The wonder-beautiful month of May has swept on by, in a mere blink of the culturological eye. And no wonder, given the steady stream of blockbusters that seeped out of Hollywood’s underclothing every weekend. Watching movies is a bit like watching baseball: after the first month of the season, one is tempted to draw major conclusions and determine how the whole season is going to play out, but must bide ones time as well, as so much is certain to change as the weeks progress. But it was a pretty good month for movies, all things considered (well, not all things… I really only went out to like three movies (I would’ve seen Up, but I was out of town over the weekend, and my friends all went to see it without me, and since I more or less make it a rule to never go to movies by myself, I probably won’t see it until its eventual DVD release)), and to me, the movie the really tied the month together, and gives the best sense of what the summer might hold is Terminator: Salvation.
Star Trek was great, Wolverine pretty much blew (apologies, as usual, to Nick, for my failing to find its stalwart action movie tropes to be as exciting and enjoyable as I should have), and Terminator falls somewhere in the middle. Where I was hesitant to compare Star Trek and Wolverine, I feel the opposite impulse between the latter and Terminator. Mostly ‘cause they’re both more or less straight-up sci-fi/action flicks, and both come from similar pedigrees (having two quite good movies been made in their franchises with questionable third movies—though T-3 was way way better than X-Men 3). Wolverine riding his motorcycle out of an exploding barn? Meh. T-800 jumping off an exploding bridge holding an axe and using that axe to climb onto a giant flying robot? Awesome!
Beyond the explosions-and-leaping comparison, the obvious choice to put against each other are the special effects; it’s very easy to say “Terminator looked much better, and was therefore the better movie.” In fact, it’s one of those arenas where I have the most trouble getting an objective sense of my own taste. Ideally, I wouldn’t really care one way or the other about the look of the movie, and gauge it more for its editing/action/pacing, but its hard to ignore the fact that Wolverine looked so cheap and careless, whereas Terminator (and Star Trek, for the matter) had much bigger budgets (though also, arguably, more of a need for those effects) for the computer graphics. But sci-fi is one of those genres where I think it does matter. Look at Star Wars: what was it that separated those first three Star Wars movies from the pack of all the rest of the sci-fi in the ‘70s? It’s set-design, specifically the darkness of its sets (this isn’t necessarily something that I feel like I can actually fully argue, but it’s been my sense for a long time that the only reason Star Wars was ever popular is because of the darkness of its sets). Terminator 2? The Matrix? Special effects are what cement their place in action/sci-fi movie history. Total Recall sits at the absolute pinnacle of the greatness of pre-CGI special effects. Tron. Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain will eventually have massive cult status for its non-computer-generated sci-fi backdrops. Jurassic Park. Even Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie which exists in its own special corner of science fiction (I think its one of the best spaceship movies ever made), was recognized for its special effects—it was the “ultimate trip”.
Much rarer is the sci-fi movie known for its awesomeness without its effects. Robo-Cop is the one movie that springs to mind. Maybe Tremors. All the Star Trek movies seem to skirt the issue pretty well (despite whatever amount of mockery of the original TV show). And there are certainly movies that had great effects but sucked so much that it didn’t matter (though I’m drawing a blank here at the moment). So if Wolverine’s claws hadn’t looked so shitty, would it have been a better movie? It might have been—it may well at least have been way more enjoyable. But its main problem lies deeper than its half-assed visual sense: Wolverine utterly lacked ambition in its film making. Not that Terminator: Salvation set any records for mind-blowingly good ideas, but there was at least sense through all of its set-pieces that it knew it was going up against classics of the genre in its forebears, so had to provide some novelty to it. Compared to Terminator, Wolverine seems more like a B-movie than a blockbuster.
Culturology Summer of Booklove Book Club #2: A Scanner Darkly
As soon as I started reading this book, I realized that I should have picked a different Philip K. Dick book than this one. Although it certainly exemplifies a major piece of the PKD puzzle, its way more of a drug novel than real sci-fi. During the passages of the book where its just junkies hanging out and rapping with each other, it might as well be taking place in the mid-70s, rather than the imaginary 1997 of its fictional future. So I apologize for that; but there are still some interesting things to talk about here.
Philip K. Dick is known, of course, for his long-standing popularity as a writer whose books or stories are prime material for movie making. Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, and many more were all based on PKD material. Part of the reason I picked A Scanner Darkly was because Linklater made a movie version of it a couple of years ago which I haven’t seen yet, and figured that at some point this summer I can spend some quality blog-time bitching about it (Linklater being about the least interesting (and most annoying) of the current set of young American filmmakers). But after reading the book, I’m not even sure that I would care to defend it against even a crappy film adaptation.
Its basic premise is pretty cool. In the future, drugs will be more powerful and more harmful than what they were, drug manufacturers will be more powerful as well, and the police will be more impotent than ever in stopping the trade. So Fred ends up narcing, and using his fair share of Substance D, which causes his brain to split in half (a trendy idea for a while there, back in the sci-fi day; the other must-read of split brain sci-fi being Stanislaw Lem’s Peace on Earth), and is commanded to narc on himself as Bob Arctor. Bob/Fred is a sad character. And given PKD’s own history of drug abuse (apparently it was something like a massive acid trip/schizophrenic episode which launched him into the last phase of his novel writing, which was massively paranoid and infused with Gnostic religious leanings (see the VALIS trilogy, for instance)), I struggled in reading it to not just associate Bob/Fred with some vision of the actual Philip K. Dick. PKD also, apparently, for a while, had decided that the FBI was watching him, so started mailing them letters where he would narc on himself, so the paranoia that soaks through Scanner perhaps works so effectively because its writer really believed in it.
The idea of the drug manufacturer’s turning addicts into zombies in order to add them to their own numbers is appealing too, though it’s hard to see any kind of real-life analogue to it. It’s interesting to me, since we only get that information at the tail end of the book, but it’s really a scheme worthy of a mastermind criminal’s epic climactic “I did it” speech. I do enjoy paranoid fiction—Pynchon’s novels are all great for it—the sense that the world is built up of these massive schemes that the average person has no control over. The two basic ways to pay off paranoia plots are obvious enough: either someone is pulling all the strings, or no one is. I personally lean towards the no-mastermind plot resolution, but I think A Scanner Darkly’s ties up in a satisfactory way; if the drugs make you paranoid, it probably does work better for there to turn out to actual be a massive, carefully controlled scheme working against you.
Next Week: Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
For July 6th: Sharp Teeth
For August 3rd: Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road
hm. after the first read, i wanted to agree with your ordering, ST>T4>Wolvie, but upon further consideration, i don't think i can.
T4 > Wolverine - I'll buy that - but only because I had such low expectations for T4 to begin with. Foolhardy as it may have been, I was expecting a lot more from Wolverine. On a relative scale, the Terminator franchise will suffer a lot less than XMEN. However, whereas Terminator is nearing the end of the line, The Marvel's movie strategy is just hitting its stride. In absolute terms, both movies were garbage pail.
You focused on SFX - and you even invoked Star Wars and Wolverine's shitty claws. I think that is important - and I will quote Nick here, 'After Star Wars, there really is no excuse for bad SFX'. I wholeheartedly concur with that. I mean, all things being equal (read: budget), why aren't all movie SFX on par with each other? I know there are other things that go into the mix and of course SFX aren't everything, but were I a studio executive I'd probably get a lot of mileage out of that line.
and the book club - weren't we going to do Chabon's Mysteries of Pittsburgh, or did I make that up?
i agree that Wolverine was a B-movie through and through. it just had a big budget, which places it into that weird space between B-movie and blockbuster. and as a blockbuster, it fails almost every litmus test for quality. as a B-movie, however, i think it passes nearly every test with flying colors. i tend to approach almost every movie ready to enjoy it as a B-movie, and in that sense, Wolvie delivered.
to take the Wolverine debate one step further, i think that the reason the movie didn't peak its potential as a blockbuster is simply because the character hasn't been around long enough. if you look at the comic book superheroes who have had successful forays into film, you'll notice that almost every single one of them has about 40 plus years under their belt and they're still adding stories to the ongoing narrative. i think Wolverine needs to add some of those extra layers to his mythos in the comics first. by the time someone relaunches Wolvie in movies in 10 to 20 years, the film has greater potential to have more solid blockbuster storytelling and psychology - because there will be better material to pull from that has truly stood the test of time.
still, i enjoyed the hell out of the Wolvie movie. it wasn't perfect, but i thought it was really fun.
Pete, you ever see Timecop? i watched it this weekend and LOVED it. the ending is a bit of a cop out (as well as a time travel conundrum) but the movie still holds up. and there are barely any FX in it. mostly "time warping" where the background becomes rippled, and one climactic scene that only lasts for a few seconds. the sets, however, do leave much to be desired.
AND A Scanner Darkly. oh how i loathe that book. in fact, i already placed one of my two copies on Amazon and sold it last night. i had to buy two copies because i lost it last week and i had promised myself i would finish it in time for today.
it was just awful. it was a heavy-handed, whiny book about the symbiotic relationship between crime and law enforcement, filtered through the lens of drug use. the characters were annoying and the situations lacked excitement. the worst part was the author's note at the end about the druggies of the sixties who were punished too harshly for experimenting. i was also irritated with Dick's hangup on ethnicity. whenever a non-white character entered the story, every mention of the them was preceded by "black" or "colored" or "Chinese." he even did this in consecutive sentences when it was completely unnecessary.
overall, i'm glad i read it. but it was a painful experience, and, in my opinion, a poorly written book.
and Neal, like i told Pete before, Marvel didn't make the Wolverine movie. that was Fox. this film was not part of their movie strategy. they only have the rights to the Avengers stuff right now.
Definitely made up us doing Mysteries. I don't like that book at all. If you read it, I'll be happy to tell you why I think it sucks, but Gentlemen of the Road will be a better endeavor and pay off more. Given that I think all of Chabon's novels besides Mysteries of Pittsburgh are great, I have no problems disliking the boring and annoying first novel.
As for the SFX, like I say, I'm kind of surprised at myself for deciding on focusing on them, but they do end up having a lot to do with what makes Wolverine look so completely half-assed. But in terms of expectations, everyone was expecting T4 to look good--and it does (and has high quality sound design to match its look)--but expecting the story and everything else to suck, so when T4 didn't totally blow it became a pleasant surprise. The first two X-Men movies also looked very good, so there was a similar bar set for visual FX within franchise that Wolverine didn't even bother trying to match, which is what makes it so frustrating.
I haven't seen Timecop. But I will now.
Wolvie-as-a-B-movie also seems to be leading towards this problem with expectations. Since expecting a B-movie is way way different from expecting a blockbuster. And big movies that have tried to cop the B-movie thing tend to fail, at least from a large audience perspective. Starship Troopers for instance, has a pretty devoted following at this point, amongst college-educated hipster types that figure out its B-movie impulses, but when it first came out it fell flat as hell (I do think its good, but mostly because that way I can give Verhoeven credit for three sci-fi masterpieces, which is a better number than just two).
The large budget B-movie is the worst kind, because its large budget is still smaller than a blockbuster budget; it's just a studio making a movie as cheaply as possible (or nearly so). I'd guess that Wolverine cost less than half as much as Terminator. And it shows.
Yeah, like I said Nick, I feel about going with A Scanner Darkly,, but it is one of Dick's more popular novels. Drugs are bad, m'kay? I'm trying to think which of his novels would have been better to go with. Maybe Radio Free Albemuth. Or Ubik. Oh well.
You should like Gentlemen of the Road; its short and an action novel.
Philip K Dick writes like a dick in A Scanner Darkly. there, i said it. the obvious pun everyone was thinking of.
back to the FX - i thought X-Men 1 looked pretty bad, FX-wise. but the script and actors were so good that i think it was easy to gloss over. the sets in X1 were amazing, though, in my opinion. the sets in Wolvie were just whatever. i actually think this set design thing is fascinating. it never occurred to me before! i dunno man maybe it's cause you and Neal know Wolvie mostly from the movies but he's always had mostly B-movie adventures in the comics. not bad, mind you, but B-movie. so my expectations were probably different in that sense.
AudioShocker Shoutouts!
you know what is funny? i just started rewatching starship troopers after writing my comment.
I also love Chabon and dislike Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Holy shit, did Pete and I just agree on something?
i made it about halfway through and gave up. last time i pick up a book because of the title.
Mark this for the records, that Kirsten and I agreed on something. Have you read The Final Solution or Gentlemen of the Road, Kirsten?
Yeah, the set design thing is super interesting. I really think that's the case with Star Wars, even more than just its effects overall. A lot of it, I think has to do with darkness, or managing light and dark. This is why so many "art film" classics are in black and white--because there's much more concern for the overall look of the film, and b/w has way more contrast than color. Think of all the classic German expressionist films--especially "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (easily one of the best films ever made), and then the way that the Germans influenced Billy Wilder when he shot Double Indemnity and launched film noir in Hollywood--again, so much work is done by the sets (and especially the lighting); I think at the time, Double Indemnity was the darkest studio movie ever shot. Kubrick's movies too were all so carefully designed in their look.
I just don't know if there can be such a thing as a blockbuster B-movie. I'll have to keep thinking about it.