid out in somewhat-hard-to-follow talking head scene between father and son at a cafe table, which didn’t work very well.
As for Mac, he alternately believed him to be a traitor and an ally. (And in the end he helped him even though he knew he was a traitor.)
I haven’t seen the other Indiana films so I can’t compare; it was an entertaining pop movie, but I think it suffered from having to be set in the 50’s.
June 7th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Can’t agree about Indy. I was never once confused as to what he was doing, or why. My favourite movie of the summer thus far, the closest they’ve gotten to matching Raiders yet, and yes, better than the overrated, lacklustre Iron Man. Sorry, John. :)
P.S. The gophers were CGI? If they were, I sure as hell couldn’t tell. Any proof of that? I remember everybody complaining about the CGI tigers in “Gladiator”, and every single one of them was real.
June 8th, 2008 at 9:14 am
YES! The motivations made NO SENSE throughout Indy 4! Did Indy want the skull or not? I thought he wanted to stop them from returning the skull, but then suddenly he wanted to return it himself. If Indy wanted to return the skull, then what did Blanchett want? At the end, did Blanchett get what she wanted (to commune with the aliens?) or not? Did Indy get what he wanted?
Nothing better sums up the movie’s motivation problem than LaBoof’s behavior when they see the cave. He spots the skull cave and suddenly starts jumping up and down in excitement “We found it! We found it!” Then Indy shrugs and says he might as well take the skull in. Suddenly, LaBoof is all slouchy and muttering “Why should anybody care about some old skull? Let’s go home.” Huh? What?
I figure that Lucas has vetoed so many drafts that when they finally had one he liked, they must have been terrified to order any re-writes. Motivation problems are often fixed in re-write.
As much as I hated the movie, though, the one moment I actually liked was the fridge moment, so I can’t get on board with this whole “nuke the fridge” movement.
June 8th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I thought it was obvious they were CGI gophers. Firstly, I don’t think gophers are that trainable. Secondly, they didn’t look real at all. And while the tigers were real in Gladiator, the swipes of the paws were not, a lot of the time.
June 8th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
I don’t think that ‘nuke the fridge’ works so much as a replacement for ‘jump the shark’ as it does for pinpointing where the filmmakers reveal how low an opinion they have for the target demographics’ intelligence.
June 8th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
This one featured a relic that has no significance or historical meaning. Everyone knows about the Ark of the Covenant and the Cup of Christ. Even if you didn’t, the scripts did a masterful job of clearly explaining them. In this one: what’s a crystal skull and why should I care about it? They sort of explained it, but it has no resonance. If it was attached to Roswell directly, maybe…
And the crystal skull itself. It was the only time I laughed – it was that bad. Where the hell they get it? The dollar store? Did Lucas say, “Find me the cheapest plastic and fill it with tin foil!” Plus, it looked like a skull from an Alien movie. I pray Lucas doesn’t think of Indiana Jones vs Predator vs Alien. Shudder. And the ending. It was even worse than Transformers. Plus, Indy’s a superhero in this one. Bottom line: if studios want to hype a billion dollar movie and pay off critics to get good reviews, it should get slammed. I don’t want to be ripped off again like this (but I know I will.)
June 9th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Okay, I had to think about this one for a while, because my first instinct was to blindly defend Prince Caspian, which I loved, but I realized that I was thinking mostly with my heart and not my head. Now I think I’ve got both more or less in balance.
Initially, I agreed with you, and I even thought the same thing while I was watching: “Leo ex machina.” We’re all taught that this is a bad way to end stories, that it’s a copout, and usually it is.
However, I think it works in Caspian for a couple of reasons:
As you pointed out, the movie is based on the book. Whether or not it works in the book is another story… (It’s been so long since I read it that I can’t honestly remember.)
Aslan didn’t fix everything. And he didn’t fix anything until the children had come to all the necessary realizations and made all the right choices on their own.
That’s why, for this viewer, it wasn’t a true/complete deus ex machina, and it didn’t feel false to the evolution or redemption of the heroes.
–
I do think Forrest (commenter above) brings up a good point about killing nameless baddies but not the “Big Bad.” The problem certainly is not unique to Narnia.
I guess one could justify it with the fact that most of the time the Big Bad is so weak/vulnerable at the moment that the MC could kill him, that it’s almost “unfair,” whereas the nameless baddies are usually running at the MC with maniacal intent to kill or be killed.
Though it seems strange, I can understand it better if I imagine it in a real life context: a stranger running at me with a knife, vs. someone who poisoned my father and is now lying defenseless at my feet. Because the threat isn’t immediate, and you are more in control of the situation, I think it would be harder to “pull the trigger” (so to speak) in the latter scenario.
But who really knows? Thank goodness these aren’t situations I actually face!
–
But back to Narnia. Overall I think this series does a wonderful job of condensing a complex world and epic stories into feature-length films. Better than most other recent fantasy series, which run into problems like being too long, too jumpy, etc. The Narnia team alone has managed to avoid those pitfalls, in my humble opinion.
And of course, the special effects are fun and beautiful. :)
// end long and overly-opinionated comment
Kristan
June 9th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Haven’t seen Indy, but Iron Man? I thought it was a mess. Such a long, belabored, and absurd setup. I thought it was pure silliness. Going geopolitical didn’t work for me (or maybe it was wrapping a real-world political message around a super hero movie that I didn’t buy). All I can say is bring on the Dark Knight.
Disclaimer: I’m not the target audience so maybe it’s fantastic and I just can’t tell :-)
June 9th, 2008 at 11:40 am
I liked Prince Caspian but I completely agree that the rating was wrong. I also watched Ran (which is based on King Lear) on DVD yesterday. Ran was rated R, though I don’t think it’s much more violent than Prince Caspian. I think the only real difference is that Kurosawa showed a lot more blood, which of course makes it more real. If anything, I think Prince Caspian should be rated R and Ran should be rated PG. At least Kurosawa showed some of the graphic consequences of fighting with swords and longbows. And the violence in Ran/Lear is tragic. In Caspian, the violence is glorified.
June 9th, 2008 at 11:42 am
To James (#6): I’m sorry to have to be the one to break this to you but there’s nothing even close to the level of requisite hate needed to replace “jump the shark” with “nuke the fridge”. That idiocy is restricted to only the loudest of the haters on AICN and similar sites. To get it stick you’d need EVERYONE to hate this movie, but anyone trying to be a straight shooter has to admit that reaction to the film has been very mixed with opinions scattered from those who loved to those who hated it but mostly people who were let down and felt pretty blah about it. The truth is, people don’t WANT to hate Indy and that term has 0% chance of chatching on. Go on James, go to every website you know and make the same plea for people to adopt that term… it’ll never stick. Mark my words.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
I have to disagree about Iron Man when you write: In order to better establish the villain, we would have needed to spend more time away from Stark…
Actually, the problem I had was the time they spent developing the faux villain, whose purpose in the film is to set up expectations and then surprise the audience with the “twist” revelation of the real villain. (As if we hadn’t seen the poster or trailers.)
If the filmmakers had concentrated all that screen time on the actual villain, they could have developed him without stealing screen time from Tony.
And then maybe I’d have some idea why whatever Gwyneth does at the end manages to deactive Iron Monger but has no similar effect on Iron Man…
June 9th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
“To get it stick you’d need EVERYONE to hate this movie,”
I disagree. I don’t even know where “jump the shark” comes from, and it really doesn’t need to be a movie you hate, it’s just a funny phrase. And anyone who enjoys Indy 4 has to at least acknowledge the absurdity of “nuked the fridge,” the absurdity is why that scene’s enjoyable. And so I think it is possible for it to catch on as a funny reference. Not that it will, just… you know… saying.
“time they spent developing the faux villain”
According to rumors, ‘faux villain’ is ’sequel villain,’ so it’s not completely useless. Also, I was never under the impression that Stone was uncharacterized. Sure, he had less scenes, and you don’t know if he has a family (which assumption is he doesn’t). But with the montage of magazine covers from the beginning, Stone being the only one there and not getting glory, and adding in an audience presumption of what corporate businessmen are like, he’s solidly looked after. Might be rooted in a stereotype, but that doesn’t mean he’s lacking in understanding motivation.
The main argument I heard about Iron Man was that people felt it resolving in “simply two guys fighting in suits” was underwhelming. I don’t agree, because the fight wasn’t between Stark and Stone, but between Stark and himself, Stone was simply a foil of sorts.
The ending is probably the biggest gap in disbelief. My assumption is that Iron Monger’s core wasn’t deactivated, but Stone and the suit were destroyed, leaving the core active, perfect to be replaced by Paltrow [who we know knows how to do it] with Stark’s dying core. I’d even go so far as to presume they shot that scene where Paltrow panics and saves Stark while he’s unconscious, but everyone felt it was better to just let the screen fade as he passed out. And, yeah, it was better, the logic gap didn’t need to be filled.
June 9th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
To John Jackson (#38): “Jump the shark” comes from Happy Days (Fonzie literally jumped a shark tank on his motorcycle) but you don’t need to know that because it was already a famous saying when you heard it.
But to REPLACE it with a new phrase on purpose is something totally different. In my opinion, it would require something monumental. Most people don’t know where most idiomatic phrases get their origins… “raining cats and dogs”, “dressed to the nines”, “A-OK”, etc etc… but once they’re ingrained in culture, they’re virtually impossible to replace.
I could be wrong but i’m sticking with my initial evaluation that “nuke the fridge” will get no traction. In a month, people will be making fun of something from Hancock and have pretty much forgotten all about that fridge.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
@ Rick. How about we adopt the term “tongue in cheek” for my previous post? (which I thought was pretty clear.)
I always thought of Indy as a truly vulnerable, flawed hero (the mining car race, and life boat drop, being small exceptions), but surviving an A-bomb blast in a fridge pushed him into cartoon character land. What happened to the Indy that had to have Marion nurse his many wounds? And that wasn’t the only problem I had with the characterization of Indy in this flick. It’s like they’d forgotten who he was in the previous films. How come he’s all of a sudden a government op? I always read him as a rogue archaeologist, willing to work with the bureaucracy if it suits his needs. Never in a million years would I think he would be at the beck and call of the “top men” that would end up boxing away all the treasures he sought.
It’s the current MO for action movie stars I guess. They all have to perform, or survive, superhuman events. John McClane has to surf a jet instead of simply running across broken glass, etc etc etc
June 9th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
To rick #39, You’re probably right. Just saying, if a few really stubborn high profile geeks latch onto it. It might slowly ebb its way into the culture. Most likely won’t happen. But it could. I just wasn’t a fan of the argument that it wouldn’t happen because people didn’t universally hate the film. People definitely didn’t universally hate Happy Days, they just new that instance was insanely absurd, and thus, funny.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:31 am
“I actually think it’s nice to see the PG rating actually getting some use.”
Are you talking about Narnia? I think it’s great when studios make PG movies for families and kids (at least when they make good ones). But it’s even worse when studios make movies that should be PG-13 but they get rated just PG, it gives the false impression that the movie is OK for little kids.
“most ‘violent’ family movie everâ€?? dude – i know some families with kids as young as five who watch “The Passion of the Christâ€? every Easter.”
The point is that Narnia may be the most violent movie promoted as a family movie. Sure, there are tons of idiot parents who let their kids watch anything, but that doesn’t make those movies “family movies”.
I’m really surprised about people not liking Iron Man, while there will always be minor quibbles about superhero movies, I thought it was excellent and that the setup was one of the best parts. People complain that action movies have bad dialogue, characters, and plot (see INDY), and here’s one that did all those well.
And I do like the phrase “nuke the fridge”, it is a nice alternative to “jump the shark” which has been way overused.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:05 am
By it’s nature as a Christian parable, the heroes of Narnia are incapable of succeeding or failing on their own merits, as that would be anti-Christian. If your story has a Jesus Analog in it, everyone will have to submit to him and his goals eventually, or become a bad guy. You can’t succeed without Jesus’ help because it sends the message that you don’t need Jesus to be good. and since the message of all Jesus-centered stories is that you need Jesus’ help to be good, you can’t succeed without him directly interfering in the action. It’s the Catch 22 of religious morality plays: all the human characters are ultimately superfluous.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:34 am
@James (#12):
I’m a fan of the PG rating, too. Charlie and Corpse Bride were PG.
@Johnny (#23):
Comment editing will come back. Just doing some infrastructure changes.
@Keith (#43):
Yet I wonder if the Jesus-analog could work as an advisor rather than outright savior. In Star Wars, that’s the Wise Old Man (Obi Wan, Yoda) who shows the way without doing the work.
Aslan’s explanation about why he didn’t intervene earlier was so unsatisfactory that it raised the classic Problem of Evil: if a god figure allows evil, is he evil himself?
June 10th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
To James (#40) – It wasn’t clear, I thought it might be, but there are so many haters on AICN really trying to get people to use “nuke the fridge” that it makes your sarcasm that much harder to detect (sarcasm, in my opinion rarely comes out through the internet anyway). BTW, I agree with your comments about KotCS.
To John (#41) – I guess I’m not explaining myself well. People didn’t have to hate Happy Days for the term “Jump the Shark” to acquire its meaning, but I think people WOULD have to hate KotCS to replace a popular idiom by agreement (why else agree?). And I promise you, and Mr. August, that’s absolutely the last I will say about this completely ridiculous point of argument. Cheers.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Indiana is on his way to the kingdom to return the skull. They make a pretty big deal out of it. The very word is said a number of times in different languages, and also written on the walls of the prison where John Hurt stayed. Indy later says why he has to return the skull. “Because it told me to”. This doesn’t quite explain how John Hurt was able to first go to the kingdom, change his mind and hide the skull from the Russians. Perhaps he wasn’t under its spell back then.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Speaking of Iron Man, John, what I’m wondering is…
…did you like working on it enough to do the sequel if offered? :)
June 13th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Yet I wonder if the Jesus-analog could work as an advisor rather than outright savior. In Star Wars, that’s the Wise Old Man (Obi Wan, Yoda) who shows the way without doing the work.
But then he wouldn’t be a Jesus Analog, just a generic wise man. The flaw of Christian storytelling is that it starts with the basic assumption that people are helpless dupes waiting to be told what to do by a cosmic leader. And any leader will do, but you’d better hope he’s the good leader, not one of the many evil leaders. But all you can really do is hope because you’ll do whatever anyone in authority tells you.
Conflict arises only because the evil cosmic leader always shows up first to tell people to do bad things, requiring the good leader to then put in an appearance and steer all the lemmings away from the cliff edge. The resolution occurs when the lemmings realize they’re dupes and then are grateful for the good leader saving some of the ones who hoped correctly. But the important part is that no one ever decides to try and save themselves.
It’s maddeningly inhumane story telling.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Although I liked a lot of IRON MAN, I do disagree with John. I always thought a very important (and often overlooked) factor on a well-done superhero movie is strong villain motivation. While I didn’t think that was particularly interesting in IRON MAN (Obediah just wants to make money selling weapons…yawn), the parts of the film that were well-done almost made up for it.
My favorite villain motivation is still Gene Hackman’s Luthor in the first Superman movie…he was going to sink California and make a killing in real estate anyway, even before Superman made his debut. Superman was just an obstacle that showed up.
My example of worst villain motivation is the Green Goblin in the first Spider-Man film. The moment he kills all of his ex-business pals on that balcony in Times Square, his reason for being a supervillain is over. It seemed a stretch for me to keep him antagonizing Spidey for the rest of the movie. (Though, like IRON MAN, I did like a lot of the first Spider-Man movie.)
I want to say that Jack Nicholson’s Joker had a similar problem in Burton’s Batman film, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, so I can’t speak definitively on it.
August 6th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Indy 4?
Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!