Disney Plus has announced that they're screening their live-action version of Mulan exclusively to Disney Plus members…for an added cost of $30.
My impulse to that is Pffsssh. Not worth it. Admittedly, while I enjoyed the original Mulan, I don't much care about/for the live-action retellings of Disney movies. Aladdin was so bad (to me…my family liked it; then again, we were at the drive in, so the whole experience was new for them) that I didn't even bother trying on any of the others. (At least with Maleficent it's a different version of the story.) As it stands, though, I'm not a big fan of the idea of Disney Retells™ in the first place, so $30 sounds exorbitant to me. But then I saw a tweet by John Scalzi made me realize that I would never be able to take my whole family of two adults and three kids (though I think my oldest is now the price of an adult? I dunno; it's hard to remember these faded details) to see Mulan for that price. It is way cheaper than a family-night at the theaters. Some of the comments by Scalzi followers on the Twitter thread made sense: Paying the higher ticket prices means more of your money is going to supporting the theater, ushers, concession-stand workers, and other people who need the job. Yes, you do pay more for tickets, but that cost is diffused throughout the operating needs of the theater. In this case, it's pouring $30 straight into the pockets of Disney, with the added $8 per month Disney Plus subscription going along with it. Another comment was that this sort of pricing made it clear that Disney wasn't interested in single-viewer experiences, as a person who's correctly quarantined isn't about to have a watching party at their house. If it's just for a single viewing, single viewer, then $30 is outrageously high. (While some 4K and Blu-ray versions can get to be that high, at least the ability to rewatch the film comes with buying the disc. I'm pretty sure this is a $30 rental.) Scalzi's comment about losing 45 minutes of trailers and ads, though, is a really strong selling point for me in terms of paying for brand new movies in this new format. I have been anti-trailer for many years now, and not having to worry about them any more is appealing to me. First, a bit of background: I'm not a big-time movie goer. I like movies as much as the next person, and I think they're an important part of our societal memories and cultural capital. But in terms of the "theatrical experience", only big-budget, special-effects blockbusters really feel like they're "worth it" in terms of the difficulty of getting to the theater. Until just the past few months, we haven't had an at-home babysitter (my oldest turned 13 during the early stages of the pandemic), so any attempt to see a movie involved finding and coordinating with babysitters, dropping kids off, commuting to the movie theater, and then doing it all in reverse once the film was over. It was a lot of hassle, so only films we really wanted to see in theaters made it worthwhile. Trends in theaters--people acting like it's their living room instead of a communal space, frequent texting, or general discourtesy--made me miss very little when the pandemic swept all aside. But the thing that I really disliked--and still do--are ads and trailers. As far as ads go, I find it insulting that I have paid the cinema company to see the film, only to be barraged with advertisements paid to the theater again. If they did that while the movie was going, people would be absolutely furious. After all, they paid to see the movie, not be thrown advertisements. Yet we're surprisingly quiet about the fact that the only difference is the timing: Before the movie is okay (for some reason), but definitely not during. Amazon does this on occasion with their streaming service and it drives me crazy. We're already paying for the Amazon Prime subscription--or paid for the digital rental--so why am I sitting through a subsidy of a payment plan? If they're getting paid to put in ads, they shouldn't be charging me for entrance, whether that's physical or digital. The much more egregious insult, however, would have to be cinematic trailers for upcoming films. They've been getting worse more and more lately--we're all aware of them, of course, because they're so ubiquitous that they're essentially impossible to miss--and I recognize why they are used and how they're crafted. Doesn't mean I have to like them. I think the best explanation is an illustration: Back in the late aughts, the then-new movie Terminator: Salvation was coming out. Being a fan of the franchise (and eager to see a PG-13 Terminator movie with the missus, because Mormons), I was excited that there was another entry in the cinematic universe. Not only that, but the trailer was pretty cool and it showed some really interesting ideas: What would a person who's part Terminator, part human be like? How would he navigate the world where he didn't fit into either side? Would this Humanator have a soul? (I was teaching Frankenstein at the time, so these questions were more frequently in my head.) If you don't remember Terminator: Salvation or never saw it, that's okay. It wasn't that memorable. What I do remember about the film was how confused I was. Throughout the film, the main character--who, based upon the trailer, was a Humanator--didn't seem to know that he was part machine. In fact, that is the primary mystery of the movie: How did Grimy McManliness survive to this point in time? But it wasn't a mystery for me. I already knew the big twist. This is a fairly egregious example--most trailers aren't quite that bad--but we've all been hoodwinked by the ad and given something different than we expected. On the whole, having a movie for which I pay X amount of dollars shouldn't be spoiled by an ad…whether that be an actual advertisement or a trailer that tells too much. Goodness gracious. Well, 2019, I'm really okay that you're leaving. What a year… That isn't to say that some great things didn't happen: They did, and I'm proud of some of what I've achieved in the past dozen months. Still, there was a lot of stress, strain, and sadness that came with the passing of time, and seeing those woes recede in the rearview mirror is fine by me. I can only hope that they don't pursue me into the new decade. Goals--Made, Lost, and Won As I was staring down the barrel of 2019, I wanted to try something different in terms of my readings: I wanted to reread all of Shakespeare's works, as well as go about my reading habits differently. I wanted to spend a lot of time reading certain books, with less emphasis on my nonfiction writing. I also hoped to finish writing some shorter books. Let's see how I did on these, shall we? Shakespeare reading: This one will go down as a definitive brick on my road to hell, as it was made with the best of intentions and was promptly glossed over. I honestly blame 1 Henry VI for being a fair slog that I'd just seen the previous year at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Some of Shakespeare's plays can come up again and again without growing stale. The first part of Henry VI is not one of them. It took me a fair amount of time to read through that one, so though I'm finally in Richard III, it's rather frustrating to be sitting at the end of December and only have six plays finished. Yes, I'm going more slowly because I have pencil in hand as I'm roving through the pages, but that doesn't change the fact that, if given a chance to sit and read some of the Bard, I'll probably find something else to do with my time. This isn't because I don't love Shakespeare--obviously--but because reading his stuff is a lot of work. I usually come home from work having already put forward a lot of work, so the idea of picking up some "light reading" at the end of the day usually means not picking up The Norton Shakespeare. I did acquire quite a bit of Shakespeare-adjacent things, including Tyrant by Stephen Greenblatt, Richard III: England's Most Controversial King by Chris Skidmore, and Shakespeare's First Folio by Dr. Emma Smith. My Milton and Shakespeare library grows apace, much faster than my attention span, lamentably. Reading Anew: I had planned on reading one book per quarter, pencil in hand, with an eye toward becoming a deeper reader--as the previous year I ended up reading quite widely. There's nothing wrong with this goal, save my lack of will in completing it. Persuasion by Jane Austen failed to charm me, and I ended up having a really rough time trying to finish the book. With that taking so much longer than I anticipated, I ended up skipping out on whatever else I had planned--though I have read some more in Somme, which is immensely sad (the book, not the amount I've read)--and going back to my default of reading whatever snatched my fancy for the nonce. The pending Harry Potter Winterim, however, did put a monkey-wrench in my summer plans, as I realized that, by mid-July, I would have to start my reread of the entire Harry Potter series. This I did, reading the first three books in the delightful illustrated version, then the final four in my old Scholastic editions, all of which were carefully marked up from the last time I taught the class (back in January 2012). I finished Deathly Hallows a couple of weeks ago. That six month reread ate into the time I might have otherwise spent on the other books I was planning on reading. I'm disappointed by this failure, if I'm being honest. I wanted to broaden my deep-reading skills, but I was flustered by the first choice going so far awry. I still want to read a philosophy, a piece of fiction on my To Be Read pile, and a history book. I still want to improve my reading base. So I may try the same sort of thing in 2020, though appropriately tweaked. And, while I'm on the subject of what I read, I'm going to throw down the list of completed books right here, mostly as a way to remind myself what I finished this year: There are a couple of books I'm missing, I think, which would put me up to about 75 total titles this year. Some interesting (to me) notes: Numbers 48-52, 69, and 72 are unpublished works. Crimson Hands (number 52) is one that I read from a friend in the writers' group. The others are all books that I wrote over the course of the year (more on that below). Other interesting things include that I have absolutely no memory of what Kids These Days is about; it took me a while to remember what Skeleton Keys is; Mother Tongue is an absolute blank in my mind. While I can conjure a couple of thoughts about most of the things on the list, these are some that I don't even know what to think. I also had duplicate readings--not just the normal ones of Les Misèrables or Pride and Prejudice, which I read every year with my students--of things like Why Write? and It. (In the case of Why Write?, I finished it in January, then again in November.) As a matter of blasé interest, I also kept track of my comics, video games, plays, and movies that I enjoyed this year. 1. Fellowship of the Ring I rather doubt this is an exhaustive list. Also, there are still a few days left of the year, and I need to finish watching the Harry Potter movies. In other words, I've another five titles to add to this. I think it's safe to say that I consumed about 100 titles, though how I counted them is rather arbitrary: I counted individual seasons of Upstart Crow, but didn't include any of the Invader Zim or Animaniacs cartoons that I listened to as I shuttled the kids hither and yon during the year. Still, this gives a good sense of what I'm willing to devote my time to, if nothing else.
Nonfiction Writing: This has absolutely decreased this year. Back in 2018, I wrote over 625,000 words. Between my daily essays and the journaling I did, I estimate that about 395,000 of those words were nonfiction. And, though I've still a couple of days to add to the number, my current (not counting this essay) writing levels are these: Nonfiction = 213,000; fiction = 281,000; total (including editing and worldbuilding) = 520,000 words. I'm almost a hundred thousand words behind where I was yesteryear. My fiction output is upped (281,000 in 2019 versus 230,000 in 2018), but my overall word count is lower. In terms of my goal to write less nonfiction, I definitely achieved that. I missed it, however. I really enjoyed putting my thoughts down for all dozen or so readers to see. I liked having the ability to sound off on whatever it was that ate at me, to say nothing of the satisfaction of having written over 600,000 words in twelve months. That's not a small amount of writing, and I feel like it's definitely been a part of my life that I should reincorporate. However, as I look at those estimated numbers, I remember why I decided to ease off on the essays. I've written over a thousand of these things now, and even more than my NaNoWriMo projects, they are abandoned. I don't reread them--heck, I don't even look them over once before publishing them. They're all rough drafts. And, with the exception of the memoir about Shakespeare, I don't think I mind them being anything more than what they are. I'm okay with them being just sketches that never turn into paintings. They're lumps of slightly formed clay. That's fine. The issue is, I've spent hundreds of thousands of words honing my nonfiction writing. I can slap something together with precious little thought and still have it make a bit of sense. This comes because of all of that practice. If I had my druthers, I would want to see that much commitment to my fiction writing. I want to be a fiction writer, not an essayist (and, having read quite a bit by David Sedaris, I know that the expectation and competition in that genre are far above what I think I can attain). I have to put the time in writing fiction if I want to improve how I write fiction. Which leads me to the last goal I wanted to write about… Fiction Writing: I completed a lot of projects this year. I've talked about them before, but in case you've forgotten, I wanted to write a five-novella book that feeds into a novelette--almost like an Avengers-lite, a way of getting to know five characters well, then see them all come together to solve the bigger problem that they were all experiencing (to one degree or another) in their own way. But I had some lingering issues to take care of. The first was my 2018 NaNoWriMo novel, Theomancy. Of all my NaNoWriMo books, this one is perhaps the only one that I'd like to see again--though when and in what way I don't really know. I tend to write an idea, then, if it didn't work, abandon it in favor of something else. So I don't know quite what to do with Theomancy, save knowing that I did like the world, even if (as always happens) the wheels fell off by the end of the story. Theomancy, however, wasn't finished in November of 2018. I let it hover on the edges of my mind until January was about to start. See, in January 2019, I had a winter writing retreat, during which time I decided to finish the NaNoWriMo novel. So while I technically started Theomancy in 2018, I finished it in January 2019. So that's one project done. I've also been working on my horror novella, Mon Ster, for quite a while--a couple of years, in fact. Through some luck, some moments of worthwhile writing, and continual pressure, I finished it in the summer of 2019. That makes for two completed projects. Last school year, I had the opportunity to write each day for about fifty minutes. The goal was, with the rest of the class, to write 50,000 words on our projects by the end of the semester. I spent a portion of that time channeling a couple of different sets of inspiration: At that time, I was playing Resident Evil 2 remake and enjoying that survival-horror-and-hunt-for-clues kind of story. I had also listened to Mr. Lemoncello's Library with my kids, which was using reading, books, and authors as the fuel for his own puzzle story. Having been disappointed in a recent Shakespeare's Secret, I decided to write my own, Shakespeare-inspired puzzle story. Basically, think of The Da Vinci Code but with Shakespearean clues, and you have Raleigh House. Tonally, I think it could have been a bit tighter, but as a love-letter to the Bard, I think it went pretty well. I worked on that one all of second semester, finishing it sometime before school ended (if I remember correctly). That makes for three projects done. Once the writing season (read: summer) was in full swing, I set down the aforementioned novellas-into-novelette story. This required hours of careful plotting, copious note-making, and plenty of revisions to the outline. It's easily the most complicated project that I've tried to do. In my typical way, I wanted to start my first summer writing retreat by having a clear idea of what to do, but not a single word down in the actual writing. During that retreat, I managed to write the entire first novella--about 32,000 words of it--with a bit of time to spare. This was exciting and unexpected, and meant that, though the entire story still had thousands of words to go, I had accomplished something toward it. I count that as the fourth finished project. With the time off from school, I found a way to weave the second novella into being. It wasn't easy, as writing at home is no problem when it's quiet, but as I have three boys, quiet time isn't particularly abundant. (Maybe that's why I like writing on Sundays so much; the children aren't running in and out, friends aren't over, and the entire day is more sedate.) Nevertheless, I had a goal of finishing Novella Two before approaching the next writing retreat. Days before I left for the family cabin, I finished it. Fifth project: Done. When it was time for my second writing retreat (the first was with my writing group; this one was solo), I managed--despite coming down with conjunctivitis--to write a 29,000 word novella. Thus I completed a sixth project. After that retreat, the reading really kicked in, to say nothing of the family vacations that ate up the remainder of the time. School resumed, my attention fractured, and I spent almost none of my writing time in the Novella Story. (I managed to squeeze out four painful chapters--a third of the project--but haven't touched the thing since the end of September.) However, November came, and with it, the desire to retell Hamlet in a modern setting and without the poetry. I started Elsinore Ranch on 1 November, finished the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words, and left the story incomplete. At the same time, I started an edit of War Golem to go along with my goal to improve my editing skills. That took up a fair portion of November and December, though I did manage to finish that edit before Christmas arrived. I call this one my seventh writing project of the year. That's not the end, though. Despite having left my retelling alone through the majority of December, just this past week saw me again picking away at it. I conjoined some chapters, cut out some of what I thought I wanted, and focused on getting it done. With little fanfare, I finished Elsinore Ranch yesterday (28 December). It took a lot--and I can't say that it's all been worth it--but I did complete eight projects in 2019. Yes, you can quibble about the merits of short stories, novellas, and novels, but I feel like each one of these projects is different enough to appreciate them the way I did here. The quality of the stories varies widely, as do the subjects and characters. Still, finishing this many works in a single year is nothing to be ashamed of. My word count may be smaller than before, but I think that I've done something remarkable. Next Year's Goals For that, I don't know. I could perhaps postulate some things, but this essay is already creeping up on 3,200 words, which is far too long for a cold winter's day. I'll end it thus: Just as this year marks a highwater mark for project completion, I'm hopeful that this next decade will see--somehow--a change in my writing career as a whole. I can, at least, hope. Despite the flaws, I really enjoyed Endgame back when I saw it in April. Ever since I saw it, I felt like 1) I wanted to watch it after a refresher viewing of the previous movies, and 2) I wanted to see it with my boys.
The second impulse came (in part) because of what happened when I was at Infinity War, which, if you still haven't seen it, I'm going to be rather spoiling the film for a quick sec. At the end of Avengers: Infinity War, the Snappening transpires, which totally shocked me because I had been so well conditioned by Marvel movies to see the heroes pull off the big win at the end of it all (additionally, I purposefully don't pay attention to announced movies as much as possible, preferring to be surprised by when they show up, rather than anticipating them). The ending to that movie is powerful, raw, and surprising. Gayle and I sat in the theater, waiting for the end of the credits (again, conditioned), only to hear the heart-rending wailing of a kid a few rows in front of us. He had just seen some of his most beloved heroes get dissolved in front of his eyes. Methinks the price of that family's tickets will increase with therapy bills later on. I didn't want that to happen; I didn't want my youngest (he's six at the moment), who has seen some Marvel movies, jump ahead to Infinity War and see so many characters get Snapped. That was not a parental-trial I wanted to face. So I decided that we would get around to rewatching all of the Marvel movies together as a family--yes, there's some uncomfortable content, and I'm not going to sweat that too much (I saw Batman Returns in the theater--you know, the one with the Penguine trying to bite a guy's nose off? Yeah, that one--and I'm only slightly permanently scarred)--before I hit Endgame again. Then my kids would have a fuller experience with the emotions that the film is playing with. It's not quite the same with being in the moment, I know--there's a full third of my life in which Marvel movies have been made. Considering how I was very much the stereotypical nerd who yearned to see his favorite characters on the silver screen someday, the Marvel films really have been emotionally significant to me. I can't recapture that: My kids grow up in a Marvel-dominated world (and hurrah for that, says I). But I think this process will be worthwhile anyway. We've already knocked back Iron Man, Thor, Iron Man 2, and since I rewatched The Incredible Hulk only a few months ago, we're considering that one complete. That meant that, before Amazon Prime loses all of the Marvel movies to Disney+, I decided to watch Captain America: The First Avenger last night. And by saying that, I have now taken about 500 words to get to this particular point: I am still conflicted about that movie. There are a lot of things about the Marvel movies that are rightly criticized: The music is forgettable (good while you're in it, I suppose, but essentially without the ear-worm stylings of earlier superhero movies (think the John Williams Superman theme, or Danny Elfman's Batman theme, for example)), the colors are sometimes a touch bland, the character arcs are familiar, they always end with a swarm battle, the girlfriends are immaterial to most of the heroes…all of these are valid points, and there are some more, too. One of the more subtle critiques--and one that really just gnaws at me--is that it's a much more progressive world. I mean, don't get me wrong: I love the fact that Agent Carter and a couple of nameless (essentially; I didn't catch them, at least) Black guys are brought into Captain America's squad after he busts his best friend out of Hydra prison. I wish that Bucky had been Black just to drive that home a bit more: In this version of history, they weren't Buffalo Soldiers or a segregated unit like the 442nd Infantry Regiment. They have a San Diego-born Asian-American, a Brit, a guy I'm assuming is Irish, as well as a couple of White guys and the Black guys. We don't spend a lot of time in their presence, so we never get attached to them, but seeing that kind of rich diversity that America can have (if we let it) is awesome to see on the screen. So what's the problem? It's not historically accurate--and what I mean by that isn't "I want my superhero movie to only feature White people 'cuz that's what history says and the source material" kind of argument. It's the same problem as having Captain America focus on defeating Hydra instead of Hitler: The real-world, real-history problems were deep, damaging, and destructive, but the film vaults over them without so much as a hesitation. The Holocaust is pretty much one of the most wicked things that happened in Europe--World War II was pretty much one of the most wicked of things to have happened to the planet. No one walked away without sin. Our institutionalized racism was horrendous--so bad, in fact, that the Nazis used our racism as propaganda to try to influence Black soldiers to defect--and America is the only country in the world to drop two nuclear bombs on civilian populations. It isn't like we walked away from that conflict without some heavy stains on our souls. But the version of America that Steve Rogers represents isn't the one that we have. Maybe that's the biggest part that bothers me: He has a vision and understanding of America that we never got, though many of us believe it is the same one. There's nothing wrong with having a story with an alternate-timeline of how American history went. That's not the issue: It's the way that it feels like it's supposed to be interchangeable with our own timeline. I plan on talking to my kids about this very thing, especially since my oldest is studying The Hiding Place right now, so he's becoming exposed to the real terrors of that time period. This matters to me because so much of how we view the world is filtered by the media we consume. While I do think America was a force for good during World War II, I don't want my kids to think that Rogers' America is our America. Additionally, it still bothers me to think about how Captain America--the paragon and quintessence of Americanism--is used to charge a dumpy little fortress in the Alps when he could have been helping push through the German lines at Bastogne or liberating parts of France. The timeline of the movie, to me at least, was a bit murky. Obviously, it was post D-Day when Rogers arrives in Europe, but where he is and when is incomplete. I mean, when he attacks the Hydra headquarters, he literally rides his motorcycle in, as if it's just a matter of using the 1940s version of MapQuest to figure out the best route in. I know that there are a lot of cuts that a movie like this has to take in order to 1) hit the two-hour run-time, and 2) keep it simple enough to tell the portion of the bigger story (how Captain America came to be and ended up in the 21st century), so there had to be concessions. Nevertheless, I feel like their version of the war doesn't really show the sacrifice, danger, death, and suffering that transpired in the war. Nothing really shows that to me quite as strongly as the shift from Hitler to Hydra. Honestly, the easiest way for me to swallow what happens in Captain America: The First Avenger is to assume that the Holocaust doesn't happen in this timeline. I know that America didn't get involved in Europe because we wanted to stop a genocide. But by the time (again, it's not perfectly clear) Rogers was blocking blue disintegration blasts with his vibranium shield, the crimes of the Nazis was no longer whispers and rumors: We had been liberating camps as we marched eastward, and the Russians (non-entities in this film, which is not unusual for World War II narratives; why should we credit our future enemies with their due? They were communists, after all) had been doing the same as they raced toward Berlin. Steve's fixation on Hydra--which is flimsily cast as being even worse than the Nazis, though it's only through some hasty dialogue--honestly feels out of sync if there are death camps dotted throughout Europe. Look, he even thinks about diving into the water to save that young scamp during the foot-chase scene ("I can swim! Go get him!" the kid tells him). Are we seriously going to say that he understands the Hydra threat to be so large--this mystical, quasi-magical weaponization of Norse deities' power--that people being burned alive in ovens is immaterial to him? I'm not saying that I want Hydra to be more wicked than Nazis. That would require a lot of uncomfortable decisions that wouldn't make sense in the alternate-world that the Marvel movies work in. Instead, I wish that the Nazis were also considered a threat…maybe the threat of the story, only learning about Red Skull and the tesseract in the final moments. The thing is, masked soldiers who do a double-arm salute instead of the blonde-haired, blue eyed brownshirts doing a single-arm Nazi salute really doesn't feel like a legitimate threat to me. I feel like Hydra's dangerous because the movie says they are, while the historian in me is reminding me of all of the horrible things that happened to those who fought against the real-life villains. For me, it's a bridge-too-far to pretend like there was anything worse than Nazism's ideologies that were motivating the violence of the Second World War. I can't turn off my visceral reaction to that time period long enough to let a garishly-dressed supersoldier kill (and, boy, does Rogers do a lot of killing) his way through these faceless spearcarriers without feeling like something is really missing. "But, wait. Don't you love Wonder Woman? Isn't that doing the same thing, but during World War I?" Yes. Good question. And that has been grist for a lot of thinking on that front, too. In fact, I felt so strongly about how Wonder Woman treated the Great War that I took my son to see Wonder Woman as a way of getting him exposed to World War I. So, what's the difference? On the surface, it's basically the same story, isn't it? Superpowered person ends up in the theater of war and, through heroic efforts and immense self-sacrifice, manages to keep a plane loaded with deadly, world-ending weapons from being released, all while defeating an antagonist who isn't actually concerned with the historical motivations for why the war is being fought. But Wonder Woman does a lot of things differently. First of all, they picked a less-popular war (what a world we live in where wars have anything representing popularity), one that wasn't as pre-loaded in the minds of Americans. The 101st Armistice Day was observed just a couple of weeks ago, but what was the experience like for Americans--here and over there--during that time a century back? Do we remember any of the soldiers who survived the Great War--or are they only significant in the way that they came into play during the Second World War? How many battles can the average American name that happened during World War I? How many battles did the Americans fight in during World War I? These are massive gaps in our collective memories, and as a result, it allows a fictional version of the war to fit inside the superhero paradigm better. Having Diana Prince in this less familiar conflict allows the film's incongruities (like, how the H did they get close enough to the bad guys' headquarters that Diana could go incognito in a stunning blue dress without being noticed?) to be easier to swallow. More than that, however, is the trench scene. Not only is there the symbolism (which I absolutely love) of Wonder Woman being the only person who can get across No Man's Land, but there's an intimacy with the violence that makes it feel more significant. That is, Wonder Woman has to navigate the trenches, where we see the suffering of soldiers wounded, horses drowning in the mud (about 8 million pack animals served during World War I; the screams of dying men were echoed by equine death-throes), and families displaced by the violence of the war. All in about ten or fifteen minutes of screen time, we get a strong sense of the cost of the war, the effect it has on those surviving it, and the traumas it inflicts. Remember the sniper guy's PTSD being so bad that he becomes a liability? Shell-shock was a real problem, one that many--if not most, to one degree or another--soldiers experienced. In other words, Wonder Woman treats the war as a war--albeit a PG-13 version (which is fine; not everything needs to be Saving Private Ryan level of graphicness)--and allows there to be cost, danger, violence, and stakes. Wonder Woman has its own flaws--the third act is, in retrospect, a fairly large stumble--but in the area where it feels most important (to me), it really succeeds: It makes me feel like this is a real war in which Diana Prince is committed to doing her best to help end it. Captain America feels like Rogers is taking out some bad guys in a foreign country, a la the beginning of Black Panther. Couple final thoughts: All of that being said, I still really, really like the film version of Steve Rogers. The comic book version never really clicked with me--as a kid, the Man Out of Time trope wasn't very interesting (I don't know if I'm that way still; I haven't thought about it) and his costume always struck me as ridiculous. However, Chris Evans' work with the character is really enjoyable. Yeah, his pre-serum body is a bit distracting, but I positively love what they did with the character. He's committed, self-sacrificing, brave, and unwilling to compromise in the areas where conviction matters most. He's simply fantastic. In a lot of ways, Captain America: The First Avenger is less useful as an origin story, and more valuable as a character study of what makes Rogers so intriguing. Lastly: Watching Captain America and thinking about Wonder Woman and the portrayal of those films makes me--once again--deeply consider what I'm doing with my War Golem book. I've mentioned it on occasion before (like right here), but in case you've forgotten, I wrote a novel where a World War I-inspired war is fought, but with gigantic golems as an additional part of the war. If you take the dragons from Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern and their relationship with their riders, the scale of Michael Bay's Transformers, and dropped them into trench warfare, you have a sense of what I'm going for in the story. It has always gnawed at me that I chose to write a book (two, technically, though I haven't looked at the sequel since I wrote it) that uses the real-life suffering of men and women in order to tell an adventure tale. I don't normally watch war movies, as I take issue with the idea of profiting off of the death and misery of some of the worst moments in modern human history. I know that some people view them as homages and demonstrations of appreciation, and I don't disagree with that. However, as I mentioned earlier, the media we consume gives us our lenses, and viewing the wars the way that Saving Private Ryan or Dunkirk do tends to push the narrative into a "my side is the heroic side; the other side is the evil side" kind of thinking. After all, there are only a couple of hours to tell the story, so shortcuts are required. But if a person watches Hacksaw Ridge (which I haven't seen, so I'm guessing here) and thinks, "Man, the Pacific War was crazy. Look how many people died! It was so bloody!", then the film has failed. Any story of Desmond Doss, I would argue, that doesn't inspire the audience to rethink what it means to serve a country and fight in a war is a failed telling of that man's story. (Again, I haven't seen it; I can almost guarantee, however, that some people left with those sentiments I just mentioned.) I haven't been able to come up with a way of squaring this circle. As I mentioned in my linked essay, I really do like War Golem. I think it's a pretty good book. Because it's a fantasy, I don't have to worry about things like the Armenian genocide or the British blockade that starved millions of Germans--I can have a Captain America style world where the terror is in the trenches alone. But I'm trying to make it feel like Wonder Woman in terms of giving the reader a sense of the trauma and fear, the worry and pain that war of that type creates. Is that enough? Is that what it takes to make a story with real-life suffering as its cornerstone? Care, consideration, and respect? I don't know. I really don't. But I wish I did. NO SPOILERS: Captain Marvel is great. So is Captain Marvel. (See why it's so important to italicize the titles of books, plays, albums, and movies, kids? It makes a difference.) Of the two origin stories of people named "Captain" that take place in the past, I liked it much more than Captain America: The First Avenger. I've liked Carol Danvers' character for a couple of years--she showed up in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 back in the early days of the PlayStation 3 and then made a strong showing in the mid '10s that made me aware of her. No, that's not to hipster brag, but instead to put out there that, in terms of high-powered female characters in the Marvel universe, she's a good choice.* SOME SPOILERS: One of the things that I love about the MCU is how they're willing to do deep-cuts in a way that appeal to the mass audiences and still give a strong verve that shows their roots: Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty out there--I hadn't heard of them until the movie was released--and they're now major fan favorites. Captain Marvel is, I think, in a similar vein. The movie's premise--taking place in 1995 as it does--was a fun departure. We've had Captain America: The First Avenger happening in 1945, and a couple of parts from the two Guardians movies transpiring in 1985 (-ish? I haven't watched them in a long time, so there might be a more specific date that I could look up but I won't; and if Ant-Man happens earlier, I wouldn't know, as it's the only duology of the MCU that I haven't seen). Otherwise, the MCU dabbles in the not-too-distant future (considering the level of technology, maybe it's just safer to say that it's an alternate present). For Captain Marvel, the nods, flashbacks, and shorthands utilized were adroit and enjoyable. What better way for us to know that the story is happening, not at the same time as Infinity War, but before it, than to have the heroine crash through the ceiling of a Blockbuster? (And, hilariously, pick up a copy of The Right Stuff?) Gayle and I both really enjoyed it, as the music was almost all (quite deliberately, I'm sure) selected from popular songs from the decade made by female artists. There was some Nirvana and R.E.M. that I noticed, but, for the most part, it was number one jams from Garbage, Hole, and No Doubt that were rocking the soundtrack. The NIN shirt, flannel, and cut jeans looked perfect on Brie Larson, the actress playing the captain, and the technology references and jokes landed well for me. Another aspect of the production that was really appreciated was the respect that the camera had for the character. The camera never lingers on lady parts, all of which are logically protected (considering the role that Danvers has to play throughout the film). Additionally, Carol Danvers was never sexualized nor objectified. She didn't look unattractive or frumpy, but she wasn't being glamorized or catwalked either. I love Gal Gadot's work as Wonder Woman, and that character deserves to be heartbreakingly gorgeous in basically everything she does, so the fact that Marvel (both the studio and the character…and the movie, I guess, which makes the italics thing kind of tricky at this point) goes in a more practical direction is a good way to demarcate difference.** There probably was a lot of pressure to live up to Wonder Woman's success, and I think that it was wise to find the variety that they did. Plot wise, it had a fairly predictable "reveal" of the real baddie, but there were a couple of surprises that worked well for me. I walked in with the idea that the Skrull would definitely be super evil--Secret Invasion and all that--so the change in their behavior partway through caught me off-guard. It filled in some gaps--why Captain Marvel wasn't around before the Avengers Initiative got off the ground, for example, or how she could have survived the Snappening--and, in typical Marvel tradition, strongly sets up and supports the next chunk of the story. Some people dislike the way that these "B-story" characters end up being ancillary and stepping stones to the bigger dangers, but it doesn't bother me. Captain Marvel has a great story that has a lot of focus on her growing as a person, making her own decisions and going her own way--which is what I wanted out of the movie. That there are other components that are building up the broader MCU doesn't detract from that, to me. Admittedly, I'm the target audience for this sort of thing. I may not be as well-read in the comic book lore as I would like, but I've read enough Captain Marvel comics to know this movie was on brand for the character and her place in the world. So maybe I'm able to intuit certain story elements that wouldn't be as easy for a more casual moviegoer to appreciate. But, hey, I'm not them. A couple of things about Captain Marvel's strength: I think it's safe to say that she is, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, at least, the strongest hero, and second strongest (to Thanos only) character of them all. The comics have different ways of depicting power (in the comics, for example, Wonder Woman lifted a planet; in the movie, she struggled with a tank), so from what I can tell, Captain Marvel could lay down Hulk in a single punch. Movie Wonder Woman and movie Captain Marvel wouldn't be much of a fight: Marvel would wipe the floor with the Amazon princess. But that's not really germane--"Which one's stronger?" isn't a very interesting analysis. What's significant is how both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel are--and are not--particularly feminist. There are lots of ways that feminism enhance and improve texts, and the one area that they almost always force writers of fantasy and science fiction (myself very firmly in this camp) into new narrative directions is that feminism encourages "strong female characters". The issue with this--and, again, one that both of these films struggle to understand--is that a "feminist" movie*** isn't about "ra-ra-girl power! Yay!" but instead looking at the resolution of the conflict in ways that are inherently more feminine. So while Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel easily pass the Bechdel test (which, everyone should always remember when this test is invoked, doesn't point toward quality of the film, but rather a very low bar of required content), both characters use violence and anger as their tools to solve the crises. There's nothing wrong with a woman being angry, of course: She has emotions. They ought to be used in various ways. But how do both women stop the Big Baddie™ at the ends of their roads? Anger and violence…the same thing that everyone else uses. Strong female characters aren't actually about strength qua strength--they aren't dudes with boobs. There are different, acceptable ways that they manage conflict which don't require fists. The mercy extended their adversaries in both films points toward that realization, but the mercy can only be extended because of the raw power that each woman has over their opponents. Peter Parker "defeats" Sandman at the end of Spider-Man 3 (a flawed movie, of course, but it gets this part right) not through punching him, exploding him, or sucking him into a Dustvac (as he does in an early comic), but by forgiving him. That's the kind of thing that I need to practice doing, as my physique does not lend itself to fighting off intergalactic hordes. This isn't to say that there isn't a lot of progressive work inside of both films. They're interested in making the characters thoughtful, flawed, nuanced, and capable of fixing the mistakes that they make. That's good writing; that's good character development. That's what makes a "strong female character": Not how much she can dead lift or how many punches she can take, but how willing she is to own up to her mistakes and confront those who have treated her unjustly. The frustrating dilemma about this genre is that, formula- and expectation wise, we audience members expect a cool fight in the third act, some spectacle-filled clash between superpowers. If Captain Marvel didn't blow some stuff up with her energy blasts, we would feel frustrated. (Think, for example, about how one of the big criticisms about Superman Returns was that there wasn't enough action--hence the hiring of Zack Snyder for Man of Steel--though Superman Returns has a lot of other problems in it, too.) So finding a way for the character's strength, rather than her arm's strength, to be the thing which solves the problem is hard to do with all of the genre expectations. I don't blame Wonder Woman nor Captain Marvel for failing to find the perfect way to do that. I love the fact that both of them show mercy on the antagonists, even though it wasn't an easy thing to do. That's a step in the right direction. I wonder if there's any way to really square this circle, now that I think on it. Anyway, the movie is great. I really liked it, and though I don't have the same love for Carol Danvers as I do Diana Prince, Captain Marvel is certainly up there as one of the better Marvel movies.**** --- * I personally would have preferred She-Hulk, but there's already a green-skinned woman in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and that might be crossing the beams a bit too much. I couldn't get a solid answer about future projects from the internet--a lot of speculation, but maybe I just missed the accurate information? Anyway, I don't have a huge catalogue of She-Hulk titles, but John Byrne's run was meta and tons of fun. If Marvel wanted to have a go with Marvel-exclusive fourth-wall breaking in the PG-13 realm, they could copy themselves (to an extent, I guess?) by having her be comedic in the same vein as Deadpool. But, considering how much hate manbabies have over female-led comic book movies, having a She-Hulk film that's cutting a little too close to Deadpool's territory may not be the best move, especially if there isn't anything really fresh to add to the whole thing. I'm digressing a lot in this footnote. Okay, I'll stop. ** In the comics, Captain Marvel's switch from the black one-piece swimming suit and thigh-high boots (see below) to the blue, gold, and red motif was one that got fans rumbling. While I personally wish they'd kept the sash--for no reason other than that I love sashes on characters, for some reason…long headbands, too…and capes--the comic moved into this slightly more armored version of the character quite a while ago. It's an excellent move, honestly, because it translates onto the screen much better than the domino-mask-and-evening-gloves look, and makes it more believable that she's a warrior out to stop a war than it would if she instead looked like she'd just come from a Baywatch audition. *** In some definitions. Feminism is a large community, and not without its own self-contradictions. I acknowledge that.
**** Geez, four asterisks? There's gotta be a better way to handle multiple footnotes. Anyway, I brought you down here again because I think the idea of ranking the different films is kind of stupid, despite what I said above. The Marvel Formula © ®™ is operating on essentially every level in almost every movie. While some are more or less forgettable, they all have a particular tone or feeling to them. It ends up being more about what suits someone's fancy than anything else. And my fancy on this one? Why do I still like Wonder Woman despite the rocky third act? Because there was so much riding on Wonder Woman doing well, resonating with audiences, and believing in itself. There's more to watching a movie than simply the images on the screen. The baggage, expectations, assumptions, and histories of everyone who walks into the cinema are different. That variety is important; it shapes the experience. (Remind me to tell you about my viewing of Iron Man 3 to expand on that.) For all its quality and, in some areas, superior execution, Captain Marvel can't be, can never be, what Wonder Woman was when it came out. Diana Prince had to pave a path that Carol Danvers could only follow in. The need for a female-led superhero movie to be a commercial and critical success was palpable when it came out. Despite the intense injustice of having so much ride on Wonder Woman (especially when duds like Batman v. Superman didn't destroy the careers of those attached to it), Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins pulled off a necessary story. The real life narrative about whose stories deserve to be told is as crucial to a movie as the movie is, sometimes. (Black Panther is another great example of this.) Because Wonder Woman came first, because it earned the emotional power that the No Man's Land sequence created, because it paved the way, Wonder Woman will always be the "superior" of the two films, despite having more problems with it than Captain Marvel did. Okay. I'm actually done now. Thanks for sticking around to the after credits. Over the past couple of months, I've been watching the Sam Raimi versions of the Spider-Man movies with my three boys. (Don't worry; my five-year-old covers his eyes during the "scary" parts.) We finished Spider-Man 3 last night, which reminded me of how deeply flawed it is a film, and also showed some highlights that I had either not noticed before, or had forgotten. Of Raimi's three entries into the franchise, Spider-Man 3 is universally (and rightly) considered the weakest of the trilogy. For me, there are a lot of personal connections to all of the films: I saw Spider-Man with some friends at a casual midnight showing--the friends worked at the movie theater in May 2002, so we turned it on at midnight and had a private screening; this was before movie theaters realized people would pay money to go to highly-anticipated films--and I remember stumbling out of the theater in a dazed joy for what I'd finally been treated to. I went on my mission shortly thereafter, which meant that two years passed before I could watch it again. And, much to my enjoyment, Spider-Man 2 came out in the summer of 2004--perfect timing. I saw Spider-Man 2 in California, where my family was vacationing (a tradition for when one of the boys came home from their mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) at the time, with my good childhood friend, Chris. My dad said, as we were walking out of the theater, that he felt like he was watching me and my fiancé (who is a redhead, too) the entire time. I remember being really satisfied with the film, and I watched it a lot. (I also go the video game which, up until the recent PS4 entry, was considered the best Spider-Man game of all time.) When Spider-Man 3 was on the horizon, however, things in my life had shifted a lot. I was recently graduated from college, unemployed, and spending a great deal of time in Primary Children's Medical Center, where our first born son, Puck, was being treated for a severe heart-defect. Gayle and I went to see Spider-Man 3 as a "date night", mostly because we were being kicked out of the hospital for an hour as the nurses changed shifts anyway, so we figured we could take an extra hour or so and watch a movie. Early on in the film, the bad guy, Sandman, climbs into the room of a little girl who was attached to a canula. The unexpected connection between my current plight (as Puck was on oxygen for much of his early life) made me instantly on the defensive against what might happen in the movie. As a result of that--and the overall strange narrative choices--it never really stuck with me as a film. There were the embarrassing moments (and, having seen it again, they're still quite awkward), of course, but some of the themes that it was trying to explore didn't really remain in my mind. This is the first time I've watched the film in over a decade, I'd guess, and I no longer think it's as bad as I remember. It's still not good, necessarily--the dance sequences are quite strange--but there's a lot more going for it…until Venom shows up. In fact, the whole third act isn't good at all. But the form of the movie--with everything going so well for Peter at the beginning, only to fall apart throughout--was a great decision. In Spider-Man, it starts off with Peter in a fairly neutral position; no, he didn't have the girlfriend that he wanted, but his aunt and uncle were alive and cared for him. That changes throughout the movie, so that his beginning position and ending position had shifted. Spider-Man 2 has him in a low-point at the beginning where he's lost his job, he's late for school, he's always tired--everything that could go wrong (even failing to get the hors d'oeuvres or margarita at the gala) does. So he starts low and only descends further. Then, throughout the course of the film, he learns important lessons and is able to climb up higher than he had been before. For Spider-Man 3, his starting position is at a height--things are going well and he starts to take his good luck for granted. Things unwind faster and faster and he turns to a parallel for substance abuse. The symbiote acts as a drug, something to block his pain and anger and channel it into what he thinks is cool or attractive. Part of the reason the dance moves and the finger-guns are so tacky and awkward is because we know it isn't cool, but Peter thinks it is. All of that subtext and nuance is great filmmaking, even if it is kind of hard to watch. Where the film stumbles is as soon as Venom comes on the scene. The team-up between Sandman and Venom doesn't make sense, and though the forgiveness that Peter renders Flint at the very end is impressive and necessary, the jumble of the ending makes it hard to be emotionally connected.
Everyone (who cares to, I suppose) knows that Spider-Man 3 is often held up as an example of studio meddling with the director's vision and getting a blemished product as a result. That is absolutely the case--but I don't think the error was in adding the symbiote. I think it was in adding Eddie Brock. Not only is Topher Grace a milquetoast actor (not bad, necessarily, but not the right choice here), but the character of Brock/Venom is not what the film needed. Because of what the symbiote does to Peter, the way it manipulates him and addicts him, is an excellent addition to the film. Peter defeating the symbiote in the church, where it dies (or, I guess, if it has to come back in a later film, that would be fine) so that he could focus on the Sandman issue would have made for a much stronger film. There are some moments of impressive CGI work, with a lot of great homages to the comics in it, and while it's almost completely broken at the end, I do think that, a dozen years down the line, Spider-Man 3 is a better film than I originally gave it credit for. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Getting to the Movie
I follow a lot of my interests on Twitter. When political dumpster-fires aren't eating up all the bandwidth, I find a lot of useful websites, thoughts, and conversations that have helped me become a better person. (Whether or not that balances out the frustration I feel almost every time I log on is still undecided.) One of the accounts I follow--which has been particularly interesting in the post-November tweets--is an account called "WWI Live", which regularly posts snippets of men's journals "on this day" back throughout the Great War. So, unsurprisingly, when Peter Jackson's documentary They Shall Not Grow Old was debuted back in October/November, WWI Live and other WWI related accounts shared the news article. If you don't know, They Shall Not Grow Old is a side-project by the famous director. The idea was to cull 100 hours of film and 600 hours of interviews the BBC did with WWI vets back in the sixties and seventies, assemble it into a type of narrative about the boys who went to France from 1914-1918, colorize it, and give the audience a chance to really feel as though they were as close to the trenches as we could possibly get. As soon as I learned about the movie, I immediately started trying to find if it was going to screen in Utah, but, at the time, it had some festivals it was showing at in London, and other than that, nothing. I mean, I did my due-diligence; I went to the Fathom Events website to see if there was anything pending, but…nope. Nothing. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I saw someone tweet that they'd seen the film--an American, speaking from a not-New York location--and that it was mesmerizing. I was with my wife, Gayle, on the way to run some errands, just the two of us. I immediately started looking at the Fathom Events website again--it had been a couple of months, after all, maybe it had updated?--and, sure enough, there were some screenings going on at the end of December. After that, maybe something would show up in February. I started to try to reserve some seats…only to see that every single screening in a 100 mile radius was completely sold out. I was frustrated; Gayle listened to me grouse about the injustice of me being unable to attend--a smaller version of the frustration I felt when I was unable to go to Verdun when I visited France a couple of Januarys back--because she knows how much learning about the World Wars means to me. Then, right at the top of my Winter Break, my little brother texted me, asking me if I knew about the movie. It's sold out, I texted back. Really? It looks like it's still there, he replied. I scurried online. Sure enough, a couple of tickets, on the very back row, tucked into the corner, were two available seats. Without hesitation, I threw in my credit card number and scooped them up, telling my brother he was going to come with me. He was down. I was relieved that, after all of that, I would finally get to see the movie. I had some trepidation: I get depressed and frustrated with war films--Dunkirk was perhaps an exception to this--and part of what always makes me unhappy with war films is that it's a recreation. No matter how hard they strive for accuracy, it isn't what truly happened, and all the people on the screen got to go home at the end of the day. It makes the real sacrifice of real people--even those who died over a century ago--feel…exploited. Well, that might be too strong of a word. Still, I don't normally go to see war films, and part of that is also because of the exceptional violence on screen. I know why it's happening, I get the process…but watching movies like that make me a little queasy and often glum. Nevertheless, I felt this was important for me to go to, so I was excited in a way that I don't normally feel for movies. Anyway, today is the day of the film, so I went by my brother's house, picked him up, and drove to the correct movie theater. We needed some food before the film, but when we tried to get some Chick-fil-A, the restaurant was packed. We decided to head to the theater and try to get something there. We only had twenty minutes before showing to get some food, eat it, and get to our seats. The food--over-priced, but still good--mostly eaten, we headed to the theater. "We're at the top left," I whispered, remembering what I saw when I bought the tickets. We hiked up…only to see that there wasn't anything approaching my seat numbers there. When I had ordered the tickets, I had misunderstood where the movie screen was in relation to the seats I was selecting…I had purchased the front row tickets, not the back. I didn't want to crane my neck at the screen for the next two hours, so I sat down in the empty seats at the back. A couple minutes later, the actual ticket holders came, surprised to see me and my brother parked in their spots. We moved. Another batch of people came. We moved again. I then spent the next fifteen minutes stressing out that the people whose seats we'd claimed were going to come in and kick us out of our seats again. (I really didn't want to move closer to the screen.) Fortunately, that was the last relocation, and my brother and I got to experience the film without further interruption. The Film Itself Where to start? Well, first of all, I can talk about the film pretty freely, as there isn't really any "spoiler" territory for a documentary: If you didn't know, the British fought in the Great War. They had horrible experiences. It ended on 11 November 1918. Many people died. I can also unequivocally and wholeheartedly recommend the movie. I would love to show it to my students--despite the R rating, which it deserves (as it's a documentary with many gruesome and graphic images), the film doesn't sensationalize the subject matter or make it overly grotesque*--though there are many reasons (the rating being one of them) that there's little possibility of that. I don't know how available it will be--I don't know if there will be country-wide distribution of the film later, or if it will become viewable online or through Blu-Ray sales. But if you get the opportunity to see the movie, you should take pains to see it. Of course, the question is, why? There have been plenty of colorized versions of the WWI footage available--and, though Jackson didn't address this in his after-credits, behind-the-scenes explanation of how the movie was made, there are sanitized versions of some of the filming from the war--to say nothing of the fact that there isn't as much interest in the Great War as its flashier, deadlier sequel. So why the Great War? Jackson obviously has a long-standing fascination with the First World War: His grandfather served throughout the entire four-year period, and he actually owns a fair number of WWI pieces, including artillery and uniforms and magazines. For him, it was a personal affair. Another thing is, there is a technological gap between the First and Second World Wars that allows the latter to be better documented and visualized. For us, the First is all about scratchy, silent, black-and-white, static images, where everyone moves at an exaggerated pace. The war is in black-and-white in our memories; whenever we study it, the slides and images feel too far removed. Jackson's idea was to tidy up the footage and coalesce on the experience of living in the trenches. What was it like to do the mundane things, like get hot water for some tea (they're British, after all)? Or the sound of lice popping when soldiers cooked them from the seams of their shirts? All of this minutiae strove to put the audience in what may be considered a "generic" version of events. Not about the big names--I think I heard Neville's name mentioned, but never French or De Gaulle or Von Kluck or anyone else--but just a ground-level experience. By adding carefully reconstructed lip-readings of the footage, there was a stronger sense of belonging--they were no longer silent films, but "talkies"--complete with carefully recorded explosions, marches, and other aspects that we take for granted in a movie. Jackson utilizes the techniques of modern filmmaking to allow us into a mindspace we're familiar with, then pushes that into a world we aren't: The trenches. The cumulative effect was absolutely stunning. The violence was surprisingly subdued--though having explosions on screen with enough volume to make the theater rattle gave a tiny taste of what it was like in 1915 France was one of the most striking moments for me--for the simple reason that no filmmaker, now or then, would want to rush along into the trenches to film the actual fighting. The choices they made were probably the best possible, and easily the part where I was least engaged. Not because there wasn't a lot going on, but because of the opposite: I couldn't keep track of the different voices who all narrated their own unique experiences below the sound of gunfire and explosions. There's one caveat to that: Jackson would put up a slow-motion portrait of a soldier, smiling at the camera, then, when the narration mentioned a death, do a shot of a soldier--dead and bloodied--to create the concept that the person we were looking at died in the way described. Because the narration was entirely done by those who were in the war, there was a personal veracity to it that added an air of realism that was immensely powerful. There are some conceptual flaws to the narrative that Jackson is telling, and this is an understandable (perhaps lamentable, I don't know yet) omission. It seems, when watching They Shall Not Grow Old, that the war simply ended and that was that. But suffering continued. As far as the Allies were concerned, yes, the fighting and dying was mostly over. The Americans--particularly Black Americans--were pressed into service of burying the nearly countless dead. The Germans continued to suffer beneath the crushing weight of the British blockade, their children starving until they became, perhaps, so mentally unhealthy that they would, when older, seek a Final Solution to a Jewish Question. The shattered lives of those in Verdun, Flanders, or Ypres had to be rebuilt, and though the British were done with it all, the ending of the war was only the beginning of the difficulties. Still, Jackson makes it clear (in his after-the-credits explanation of the process) that he had to focus on but one thing, or else it would spiral into a smorgasbord, rather than a singular meal. Because of that choice, there's still a sense of the futility of the entire war, and that was the final moments of the film. In the last few minutes of the run-time, many soldiers merely confessed that they were essentially ignored when they returned, almost as if nothing had happened. One man was asked by his boss, after having returned from the front, where he had been. "What, were you working nights?" The idea that the shells had scarcely stopped falling and people were already forgetting…well, that is condemnatory. This film is doing its best to push back against that, to resurrect, as it were, the voices, images, and lives of men who would never get the chance to grow old. Do yourself and the shades of those men an important favor: Try to see this movie. --- * The sad thing about the Great War is that it's already so grotesque that simply reporting it--without embellishments--is enough to shock any decent individual. Okay, so maybe the title is slightly misleading: I don't really know how one would go about writing a Superman story. It's clear that, at least cinematically, the Man of Steel remains one of the inexplicably toughest nuts to crack. And in a world where two very well-received movies include a talking tree and a sentient space raccoon, we can't chalk it up to the tired trope of "no one can relate to a demigod like Superman" as an explanation.
I've been thinking about the cinematic universe (called the DCEU) where a movie as significant and important--despite its flaws--as Wonder Woman can coexist with the mix of weird decisions and bizarre character motivations as Batman v. Superman. And though Justice League was fine (I'm not a particularly difficult fan to please when it comes to movies, in case you haven't noticed), and I purchased the Blu-Ray and expect to get to watch it soon, I'm not enamored of it. I've wanted to return and see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse more than I've wanted to return to Justice League, which isn't really that big of a surprise, considering who's writing this, but the difference is I actually have Justice League in my house and could put it in and watch it… I digress. What I'm getting at is the idea that Superman is hard to make personable, relatable, or intriguing in our post-9/11, post-2016 election world. In other words, we're in a time where our culture has created a new identity for itselves, one filled with bitterness and anger, outrage and injustice. What could Superman possibly have to say about that sort of thing? Well, a lot, I think. In some ways, the Last Son of Krypton is more crucial in our cinematic discourse than we might believe, as he's a ought to be the example of what the United States has been for the vast majority of Superman's existence: A genuine superpower. So, if I were to write a Superman movie (I'd say movie, if only because then I'd have the free reign to tell the story without worrying about continuity or fitting it into a broader mythology), I think that's the angle I would take. I wouldn't necessarily pull for the comics--in part because I don't know as much about current Superman continuity than I do some of the Golden Age stories, which probably wouldn't work for the purposes of such a thought exercise--though there are pieces of the video game series Injustice: Gods Among Us that I think makes for an interesting starting point. Here's my pitch: Make it a comedy. I mean that generically, which is to say, classically. Though there are lots of parts of the comedic structure that we'd have to ignore for simplicity's sake, I would pull on two specific aspects of classical comedy: The story is a process from social disarray to social cohesion, and I would incorporate people from all levels of society. Okay, so a quick step backwards. Have you read The Divine Comedy? It's the story about a poet named Dante who wakes up one night in a dark wood and then is invited to pass through the three potential eternities of the Catholic afterlife, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Dante begins having lost his way and is forced to go to the worst of all possible places, Inferno, in order to determine the greater good of his theme--namely, God's justice. It's best known as the repository of the first of the three books, Inferno, which is filled with all sorts of horrible punishments and gruesome images. When you read The Divine Comedy (which you most definitely should), you'll be hard pressed to put our modern definition of "comedy" onto it. It's not funny; it's comedic. There's a difference. Superman would need to do the same thing. Dante is a superman in Hell, mostly because he still has a corporal body and the rest of the shades do not. (At one point, they notice that he casts a shadow, which gets the shades furious with jealousy.) He is capable of leaving Hell, which the spirits of "Adam's wicked seed" can't do. In other words, he is far above them in ability, capacity, and authority. Kal-El is the same in our context. At the beginning of the movie, Superman is at the height of his powers--not quite at the level Grant Morrison will put him, but still pretty impressive. There is near universal acclaim for what he's done, including having defeated Doomsday, rebuffed an alien invasion, and managed to avert catastrophic climate change. He's feeling pretty good about himself: Lois and he have a good relationship, his mother is content and enjoys his weekly visits, and his life as Clark Kent is also going well, with some accolades for his journalism. All of this is the first five or so minutes of the movie. We can have some cool montages of him saving the day--and smiling every time he helps people out, whether it's the vintage cat-in-the-tree or stopping of a mugging--and get the sense that all's well in the universe. Then there's a mistake. Lois and Clark are having lunch in Metropolis. Clark is saying, "This is good, you know? After all we've been through, it's nice to have a simple meal together." An explosion happens across the street. Superman, of course, protects Lois and the entire diner from the blast (quipping, "That's what Superman can do" or something along the lines of him being somewhat cocky about his abilities), then zips over to save the day. It's a weird alien robot that he's never seen before--but who cares? He's Superman! He begins smashing things and moving at superspeed and doing the sort of cool action we associate with superhero movies. Though there's been some damage, Superman has taken care of all but one of the robots. A crowd gathers, cheering Superman's success as he approaches the wounded being. This one he wants information from. Grabbing the creature, which wraps its claws around his wrist as Superman hefts it into the air, Superman asks, "Where do you come from?" "I bring a message," says the creature. "What's that?" "Despair." Slow-motion effect as Superman perceives what the creature is about to do: A massive explosion tears through the robot. Superman can move fast enough to save everyone who's nearby--we just saw him do that a few minutes ago. But not when the robot holds him in place. Superman looks down at the claws holding him back, then up at the creature as he recognizes what's about to happen. The entire block disappears in a massive explosion. (Yes, this is similar to the moment in Batman v. Superman, but with one crucial difference: Superman tries to save everyone--which he totally could have done had he wanted to in the Snyder film--but can't. That's really important.) Superman is left with only the portion of the robot that he'd protected with his hand, a silver disk that glows with a pink light. Superman looks around, dismayed at what happened. He, of course, is unscathed, but there are dead people all over the place, as well as countless wounded. His ears are still ringing and he's a little out of sorts--mostly because he can't believe he made such a grievous mistake--and he's understandably upset about the whole thing. Then he sees Lois, under some rubble, bleeding from a head wound. He's by her side immediately, scanning her body, certain that he can hear her heartbeat. A moment of relief when he sees that she's still alive. Without hesitating, he flies her to the closest hospital. "Where are the others?" asks an ER nurse as he takes Lois from the Man of Steel. "Others?" "We heard the explosion. Where are the other injured people?" explains the nurse. "You didn't only rescue this one, did you?" asks someone else, flabbergasted. Superman stalls: He's being confronted with his selfishness and not doing all he could do. He leaves and heads back to the area of the explosion to try to help, but those who are there tell him he's "done enough". Injured at the rejection, he flies away to return to the hospital, this time as the boyfriend, Clark Kent. There, the doctors tell him that they can't really give him much information--privacy of the patient and all that--but that Lois is in a coma. Clark is a bit of a wreck. He feels immense guilt at having been suckerpunched by the robot, he's anxious about Lois, and, when he comes in to work, he is shocked when Perry White accuses him of plagiarizing an award-winning article. At the same time, who else should show up in his life than Lana Lang, his old high school sweetheart. She surprises him at work and asks him out to dinner--which he reluctantly accepts. During the meal, she flirts pretty heavily with him, enough that he feels that she's being inappropriate. "My girlfriend is in a coma," he says, rising from the table. Lana does, too, saying, "Then she won't know about this," and wraps Clark in a tight hug and kisses him full on the mouth. A person in the restaurant snaps a picture on his phone. Clark pushes her away, then says some sort of mumbled, "Good to see you, Lana," before rushing into the night. Angry at all of the injustices that are heaping on him, he heads home to Smallville where he can chat with his mom, Martha. There, he explains how frustrated he is and his mother actually laughs at him. "Sorry, Clark. I don't mean to make you feel worse. It's kind of funny to me that you're finally feeling what we always feel around you: powerlessness." Martha sighs and rubs his shoulder. "Some problems can't be defeated with your fists, sweetheart. You'll pull through, of course. Lois will pull through--you always do. But all the strength in the world isn't enough to turn back time. You'll have to wait." For a man who can move faster than light, this isn't an easy proposition. Needing to blow off some steam, he steps out into the cool Kansas night, staring at the sky. Then he squints. He's seeing something approach. Instantly, he's in his cape and boots, soaring toward the anomaly. At last, something he can do. Just as he's about to break out of the atmosphere, he hears Lois whisper his name. The possibility that she's revived pulls him to a stop. Unsure if he should investigate this anomaly or return to Lois, he hesitates long enough that the spaceship he'd spotted from Kansas can fire at him. A space battle ensues, complete with robotic drones and Superman frying stuff with his heat vision. The thing is, the robots are cutting him--making him bleed, though being in space means that he's receiving the Sun's radiation enough that the wounds don't stick around--but he's still shocked that he's getting physically injured by the attack. At this point, Lois' heartbeat begins to fade--a frequency that he's specifically tuned into for just such an occasion--and he begins to panic. He has to get back to Lois before she dies, but every time he tries to retreat, the robots knock him back. Realizing he needs to outmaneuver them, he tries to fly around the planet, only to be blasted out of the sky by a massive beam from the mothership. Superman wakes up in a crater, dazed and confused. He tries to fly, but finds himself too weak to do anything except for rise up a few feet before crashing to the ground. He has landed in rural China--he can tell because a bunch of confused Chinese farmers are staring at him with shock. Far from home, his powers diminished, Superman now has to figure out how to get home. And, what's worse, he can't hear Lois' heartbeat anymore. … And that's where I'll stop for now, since the essay is gone on too long and I want to do something else with my day. Stay tuned to see if I can finish how I would write a Superman story. === ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Though the year isn't officially over yet, I wanted to do a quick look-back at the titles that I've read or watched or listened to during 2018. It's a fairly comprehensive list--I tried to be diligent in my notetaking--and though it should grow by at least one title this month (I'm rereading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson as I prepare for the fantasy literature Winterim that I'm putting together), this is a pretty thorough overview of what I've read (which includes audiobook format) and watched/played. For the first category, I only counted books; for the second, I included comic books, video games (though Overwatch can't ever really end, so I put it on the list since I've played it so much), and movies/TV series that I've finished. I decided to keep them separate this year so that it would be easier to write this essay. Books (those with the asterisk are podcasts of a sufficient length and cohesion that I consider them book-like):
The X's are simply the marking that I read the title, which my app keeps as a checklist; you can ignore them. Those marked in bold are titles that I recommend, for one reason or another. Everything of Shakespeare, regardless of if I caught it and bolded it, you should read. The world would be a better place if more people read Shakespeare. Some of the books aren't available for the casual, interested reader: Melanie Sees A Ghost (which I think I misspelled the main character's name), Mistfall, and both War Golem and War Golems are all books that, in the first two cases, were written by others and I read/finished them this year, or, in the final two cases, is my own writing. (Technically, Theomancy should be on this list…but I haven't finished writing it, so it doesn't count.) Here's the list for the non-book forms of entertainment (those marked with a degree symbol are movies or TV series; the rest are comics or video games):
Again, I put in bold the stuff that I think that I'm really glad I had time to experience. Every video game on the list is for the PlayStation 4, while some of the comics are trades of different lengths. So Saga Vol 6 is only three or four issues, while Captain Marvel was seven or eight of them. It's still a good list that shows a lot of my interests. It also shows that I'd rather read Shakespeare than watch him (which is weird) and that my movies/video games are much lower brow than what I bother reading.
I find this whole list both encouraging and frustrating. Combined--and counting some of the things that I had on my list but I never finished--I have almost 200 titles of entertainment that I've completed this year. When I phrase it that way, it sounds really shallow of me. Like, don't I have better things to do with my time? And, sometimes, yeah, I really did. I regret watching Wild Wild West and Sky Captain, as both movies were poorly done. (The advantage, I guess, to having lousy movies I've seen is that I've lost, at most, a couple of hours; video games and novels eat up a lot more time, regardless of how good they are.) The amount of effort I've put into some things--playing Overwatch or Bloodborne, for example, which are untraditional in their approach to narrative and, therefore, hard to include on a list like this--isn't necessarily equal to the amount of time I've put into others. But what of that? What is the purpose of entertainment save to entertain? I don't really buy that, though, as I feel that there's a lot more going on in most of the things that I choose to watch. Yes, I'm interested in genre fiction--I'm unapologetic about that--so there's a lot more flashy, spectacle-driven work on this list. But some of what I read/viewed is profoundly important--V for Vendetta and Infinity War come to mind--as being significant commentary about our world and culture. I think I'm a better person for having gone through most of this list. Conclusion On the whole, what do I think of my time? Well, I wish I could have read more. I'm honestly disappointed that I didn't exceed my goal of 100 books more fully. Sure, that falls to about two titles a week, so I was able to get that goal because I listened to some really short books with my boys. Knocking back Encyclopedia Brown and The Obvious Clues or whatever the next title happened to be was something that I could do in the course of two or three trips from home to work. On the other hand, I reread It, as well as the behemoths of Homo Deus, Les Miserables (abridged), Citizens, and a couple of other really hefty tomes. Doing that kind of counterbalances the other parts of my reading diet. The thought of doing a page count instead of a title count has struck me: Then I could count anything--even my reading of Alan Moore's Jerusalem or Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer as what I've read, but not completed, this year--but that gets really tricky when we start throwing in audiobooks or Kindle books that do Kindle location instead of pages. My rough guess I that I read over 10,000 pages this year. I don't know what I would even set for a goal on page number…so, no, I don't think I'll shift it. What should my goal be? Well, I think this time I'll keep it at 100, but see if I can't hit parity between audio and regular books. I can pretty much remember which was which on the list above, but I don't want to count it up. I'm going to shoot for 50 audio titles and 50 normal, then see how I feel at the ashen end of December 2019. I'm curious to see what will strike my fancy in the next dozen months. === ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Yesterday, I didn't get a chance to write an essay because I had to pick between doing the dishes or writing, and the dishes won out. My dad was playing in a concert with Kurt Bestor in Salt Lake, so I had to leave Utah County early enough to survive the traffic. The concert was great, but we didn't get home until after midnight--I decided to skip the daily routine.
Today, I was up early to go to the movies with my friend, his son, my wife, and my three kids--so that we could see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. As soon as that was over, I headed to a nearby elementary school to run through a four hour space center simulator (think of it as larping through Star Trek). It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I did it. To be honest, the week was really packed with lots of things to do, so though I was sad my writer group Christmas party ended up being canceled because of sickness, it was nice to have one less thing to worry about this weekend. Now that these fun events are over, I can focus more on the scheduling insanity that next week entails. Despite having so many options to talk about, I'm going to instead write a spoiler-filled essay on the new Spider-Man movie because it was amazing, spectacular, and sensational--much like the new Spider-Man video game, which has new DLC coming out on the 21st, which is an early Christmas present for me! So, yeah… ….spoilers ahead. I have to put this out there first and foremost: Peter Parker will always be my Spider-Man. That isn't to say I don't like having others; heck, I even like Ben Reilly. There are countless iterations of Spider-Man, but the original, Steve Ditko/Stan Lee combo creation is my favorite. The different film versions, different cartoons, and even different worlds--up to and including the Ultimate Spider-Man universe from which Miles Morales comes--are wonderful and a great addition to the canon. Spider-Gwen is, in particular, a welcome addition to the roster (and the fact that she has such a crucial purpose in the movie is also fantastic). I don't begrudge Miles' role as Spider-Man in his world, and though he isn't my favorite web-head, I don't find it worthwhile to call him an imposter or "not really Spider-Man"…he clearly is, both in the comics and in this movie. Since Into the Spider-Verse takes place in Miles Morales' reality, and he becomes the Spider-Man of that world after Peter Parker dies, the movie works really well as an origin story of Miles. The movie spends a surprisingly long time waiting to get us to the point where Miles has gained his super powers. I personally believe they only managed to pull this off because they were able to immediately drop Spider-Man (the Peter Parker of Miles' reality) into the picture. That is, we got some web-slinging done early on in the film, whetting our appetites for more, yet also allowing us to anticipate without getting anxious. There were a lot of Easter eggs that were dropped in there--to say nothing of the constant Sony product placements--so casually that it would be easy to miss them. The sight of the PlayStation 4 version of Spidey's costume got my boys particularly excited. There's also references to Miguel O'hara and the Spider-Man 2099 continuity, and other fun tidbits. My personal favorite was how Earth-616 was the label of one of the multiverses on the screen, which is the "original" world in the Marvel multiverse where the Ditko/Lee Spider-Man lives. But it wasn't just the Spider-Man story--enjoyable top to bottom, with some excellent, well-timed humor, brilliant deliveries of the entire cast, and exciting action set pieces--that makes Into the Spider-Verse so exceptional: They told an empathetic and powerful story. The interactions between Miles and his dad, Officer Jeff Davis (though I still can't figure out why they named a Black man "Jefferson Davis"), really hit home with me. Both Miles and his dad have a lot in common, and the fact that his dad is a strong influence and presence in his life is something that I found myself wishing I could aspire to. The moment when Jeff is talking to the webbed-up Miles through the dorm door was really powerful to me. Jeff's understanding that he might not be raising Miles correctly, about his own struggles to do right by his son, could easily have come out of my own heart--though I wonder if I could ever say them aloud. My own parenting history is pockmarked with enough cratered mistakes that it'd embarrass the moon, but seeing Davis try to do the right thing was inspirational. The ending monologue of Miles was particularly important, and I wish I could have it in front of me, but it was something along the lines that anyone can be Spider-Man. Some of that is a direct rebuttal against those who hate Morales' character--or any other "diversity-quota"--on the grounds that there can be only one Spider-Man. Not only that, but it was such an open affirmation of the importance that superheroes play in our modern lives. Letting others in--pushing open the doors of access, seeking out and supporting women and people of color creators--is a massive movement in the twenty-first century. Putting Miles up in the spotlight, letting his story receive so much loving attention, was fantastic: That he was willing to share that spotlight and invite everyone else in was even better. The final moment before the main credits started to roll, the filmmakers put a quote from Stan Lee: "That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do, is indeed, without a doubt, a real superhero." The man's iconic glasses were seen next to them--a touching tribute to the comic book legend. The theater, which wasn't particularly full, still had a collection of families. As the words came up on the screen, and we all read them, and all realized why it was so important to have them there, a child's voice from near the front cut through the silence: "So long!" Of course, the kid was saying goodbye to the movie…but the timing couldn't have been more perfect. While I never had great aspirations to go into filmmaking, I really liked movies as a kid. Jurassic Park was probably the first film to really capture my imagination, which came out when I was ten. I would go over to my good friend's house, Steven Aaron, and we'd watch something from his father's expansive Betamax (and, later, VHS) library. We'd watch "Weird" Al Yankovic music videos, episodes of Saturday Night Live, and UHF…also by "Weird" Al, now that I think of it. I first experienced Back to the Future whilst at Steve's house, as well as portions of The Twilight Zone Movie (which, though I closed my eyes during the really scary moment, the goblin on the wing of the airplane was enough to haunt my dreams for years). We sometimes would rent what wasn't on tap, with my brightest memory being of when we decided--and why my parents allowed this, I don't know--we were going to watch the entirety of the Jaws franchise. We biked down to the Allen's grocery store, which was about a mile away, to buy snacks. Taking the videotape out of its Blockbuster (or, depending, the Hollywood Video) case, we'd pop it in and watch the film whilst munching on the goodies.
Many a good day was passed that way. Steve was always, it seems, a film aficionado, no doubt because of experiences like those. When it came to ninth grade, it was time to shift gears: We had a chance to make a film. Or, rather, a video project to go along with our reading of "The Most Dangerous Game", which, if you're unfamiliar with it, is an adventure story in which a guy gets marooned on a deserted island, only to find out that it actually does have an inhabitant: A fellow named Zaroff. The man ends up getting released on the island so that Zaroff has the chance to hunt him. The story was ripe for a hyperactive teenager's imagination, so Steve and I set about--and I want to say with our buddy Mike along for the fun, but I can't remember now--remaking the story but with my superhero action figures. Rainsford, the prey, ended up being Carnage for some reason, and an Arnold Schwarzenegger action figure was Zaroff. Or maybe a Peter Parker figure was Rainsford, and Schwarzenegger turned into Carnage? It's a bit hazy. The point is, we took the idea from the short story and adapted it to our own bizarre point of view, much of which being dictated by what we had on hand. At one point, I wanted to have Carnage scale a castle toy set that we had. In order to do this, we did some stop/go animation--a technique I'd learned from a different friend--wherein Carnage slowly worked his way toward, then up, the castle wall. When it came to having Carnage actually clamber up the outside, however, we couldn't get the toy to stay in place long enough to take the shot. So for a frame or two, you can see me trying to hide behind the castle playset while holding onto Carnage so that he could "climb" the exterior. Another shot involved the demise of Zaroff, who, in the short story, gets stabbed by a cleverly laid trap (if I remember correctly…I'm going off dim memories of one evening in 1997 and a quick scan of the short story in 2018, done enough to catch some names). We wanted to do the same, so I got a small pump ready. However, the Aarons did not, that particular night, have any red food coloring. We had to use green, which we mixed with some water so that we could squirt it out of the pump. Since we didn't want to make a mess, we filmed the shot of Zaroff getting stabbed and bleeding gruesomely in the Aarons' kitchen sink. All told, it was one of the more enjoyable--and, clearly, memorable--school projects that I did. We turned in the project--recorded from our camcorder onto a blank VHS tape, then played via the school's VCR/TV combo--and, so far as I recall…didn't, like…fail it or anything. I think we got good marks. The point is, I think, that both Steve and I got a taste of the format. For me, it's slipped into a consistent appreciation--though not necessarily participation--in film as an artform and storytelling device. For Steve, he went on to graduate from directorial school. But more than it providing a type of trajectory for our lives, I remember those days--and we had many other days where we passed countless hours trying to ad hoc a story as we filmed--with a great deal of fondness. We were being expressive, focused, and entertaining ourselves, all attributes that make for worthwhile childhood memories, I would say. How much footage remains is anyone's guess. I know that a different movie we made one night about a father and son's relationship becoming really fractured because the son wouldn't eat cookies, as the dad wanted. It's…quite the blast from the past. (If you're friends with me on Facebook, I went ahead and shared the post from Steve that has the video in it. You can poke around and try to find it that way, if you'd like.) Aside from this video, I don't think any of my old stuff survives. That's both a relief (nothing is quite as embarrassing as seeing one's youngest work) and a sadness, as I can't share more of my past with my own kids. In fact, I pulled my three boys into my office and forced them to watch "The Cookie Movie" with me, if only so that they had a piece of my childhood. I don't really have a strong, profound conclusion on this. It's more of an exercise in reminiscing, a chance to stop for a few minutes and reflect on the blessing that was a childhood, graced with opportunity, friendship, and enough parental non-intervention as to let us make such insanity. And maybe that's enough of a moral, anyway. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
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