A couple of interesting things on That 70s Show. One is that they are back in 1979. The credits have always included a license plate with a year sticker on it. Previous episodes this season have left the year sticker blank leading some to believe that the show already made it into the 1980s. The 79 sticker put that rumor to rest.
More interesting, Jackie mentioned that her TV show was interrupted by a news special on "some hostage crisis." The big hostage crisis, the kidnapping of the US embassy staff by Iranians, started Nov. 4, 1979.
Not that this matters much. Without the character of Eric and Kelso the show suck and will not be renewed. The only question is if the last episode will take place Dec. 31, 1979.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Friday, January 13, 2006
Eko & Charlie
A little Lost-blogging.
This week's episode was a masterful example of misdirection, almost as good as the first Locke episode. It appeared that the episode was about Mr. Eko. After all, the flashback was about him. He was in nearly every scene. It wasn't until the last shot that we realized that it was really a Charlie episode.
Major spoilers ahead.
The events as we see them are:
Claire tells Eko that Charlie must be religious because he carries a statue of the Virgin Mary with him everywhere. Eko breaks it open showing that it contains heroin.
Charlie is fishing and singing when Eko approaches him and demands that Charlie show him where the statue came from. Charlie tries to put it off but Eko is insistent.
Claire confronts Charlie about the heroin. Charlie says that he was just holding on to it to "feel safe", a common action among recovering addicts. To show his sincerity, he throws away the drugs.
At first Charlie tells a straight lie. He points to a broad tree and says that it is where he found the statue. Eko is not fooled.
Next Charlie says that he is lost. This is reasonable considering that he was led to the plane the first time. Eko makes him climb a tree to get his bearings. While Charlie is in the tree the monster appears as a cloud of smoke. Eko faces it down. Charlie tells him that
he spotted the plane and leads Eko to it.
While Eko is burning the plane we see Charlie pick up another drug-filed statue. Later, after Claire has thrown him out, we see him burying it. Is he getting rid of it out of shame? Nope, he's adding it to a stash.
Now that we know that he has a stash we can see what was actually happening.
Claire was wrong. Charlie wasn't carrying a statue around with him. He was transporting several statues from the plane to his cache.
Charlie was probably acting so happy and singing because he had taken a hit earlier.
When he tried to put Eko off, he meant to sneak back to the plane and gather as many statues as he could.
It was easy for him to throw away the drugs in front of Claire. He had more.
He lied about where he found the drugs and being lost in order to hide his source. Eko facing off the monster unnerved Charlie so much that he stopped playing games.
Claire was right to throw him out. A drug user cannot be trusted. Charlie was already lying to people.
We got all of that about Charlie. In contrast, everything we learned about Eko came from the flashback.
A few other thoughts:
We already knew of five people with violent background but Eko is the worst of them. Even Sayid feels remorse but we saw Eko slit peoples' throats without blinking. When he killed one of the Others, he took a 40 day vow of silence but showed no remorse. He does show love.
Does the monster attack based on fear? Locke once faced it but when he tried a second time it dragged him into a pit. Did he have a moment's fear?
The Apple II cannot start communications but it can respond to someone else. Probably it is acting as a dumb terminal.
When Jack saw the screen it was blank, even through Michael had been communicating with Walt. Did Michael simply hit the power switch while we weren't looking?
This week's episode was a masterful example of misdirection, almost as good as the first Locke episode. It appeared that the episode was about Mr. Eko. After all, the flashback was about him. He was in nearly every scene. It wasn't until the last shot that we realized that it was really a Charlie episode.
Major spoilers ahead.
The events as we see them are:
Claire tells Eko that Charlie must be religious because he carries a statue of the Virgin Mary with him everywhere. Eko breaks it open showing that it contains heroin.
Charlie is fishing and singing when Eko approaches him and demands that Charlie show him where the statue came from. Charlie tries to put it off but Eko is insistent.
Claire confronts Charlie about the heroin. Charlie says that he was just holding on to it to "feel safe", a common action among recovering addicts. To show his sincerity, he throws away the drugs.
At first Charlie tells a straight lie. He points to a broad tree and says that it is where he found the statue. Eko is not fooled.
Next Charlie says that he is lost. This is reasonable considering that he was led to the plane the first time. Eko makes him climb a tree to get his bearings. While Charlie is in the tree the monster appears as a cloud of smoke. Eko faces it down. Charlie tells him that
he spotted the plane and leads Eko to it.
While Eko is burning the plane we see Charlie pick up another drug-filed statue. Later, after Claire has thrown him out, we see him burying it. Is he getting rid of it out of shame? Nope, he's adding it to a stash.
Now that we know that he has a stash we can see what was actually happening.
Claire was wrong. Charlie wasn't carrying a statue around with him. He was transporting several statues from the plane to his cache.
Charlie was probably acting so happy and singing because he had taken a hit earlier.
When he tried to put Eko off, he meant to sneak back to the plane and gather as many statues as he could.
It was easy for him to throw away the drugs in front of Claire. He had more.
He lied about where he found the drugs and being lost in order to hide his source. Eko facing off the monster unnerved Charlie so much that he stopped playing games.
Claire was right to throw him out. A drug user cannot be trusted. Charlie was already lying to people.
We got all of that about Charlie. In contrast, everything we learned about Eko came from the flashback.
A few other thoughts:
We already knew of five people with violent background but Eko is the worst of them. Even Sayid feels remorse but we saw Eko slit peoples' throats without blinking. When he killed one of the Others, he took a 40 day vow of silence but showed no remorse. He does show love.
Does the monster attack based on fear? Locke once faced it but when he tried a second time it dragged him into a pit. Did he have a moment's fear?
The Apple II cannot start communications but it can respond to someone else. Probably it is acting as a dumb terminal.
When Jack saw the screen it was blank, even through Michael had been communicating with Walt. Did Michael simply hit the power switch while we weren't looking?
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Spider-Man's Worst Moments
Spider-Man has had a long and generally good run but there have been some points that should be dropped into a black hole. Here are a some of them:
The death of Gwen Stacy. When Stan Lee left the strip and Gerry Conway took over it was felt that Peter and Gwen's relationship had stagnated. The solution - kill Gwen and replace her with a stagnant relationship with Mary Jane Watson. Shock value is not a substitute for good writing.
The clones. The issue after Gwen died, Conway killed off Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin. Not long after that a skinny green character called the Jackal started trying to kill Spidey. This turned out to be Peter's only named college teacher, Professor Warren. Warren produced clones of Peter and Gwen. The Peter clone was killed and the Gwen clone left.
The death of the Hobgoblin. In the 1980s, Roger Stern decided to bring back some of the excitement of the Green Goblin. The Goblin appeared for years before we found out who he was. Stern had a plotline where someone found a stash of Goblin equipment and used it to become the Hobgoblin. Stern kept this new villain's identity a secret, even from other writers. He actually was thinking of a fashion designer Mary Jane was working for but later writers planted clues that the Hobgoblin was Ned Leeds. Then, Leeds turned up dead, killed during a German spy plot. They had to have an issue where a new Hobgoblin explained that he had assassinated Leeds for the costume. Much later Stern wrote a limited series wrapping up the plot.
The return of the clones. The presumed-dead spider-clone returned. Then a clone of the Jackal returned. Then hordes of clones appeared. Peter decided that he was the clone and retired. His replacement turned out to be the clone and Peter came back. Like a copy of a copy, the clone plotline just got worse.
Aunt May marrying Doc Ock. In the first Spider-Man annual, Peter's girl friend, Betty Brant, and Aunt May were captured by some of Spider-Man's enemies as bait. ay never quite figured out what was going on and was impressed with the nice, cultured Doc Ock. Gerry Conway expanded on this, first having Ock take a room as May's boarder then propose. It turned out that she had inherited a Canadian breeder-reactor that Ock wanted access to.
The death of Aunt May. Marv Wolfman invigorated the strip in the late 1970s but, as part of this revival, he killed Aunt May. I doubt that anyone bought it. It was an anti-climax when she reappeared, a prisoner of the man who had killed Uncle Ben.
The return of the Green Goblin. At the end of the clone plotline it turned out that Norman Osborn had not died. He had just gone to Europe. He also got a lot richer and more powerful than previously shown. This violated one of Stan Lee's basic rules about death - if you see a body then he's really dead. The premise was bad. The execution was bad. I stopped reading the strip.
The second death of Aunt May. Once again, it didn't take. Don't kill a character unless you mean it. This was part of the return-of-Osborn plotline. Notice how these bad plots sort of build on each other.
The death of Mary Jane. Somewhere in the return-of-Osborn plotline, Mary Jane decided that she couldn't take being married to a superhero. When Peter kept doing heroics she left him. Not long after Peter started talking about how she must be dead. Why? There was no body. The real reason was that editors decided that a single Spider-Man was more interesting than one who was married. After the first movie came out, they had to bring Mary Jane back.
The death of Gwen Stacy. When Stan Lee left the strip and Gerry Conway took over it was felt that Peter and Gwen's relationship had stagnated. The solution - kill Gwen and replace her with a stagnant relationship with Mary Jane Watson. Shock value is not a substitute for good writing.
The clones. The issue after Gwen died, Conway killed off Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin. Not long after that a skinny green character called the Jackal started trying to kill Spidey. This turned out to be Peter's only named college teacher, Professor Warren. Warren produced clones of Peter and Gwen. The Peter clone was killed and the Gwen clone left.
The death of the Hobgoblin. In the 1980s, Roger Stern decided to bring back some of the excitement of the Green Goblin. The Goblin appeared for years before we found out who he was. Stern had a plotline where someone found a stash of Goblin equipment and used it to become the Hobgoblin. Stern kept this new villain's identity a secret, even from other writers. He actually was thinking of a fashion designer Mary Jane was working for but later writers planted clues that the Hobgoblin was Ned Leeds. Then, Leeds turned up dead, killed during a German spy plot. They had to have an issue where a new Hobgoblin explained that he had assassinated Leeds for the costume. Much later Stern wrote a limited series wrapping up the plot.
The return of the clones. The presumed-dead spider-clone returned. Then a clone of the Jackal returned. Then hordes of clones appeared. Peter decided that he was the clone and retired. His replacement turned out to be the clone and Peter came back. Like a copy of a copy, the clone plotline just got worse.
Aunt May marrying Doc Ock. In the first Spider-Man annual, Peter's girl friend, Betty Brant, and Aunt May were captured by some of Spider-Man's enemies as bait. ay never quite figured out what was going on and was impressed with the nice, cultured Doc Ock. Gerry Conway expanded on this, first having Ock take a room as May's boarder then propose. It turned out that she had inherited a Canadian breeder-reactor that Ock wanted access to.
The death of Aunt May. Marv Wolfman invigorated the strip in the late 1970s but, as part of this revival, he killed Aunt May. I doubt that anyone bought it. It was an anti-climax when she reappeared, a prisoner of the man who had killed Uncle Ben.
The return of the Green Goblin. At the end of the clone plotline it turned out that Norman Osborn had not died. He had just gone to Europe. He also got a lot richer and more powerful than previously shown. This violated one of Stan Lee's basic rules about death - if you see a body then he's really dead. The premise was bad. The execution was bad. I stopped reading the strip.
The second death of Aunt May. Once again, it didn't take. Don't kill a character unless you mean it. This was part of the return-of-Osborn plotline. Notice how these bad plots sort of build on each other.
The death of Mary Jane. Somewhere in the return-of-Osborn plotline, Mary Jane decided that she couldn't take being married to a superhero. When Peter kept doing heroics she left him. Not long after Peter started talking about how she must be dead. Why? There was no body. The real reason was that editors decided that a single Spider-Man was more interesting than one who was married. After the first movie came out, they had to bring Mary Jane back.
Friday, January 06, 2006
Bad Year for Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder is mainly known for three movies - The Producers, Young Frankenstein, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (plus two movies where he played second bananna to black stars - Blazing Saddles and the Silver Streak). Two of those movies were remade in 2005. In both cases the production values and expectations were much higher.
I just saw the new Producers last week and the original Willy Wonka last night which gives me some insights on Wilder's career.
Anyone who has seen much of Wilder knows that he is not a great actor. anyone who has seen The World's Greatest Lover knows that Wilder can be really awful.
Watching Willy Wonka I was noticed that the character was not really going anywhere. In the remake, Johnny Depp plays Willy as someone obcessed with making chocolate but who is afraid of people in general and children specifically. Wilder just plays that character as a Gene Wilder character.
I first saw The Producers after seeing Blazing Saddles and I was dissapointed. It seemed like it should have been funnier. It was like a Shakespearian commedy = Wilder and Zero Mostel were doing things that should have been funny but most of the laughs just weren't there. The remake fixes that. The plot has been revised a bit and musical numbers added. The acting and staging are still pretty close to the stage version which helps a lot. Some things will get a laugh on the stage but not on the screen. I saw one critic complain that they hadn't "calibrated the performances up" for the big screen but I disagree. That would have made the movie overblown instead of funny.
Both Johnny Depp and Mathew Broderick are real actors, able to play completely different characters. This just points up the problems in Gene Wilder's version even more.
Good thing no one has talked about remaking Young Frankenstein.
I just saw the new Producers last week and the original Willy Wonka last night which gives me some insights on Wilder's career.
Anyone who has seen much of Wilder knows that he is not a great actor. anyone who has seen The World's Greatest Lover knows that Wilder can be really awful.
Watching Willy Wonka I was noticed that the character was not really going anywhere. In the remake, Johnny Depp plays Willy as someone obcessed with making chocolate but who is afraid of people in general and children specifically. Wilder just plays that character as a Gene Wilder character.
I first saw The Producers after seeing Blazing Saddles and I was dissapointed. It seemed like it should have been funnier. It was like a Shakespearian commedy = Wilder and Zero Mostel were doing things that should have been funny but most of the laughs just weren't there. The remake fixes that. The plot has been revised a bit and musical numbers added. The acting and staging are still pretty close to the stage version which helps a lot. Some things will get a laugh on the stage but not on the screen. I saw one critic complain that they hadn't "calibrated the performances up" for the big screen but I disagree. That would have made the movie overblown instead of funny.
Both Johnny Depp and Mathew Broderick are real actors, able to play completely different characters. This just points up the problems in Gene Wilder's version even more.
Good thing no one has talked about remaking Young Frankenstein.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Kong vs Kong
How does the new Kong stack up against the original? Peter Jackson make a lot of choices when He made his remake. Some worked, some are questionable.
First an aside - comparisons between Kong and Lord of the Rings box office are dumb. Lord of the Rings was the first live-action adaptation of the 20th century's most popular novel. Kong is a movie from the 1930s that has been reshowed multiple times. It was remade in 1977 plus the Japanese gave the character a good going over in the 1960s. There was even a Kong cartoon show on Saturday morning. LoTR had a lot of pent-up demand. Any demand for Kong came from Jackson's treatment of LoTR. Jackson himself was fairly obscure prior to LoTR. Given all that, Kong has done pretty well but was unlikely to equal LoTR.
Notice that no one bothered to compare Rent with Chris Columbus's Harry Potter box office.
Back to Kong.
They could probably have cut an hour out of the remake and we would never notice. It would still be longer than the original with deeper characters. This could be the first director's cut DVD with less footage than the screen version (but I doubt it).
In the original, Kong was a giant ape. In the remake he is a giant gorilla. I liked the ape better. But using an unknown species of ape, they could give Kong what ever characteristics they wanted.
The modern Kong moves and acts like a gorilla.
It's a lot easier to sympathize with the ape version. He looks a bit more human. The scene of modern Kong shaking Ann while looking the other way must have been based on modern gorilla behavior but it reminds up how inhuman Kong is.
A book on the natural history of Skull Island shows a Kong who looks much more like the original. I'm betting that his look changed during production.
In the original we never find out what Kong does with his sacrifices. In the modern one we find that he plays with them until he gets tired of them then he drops them into a pit to die. No wonder the Fay Wray version screamed a lot.
In the original the two don't bond. Kong is still stripping Ann's clothing and sniffing it a few minutes before she escapes. She has good reason to be afraid. We aren't sure why Kong is so interested in her but he got her scent on the island.
In the remake we know that he liked her vaudeville act. We don't know why she bonds with him. Was it the shared sunset? The fact that he saved her from the T-rex pack? The original Kong saved Ann but it was probably more territorial than caring.
I could have done without the insect pit. It added nothing to the plotline and it went on too long.
The remake added some new characters but they died or vanished from the plot when Kong was captured. They could be cut an no one would notice.
Upping the fight from one T-rex to three was fine but then they made it a three-part fight - on top of the cliff, in the vines, and at the base of the cliff. This was excessive.
Why did the T-rexes want Ann so badly? They were snapping at her while she was in Kong's fist.
Ann trying to save Kong on the Empire State Building seemed like it was straight from the 1977 version. That is not a good thing.
In the original, Denham was a straight-shooter but things went bad. In the remake he was a walking disaster area.
The cast in the remake was really good.
Some movies look better in black and white. Kong looks better in color. Because of the rear projection used for the special effects the original was lots of shades of grey. The remake is gorgeous.
First an aside - comparisons between Kong and Lord of the Rings box office are dumb. Lord of the Rings was the first live-action adaptation of the 20th century's most popular novel. Kong is a movie from the 1930s that has been reshowed multiple times. It was remade in 1977 plus the Japanese gave the character a good going over in the 1960s. There was even a Kong cartoon show on Saturday morning. LoTR had a lot of pent-up demand. Any demand for Kong came from Jackson's treatment of LoTR. Jackson himself was fairly obscure prior to LoTR. Given all that, Kong has done pretty well but was unlikely to equal LoTR.
Notice that no one bothered to compare Rent with Chris Columbus's Harry Potter box office.
Back to Kong.
They could probably have cut an hour out of the remake and we would never notice. It would still be longer than the original with deeper characters. This could be the first director's cut DVD with less footage than the screen version (but I doubt it).
In the original, Kong was a giant ape. In the remake he is a giant gorilla. I liked the ape better. But using an unknown species of ape, they could give Kong what ever characteristics they wanted.
The modern Kong moves and acts like a gorilla.
It's a lot easier to sympathize with the ape version. He looks a bit more human. The scene of modern Kong shaking Ann while looking the other way must have been based on modern gorilla behavior but it reminds up how inhuman Kong is.
A book on the natural history of Skull Island shows a Kong who looks much more like the original. I'm betting that his look changed during production.
In the original we never find out what Kong does with his sacrifices. In the modern one we find that he plays with them until he gets tired of them then he drops them into a pit to die. No wonder the Fay Wray version screamed a lot.
In the original the two don't bond. Kong is still stripping Ann's clothing and sniffing it a few minutes before she escapes. She has good reason to be afraid. We aren't sure why Kong is so interested in her but he got her scent on the island.
In the remake we know that he liked her vaudeville act. We don't know why she bonds with him. Was it the shared sunset? The fact that he saved her from the T-rex pack? The original Kong saved Ann but it was probably more territorial than caring.
I could have done without the insect pit. It added nothing to the plotline and it went on too long.
The remake added some new characters but they died or vanished from the plot when Kong was captured. They could be cut an no one would notice.
Upping the fight from one T-rex to three was fine but then they made it a three-part fight - on top of the cliff, in the vines, and at the base of the cliff. This was excessive.
Why did the T-rexes want Ann so badly? They were snapping at her while she was in Kong's fist.
Ann trying to save Kong on the Empire State Building seemed like it was straight from the 1977 version. That is not a good thing.
In the original, Denham was a straight-shooter but things went bad. In the remake he was a walking disaster area.
The cast in the remake was really good.
Some movies look better in black and white. Kong looks better in color. Because of the rear projection used for the special effects the original was lots of shades of grey. The remake is gorgeous.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
What Happened to the Boxoffice?
Every week we see another story about how box office attendance is down from last year. No one seems to have a clue why.
I do and it's rather obvious. People are playing more computer games so they don't have the time or money left for as many movies.
This happened a few years ago with music. CD sales dropped. The recording executives insisted that it was the Napster Effect, even though the first few years that Napster was in business, CD sales went up.
If they thought about it, they would have expected the rise in sales. Every year the recording companies spend millions of dollars promoting new music. This includes paying stations to play new songs (this is legal as long as the station gets the payoff instead of the DJ). If you hear a song often enough it becomes familiar and you want to buy it. Napster did the same thing for the recording companies and it did it for free. Yes, you could get a hold of new music for free, but it was likely to have been ripped at a low bit-rate. People who really liked the music bought the CD for the better quality audio.
despite a lot of whining, the recording companies were doing great. Then they got hit by a broadside. DVDs suddenly caught on and three new gaming systems were introduced. On top of that, CD singles were discontinued and the price of new CDs went up.
It is an iron law of economics that there are only so many entertainment dollars available. Recording executives don't think of themselves as competing with movies and games but they do. Once your money is gone, it's gone so you have to prioritize your purchases.
It's been happening again. Shared universe games like World of Warcraft are very popular. New game platforms are out. Plus new games are being released for all game platforms and many of these are movie tie-ins. This directly affects the boxoffice because teenagers get to choose between going to see a movie again or playing a game based on the movie. If you are playing Kong you are not sitting in the theater and you spent enough money to go see Kong again (or to see another movie) 5-6 times.
On top of that, DVDs are cutting into theatrical revenues. In order to save on advertising, they have pushed the time between theatrical and DVD closer together. The hops is that you will remember the publicity campaign from the theaters when the DVD comes out. Some movies are now out on DVD before they are out of second run - around three months for a B-movie.
This has happened before. When radio started playing records they thought that it would be the end of recording. They thought the same thing when it became easy to record music off of the radio. TV and the VCR would doom studios.
With all of these there have been adjustments. Radio turned out to be a medium for selling records. Studios produce TV shows. VCR and DVD sales can make the difference between profit and loss. Licensing fees from games are now big business.
Theaters have been hurt. 70 and 80 years ago it was an even to go to a theater and they were big opulent places. They got smaller and plainer until the 1990s when larger screens and more comfortable seating became a selling point.
There's no turning back, though. Things change. Movie audiences continue to move on to other forms of entertainment.
I do and it's rather obvious. People are playing more computer games so they don't have the time or money left for as many movies.
This happened a few years ago with music. CD sales dropped. The recording executives insisted that it was the Napster Effect, even though the first few years that Napster was in business, CD sales went up.
If they thought about it, they would have expected the rise in sales. Every year the recording companies spend millions of dollars promoting new music. This includes paying stations to play new songs (this is legal as long as the station gets the payoff instead of the DJ). If you hear a song often enough it becomes familiar and you want to buy it. Napster did the same thing for the recording companies and it did it for free. Yes, you could get a hold of new music for free, but it was likely to have been ripped at a low bit-rate. People who really liked the music bought the CD for the better quality audio.
despite a lot of whining, the recording companies were doing great. Then they got hit by a broadside. DVDs suddenly caught on and three new gaming systems were introduced. On top of that, CD singles were discontinued and the price of new CDs went up.
It is an iron law of economics that there are only so many entertainment dollars available. Recording executives don't think of themselves as competing with movies and games but they do. Once your money is gone, it's gone so you have to prioritize your purchases.
It's been happening again. Shared universe games like World of Warcraft are very popular. New game platforms are out. Plus new games are being released for all game platforms and many of these are movie tie-ins. This directly affects the boxoffice because teenagers get to choose between going to see a movie again or playing a game based on the movie. If you are playing Kong you are not sitting in the theater and you spent enough money to go see Kong again (or to see another movie) 5-6 times.
On top of that, DVDs are cutting into theatrical revenues. In order to save on advertising, they have pushed the time between theatrical and DVD closer together. The hops is that you will remember the publicity campaign from the theaters when the DVD comes out. Some movies are now out on DVD before they are out of second run - around three months for a B-movie.
This has happened before. When radio started playing records they thought that it would be the end of recording. They thought the same thing when it became easy to record music off of the radio. TV and the VCR would doom studios.
With all of these there have been adjustments. Radio turned out to be a medium for selling records. Studios produce TV shows. VCR and DVD sales can make the difference between profit and loss. Licensing fees from games are now big business.
Theaters have been hurt. 70 and 80 years ago it was an even to go to a theater and they were big opulent places. They got smaller and plainer until the 1990s when larger screens and more comfortable seating became a selling point.
There's no turning back, though. Things change. Movie audiences continue to move on to other forms of entertainment.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Kong (the original)
Wednesday night they showed both the Original King Kong and the 1970s re-make. I watched the original (surprise). This was the full-uncut version with natives being eaten and Fay Wray's dress torn off. That was the first version I saw of the movie in an art-house showing around 1974. It's only a few seconds of film but it does change the feel of the big ape.
What is interesting to me are the special effects they used.
The primary one is stop-motion animation. Kong and the dinosaurs are models that were moved slightly and photographed frame by frame.
Then they had to mix the animation and live-action. The process of masking a figure and adding it to a different shot was known then. I spotted it in a couple of shots in Kong. It is fairly easy to recognize since the added figure often has a white border (in early TV blue-screen they had blue borders).
This is an expensive and time consuming way to combine shots. Most of the movie took the easy way and used rear-projection. When Denham and company are attacked by a Stegosaurus, they were standing in front of a screen with animated footage projected on it from the rear. Unlike today's green-screen acting, they could see what was going on, at least some of the time.
Other shots were done the opposite way. They filmed Fay Wray being held by a mechanical arm and pulled pieces of her dress off (probably with wires), then projected this onto a small screen with the model of Kong in front of it.
For extra texture, they also used a lot of matte paintings. I think that I heard that Kong was the first movie to make extensive use of mattes.
They did have a full-sized head that could change expression. They also had an arm and a foot. They used tricks like having Kong look through one window using rear projection while the full-sized arm came through a different window.
When Kong picked someone up it would be an animated character just like Kong himself.
While this technique was effective it had some drawbacks. One was that the rear projection adds a flat, washed out look. Also, it meant that the actors and models always stayed on different sides of an invisible wall. One review of the current movie mentioned this without seeming to understand why it was so.
One other technical problem - every time they moved Kong his fur got out-of-place. They tried to comb it back like it had been but they were not always successful. In a couple of places Kong's fur ripples.
A couple of things really stand out about Kong. One is the amount of screen-time the effects got. Later stop-motion movies were shot on a tighter budget and schedule and had to limit the effects.
The other thing is the attention that went into giving Kong a personality. Sometimes he is angry. Sometimes he is curious. After killing the t-rex he picks it up and works the jaw. He seems to be surprised that the snapping jaws are now slack. The same thing happens with the long-necked thing that Kong fights in the cave.
This personality is so effective that, even after he rampages through the city, you still feel bad when they shoot him.
One thing that will be missing from the new version - in 1933 the Empire State Building was only a few years old and biplanes were still new - as new as the smart-bombs used in the first Gulf War are to us today.
The 1970s version tried keeping Kong in the present. It was a mistake. A 25-50 foot tall ape (he changed scale between Skull Island and New York) was a challenge to 1930s police and even to biplanes. There was no question in the 1970s that helicopter gunships could kill him.
By putting Kong back in the 1930s, the world is primitive enough that Kong is a menace but the story becomes a period piece.
What is interesting to me are the special effects they used.
The primary one is stop-motion animation. Kong and the dinosaurs are models that were moved slightly and photographed frame by frame.
Then they had to mix the animation and live-action. The process of masking a figure and adding it to a different shot was known then. I spotted it in a couple of shots in Kong. It is fairly easy to recognize since the added figure often has a white border (in early TV blue-screen they had blue borders).
This is an expensive and time consuming way to combine shots. Most of the movie took the easy way and used rear-projection. When Denham and company are attacked by a Stegosaurus, they were standing in front of a screen with animated footage projected on it from the rear. Unlike today's green-screen acting, they could see what was going on, at least some of the time.
Other shots were done the opposite way. They filmed Fay Wray being held by a mechanical arm and pulled pieces of her dress off (probably with wires), then projected this onto a small screen with the model of Kong in front of it.
For extra texture, they also used a lot of matte paintings. I think that I heard that Kong was the first movie to make extensive use of mattes.
They did have a full-sized head that could change expression. They also had an arm and a foot. They used tricks like having Kong look through one window using rear projection while the full-sized arm came through a different window.
When Kong picked someone up it would be an animated character just like Kong himself.
While this technique was effective it had some drawbacks. One was that the rear projection adds a flat, washed out look. Also, it meant that the actors and models always stayed on different sides of an invisible wall. One review of the current movie mentioned this without seeming to understand why it was so.
One other technical problem - every time they moved Kong his fur got out-of-place. They tried to comb it back like it had been but they were not always successful. In a couple of places Kong's fur ripples.
A couple of things really stand out about Kong. One is the amount of screen-time the effects got. Later stop-motion movies were shot on a tighter budget and schedule and had to limit the effects.
The other thing is the attention that went into giving Kong a personality. Sometimes he is angry. Sometimes he is curious. After killing the t-rex he picks it up and works the jaw. He seems to be surprised that the snapping jaws are now slack. The same thing happens with the long-necked thing that Kong fights in the cave.
This personality is so effective that, even after he rampages through the city, you still feel bad when they shoot him.
One thing that will be missing from the new version - in 1933 the Empire State Building was only a few years old and biplanes were still new - as new as the smart-bombs used in the first Gulf War are to us today.
The 1970s version tried keeping Kong in the present. It was a mistake. A 25-50 foot tall ape (he changed scale between Skull Island and New York) was a challenge to 1930s police and even to biplanes. There was no question in the 1970s that helicopter gunships could kill him.
By putting Kong back in the 1930s, the world is primitive enough that Kong is a menace but the story becomes a period piece.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Winter Alligators
My wife was looking up the lyrics for Winter Wonderland and noticed this verse:
Snowman attacking alligators in the fronzen winter? This is interesting. The song is only 70 years old. You would think that there would be a standard version. I Googled it and found surprising variation but mainly in the one line. For example, there is this version:
This one works better:
This works:
And this is the worst grammar yet:
This is the only version to change the second line. Plus we are back to alligators:
This one uses "children" instead of "kids" to get the right number of sylables. That fits fine but it changes an earlier line:
Every other version has this line as "To face unafraid, The plans that we've made"
This one avoids the problem by repeating the Parson Brown verse a second time. This one does the same thing but it also substitutes "Possum Brown" for "Parson Brown".
And finally, this one must have been transcribed from the recording. It is outright garbled with an entire line missing:
In the meadow we can build a snowman
and pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
until the alligators knock him down
In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman,
Until the other kids knock him down.
Ok, that makes a lot more sense than alligators but it doesn't scan right. You need four sylables and this only has three. The singer is left having to stretch "kids".And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman,
Until the other kids knock him down.
This one works better:
In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman,
Until the other kiddies knock him down.
This one is probably worseAnd pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman,
Until the other kiddies knock him down.
In the meadow we can build a snowman
and pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
until the all the kids knock him down
and pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
until the all the kids knock him down
This works:
In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he's a circus clown.
We'll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman.
Until the other kids come knock him down.
And pretend that he's a circus clown.
We'll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman.
Until the other kids come knock him down.
And this is the worst grammar yet:
In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman,
Until the other kid is knocking him down
And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman,
Until the other kid is knocking him down
This is the only version to change the second line. Plus we are back to alligators:
In the meadow we can build a snowman,
And pretend that he's a Charlie Brown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
Until the alligators knock him down.
You're a good snowman Charlie Brown. Here is one that replaces Parson Brown with Charlie Brown and has Lucy knock him down:And pretend that he's a Charlie Brown
We'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
Until the alligators knock him down.
Chorus:
In the meadow we could build a snowman
and pretend that he is charlie brown
he'll say: are snoopy?
we'll say: no man
but we'll let ya know if he's in town
later on
we'll conspire
as we dream by the fire
and face unafraid
the plans we have made
walking in a winters wonderland
Chorus:
In the meadow we could build a snowman
and pretend that he's a circus clown
and we'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
until mean old Lucy knocks him down
In the meadow we could build a snowman
and pretend that he is charlie brown
he'll say: are snoopy?
we'll say: no man
but we'll let ya know if he's in town
later on
we'll conspire
as we dream by the fire
and face unafraid
the plans we have made
walking in a winters wonderland
Chorus:
In the meadow we could build a snowman
and pretend that he's a circus clown
and we'll have lots of fun with mister snowman
until mean old Lucy knocks him down
This one uses "children" instead of "kids" to get the right number of sylables. That fits fine but it changes an earlier line:
Later on, we'll conspire
As we dream by the fire
Your face won't have reigns
The place that we made
Walking in a winter wonderland
In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman
Until the other children knock him down
As we dream by the fire
Your face won't have reigns
The place that we made
Walking in a winter wonderland
In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he's a circus clown
We'll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman
Until the other children knock him down
Every other version has this line as "To face unafraid, The plans that we've made"
This one avoids the problem by repeating the Parson Brown verse a second time. This one does the same thing but it also substitutes "Possum Brown" for "Parson Brown".
And finally, this one must have been transcribed from the recording. It is outright garbled with an entire line missing:
In the meadow we can build a snowman
We'll pretend that he's parts and brown
We'll say no man but you can do the job
When you're in town later one we'll conspire
As we dream by the fire
Were facin' no frame
The plans that we made
Walkin' in a winter wonderland
We'll pretend that he's parts and brown
We'll say no man but you can do the job
When you're in town later one we'll conspire
As we dream by the fire
Were facin' no frame
The plans that we made
Walkin' in a winter wonderland
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
A Charlie Brown Christmas
USAToday has a frontpage story on a Charlie Brown Christmas and how it almost didn't air.
Looking back 40 years it is difficult to remember the position Peanuts had in contemporary culture. The idea of kids having problems and acting like adults was new and fresh. No one else was doing anything like it.
Peanuts is partly a victim of its own success. It had so much influence on other comic strips and media that we forget how groundbreaking it was. Even so, it was still the best of its breed right up through the final strip.
40 years later this is still one of only four original, lasting Christmas stories. Two of them are endlessly remade - A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. The other two, Charlie Brown and Christmas Story, are lightning-in-a-bottle stories that would fail if they were remade.
It's ironic that both Charlie Brown and Christmas story are children's stories but they are about opposite ends of Christmas. Charlie Brown is looking for meaning in Christmas and finds religion. Ralphie is just after presents. What makes these two stories so memorable is their unforced earnestness.
Charlie Brown could have come across as preaching but it does not. Christmas Story could have been boring or silly. There have been dozens of Peanuts specials and movies and other adaptations of Jean Sheperd's works but, outside of the Peanuts Halloween show, none of them worked as well.
note 1: That 70s Show did a subtle takeoff of a Charlie Brown Christmas with Eric directing the church Christmas pageant. The same episode also inserted Kelso into a claymation Christmas special.
note 2: Darren McGavin who played Ralphie's father also stared in Nightstalker. Not many actors can boast that they were in two so dissimilar cult favorites.
Looking back 40 years it is difficult to remember the position Peanuts had in contemporary culture. The idea of kids having problems and acting like adults was new and fresh. No one else was doing anything like it.
Peanuts is partly a victim of its own success. It had so much influence on other comic strips and media that we forget how groundbreaking it was. Even so, it was still the best of its breed right up through the final strip.
40 years later this is still one of only four original, lasting Christmas stories. Two of them are endlessly remade - A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. The other two, Charlie Brown and Christmas Story, are lightning-in-a-bottle stories that would fail if they were remade.
It's ironic that both Charlie Brown and Christmas story are children's stories but they are about opposite ends of Christmas. Charlie Brown is looking for meaning in Christmas and finds religion. Ralphie is just after presents. What makes these two stories so memorable is their unforced earnestness.
Charlie Brown could have come across as preaching but it does not. Christmas Story could have been boring or silly. There have been dozens of Peanuts specials and movies and other adaptations of Jean Sheperd's works but, outside of the Peanuts Halloween show, none of them worked as well.
note 1: That 70s Show did a subtle takeoff of a Charlie Brown Christmas with Eric directing the church Christmas pageant. The same episode also inserted Kelso into a claymation Christmas special.
note 2: Darren McGavin who played Ralphie's father also stared in Nightstalker. Not many actors can boast that they were in two so dissimilar cult favorites.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Too Old?
During his talk last weekend, Steve Englehart antioned several times how difficult it is for him to get work as a comic writer. I have heard Marv Wolfman and Len Wein say the same thing. To modern editors, these guys are over the hill - too old to work.
Englehart's response is that his Batman comic exceeded expectations by 250%.
It's not a pleasant thing for me to hear that these guys are too old. They were the new guys who started at Marvel around 1970. They are just a couple of years older than I am. My own profession of computer programming has been laying off workers over 50 so this attitude is widespread, but I'm writing about comics here.
Let's go back a few decades to when Marvel was born. By current reasoning, it must have been young turks who created the classic characters.
Stan Lee was born in December, 1922 so he was nearly 40 when he created the Fantastic Four. His co-creator, Jack Kirby, was born in 1917 so he would have been close to 45. Spider-Man co-creator, Steve Ditko, was a youthful 35.
Jump forward a decade and you find these men at the top of their game. Lee was writing the Silver Surfer, his favorite creation. Kirby had just gone over to DC and created his 4th world series. Ditko never managed to match Spider-Man's impact but he still was writing as well as drawing his own books.
How sad if these men had been forced out of the industry when they were at their creative peak.
In the 1980s Ditko complained that "everyone wants Ditko but no one wants Ditko." He meant that everyone wanted a "Ditko-like" artist but they considered Ditko himself over the hill.
Englehart, Woldman, and Wein all sold a lot of comics in the 1970s and 1980s. Wein especially created several popular characters such as Wolverene, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Swamp Thing. There is no reason to think that they lost that talent.
Englehart's response is that his Batman comic exceeded expectations by 250%.
It's not a pleasant thing for me to hear that these guys are too old. They were the new guys who started at Marvel around 1970. They are just a couple of years older than I am. My own profession of computer programming has been laying off workers over 50 so this attitude is widespread, but I'm writing about comics here.
Let's go back a few decades to when Marvel was born. By current reasoning, it must have been young turks who created the classic characters.
Stan Lee was born in December, 1922 so he was nearly 40 when he created the Fantastic Four. His co-creator, Jack Kirby, was born in 1917 so he would have been close to 45. Spider-Man co-creator, Steve Ditko, was a youthful 35.
Jump forward a decade and you find these men at the top of their game. Lee was writing the Silver Surfer, his favorite creation. Kirby had just gone over to DC and created his 4th world series. Ditko never managed to match Spider-Man's impact but he still was writing as well as drawing his own books.
How sad if these men had been forced out of the industry when they were at their creative peak.
In the 1980s Ditko complained that "everyone wants Ditko but no one wants Ditko." He meant that everyone wanted a "Ditko-like" artist but they considered Ditko himself over the hill.
Englehart, Woldman, and Wein all sold a lot of comics in the 1970s and 1980s. Wein especially created several popular characters such as Wolverene, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Swamp Thing. There is no reason to think that they lost that talent.
Monday, November 28, 2005
How to Run a Comic Book Company
I was at a question and answer session with Steve Englehart over the weekend. He was one of the new generation of writers who entered the field in the early 1970s. He is best remembered for his run on Batman but he started at Marvel and wrote a lot of their titles at one time or another. A quick list includes, Captain America, the Avengers, the West Coast Avengers, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, the Hulk, Master of Kung Fu, Captain Marvel, Hero for Hire, the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four.
I remember him as a good writer who was at his best writing individuals and his worst writing teams. He also pushed the envelope in story telling. I think that he was the first to write an issue where the characters did nothing but talk (his last Avengers) and one where the title character never appeared in costume (one of his Batman issues).
He had a few clinkers, too. Rumor is that he overused Kang the Conqueror so much that Stan Lee himself ordered Englehart to kill the character. He took Captain America's partner the Falcon and changed him from nice-guy Sam Wilson into petty crook "Snap" Wilson.
In the Q&A session, Englehart stressed how much things have changed since he entered the field. He was given Captain America with no other instructions than to keep it creative and to sell at least 300,000 copies a month.
Now a writer has to come up with a proposal which works its way up and back down the editorial ladder before he can write anything and an issue that sells 20,000 copies is considered a success.
So, were things better back then? The fact that they could sell so many more comics implies that they were but it gets more complicated.
The distribution channels have changed completely. Up through the 1960s comics were sold at news stands, drug stores, and grocery stores. News stands don't exist any longer. Drug stores no longer carry comic books and few grocery stores do. Most comics are sold through specialty stores that grew up since the early 1970s. The target audience is now much older with a large percentage being adult.
There is also a lot more competition than there used to be. Video games are a big factor. No one in the mid-1970s thought of Pong as a replacement for a comic book but many current games feature really great animated versions of superheroes. Why read static comics when you can actually control characters?
So the comics have consolidated and editors have been put in charge of protecting the franchise. Has this improved comics? Probably not.
Englehart gave the example of Batman. For the last five years or so he has been over the edge crazy. When Englehart did his Dark Knight limited series, DC made some projection on how it would sell. The actual numbers were 2.5 times projections. What was different? Bruce Wayne was back and got a girl friend. Batman was no longer crazy, just driven. DC pulled the entire Batman line and gave it to a different editor to establish a new direction based on Englehart.
Ok, so an editor's direction can hurt a title, but surely he can save it from some of the cliffs that writers went off in the 1970s. One of the best (worst) examples of a writer going off on a dumb plotline was Gerry Conway's Spider-Man clone. It started when Spider-Man's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, came back from the grave. She turned out to be a clone grown by his biology professor who had also grown a Peter Parker clone. It was dumb.
So what did Marvel do in the late 1990s? They brought back the clone along with a clone army grown by the biology professor's clone. They even told us that the clone was the "real" Spider-Man and the two switched rolls for a year. Of course, it was all part of a formula. You set it up so that the hero was dead or powerless and ran stories about how difficult it was for his replacement to take over. Then the hero would return. It already happened in Iron Man, Green Lantern, Thor, Superman, Batman, and Captain America.
So, keeping tight editorial control doesn't keep bad plotlines from happening.
I'll have more to say about Englehart's talk in future posts.
I remember him as a good writer who was at his best writing individuals and his worst writing teams. He also pushed the envelope in story telling. I think that he was the first to write an issue where the characters did nothing but talk (his last Avengers) and one where the title character never appeared in costume (one of his Batman issues).
He had a few clinkers, too. Rumor is that he overused Kang the Conqueror so much that Stan Lee himself ordered Englehart to kill the character. He took Captain America's partner the Falcon and changed him from nice-guy Sam Wilson into petty crook "Snap" Wilson.
In the Q&A session, Englehart stressed how much things have changed since he entered the field. He was given Captain America with no other instructions than to keep it creative and to sell at least 300,000 copies a month.
Now a writer has to come up with a proposal which works its way up and back down the editorial ladder before he can write anything and an issue that sells 20,000 copies is considered a success.
So, were things better back then? The fact that they could sell so many more comics implies that they were but it gets more complicated.
The distribution channels have changed completely. Up through the 1960s comics were sold at news stands, drug stores, and grocery stores. News stands don't exist any longer. Drug stores no longer carry comic books and few grocery stores do. Most comics are sold through specialty stores that grew up since the early 1970s. The target audience is now much older with a large percentage being adult.
There is also a lot more competition than there used to be. Video games are a big factor. No one in the mid-1970s thought of Pong as a replacement for a comic book but many current games feature really great animated versions of superheroes. Why read static comics when you can actually control characters?
So the comics have consolidated and editors have been put in charge of protecting the franchise. Has this improved comics? Probably not.
Englehart gave the example of Batman. For the last five years or so he has been over the edge crazy. When Englehart did his Dark Knight limited series, DC made some projection on how it would sell. The actual numbers were 2.5 times projections. What was different? Bruce Wayne was back and got a girl friend. Batman was no longer crazy, just driven. DC pulled the entire Batman line and gave it to a different editor to establish a new direction based on Englehart.
Ok, so an editor's direction can hurt a title, but surely he can save it from some of the cliffs that writers went off in the 1970s. One of the best (worst) examples of a writer going off on a dumb plotline was Gerry Conway's Spider-Man clone. It started when Spider-Man's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, came back from the grave. She turned out to be a clone grown by his biology professor who had also grown a Peter Parker clone. It was dumb.
So what did Marvel do in the late 1990s? They brought back the clone along with a clone army grown by the biology professor's clone. They even told us that the clone was the "real" Spider-Man and the two switched rolls for a year. Of course, it was all part of a formula. You set it up so that the hero was dead or powerless and ran stories about how difficult it was for his replacement to take over. Then the hero would return. It already happened in Iron Man, Green Lantern, Thor, Superman, Batman, and Captain America.
So, keeping tight editorial control doesn't keep bad plotlines from happening.
I'll have more to say about Englehart's talk in future posts.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
My Brain Hurts
Last night Bravo was showing a repeat of Happy Days Reunion. Think about this for a moment. In 2005, I was watching a show produced in the 1980s about a show in the 1970s which was supposed to be taking place in the 1950s.
Now if they could just work That 70s Show in somehow the universe would implode.
Speaking of Happy Days, by coincidence earlier yesterday I came across the Wikipedia's definition of Jumping the Shark which is probably Happy Day's lasting contribution to modern culture.
If you are not familiar with the term, it refers to an episode where the Fonz was water skiing (in his leather jacket) and jumped over a shark. This is considered the moment when the show officially changed from being about the Cunningham family to it being about the Fonz's stunts. The term is now used to denote the point when a show abandons its original premise and suffers a loss of quality. In many cases this also leads to the show's cancellation. In other cases the show was headed for cancellation and producers tried to breath some life into it by introducing a major change. There are also cases where a show continues after one or more major character left by adding new characters and making others more prominent.
This brings me back to That 70s Show. The show centered around high school-aged Eric Foreman, his family, and his friends, particularly his relationship with the hot girl next door.
Supporting cast members have floated in and out over the years but the show always had a core of eight actors. Now two of them left and a new lead character was added. The show still has some laughs but the premise is really strained. The show has been stuck in 1979 for years. The actors are now 5-10 years older than their characters. Everyone graduated but most of them still spend their time hanging out and getting stoned in the Foremans' basement, even though Eric is long gone.
This is a prime example of a show that has jumped the shark but was not allowed to die a graceful death.
The official Jump the Shark website lets you vote on when (if ever) a show jumped the shark.
Now if they could just work That 70s Show in somehow the universe would implode.
Speaking of Happy Days, by coincidence earlier yesterday I came across the Wikipedia's definition of Jumping the Shark which is probably Happy Day's lasting contribution to modern culture.
If you are not familiar with the term, it refers to an episode where the Fonz was water skiing (in his leather jacket) and jumped over a shark. This is considered the moment when the show officially changed from being about the Cunningham family to it being about the Fonz's stunts. The term is now used to denote the point when a show abandons its original premise and suffers a loss of quality. In many cases this also leads to the show's cancellation. In other cases the show was headed for cancellation and producers tried to breath some life into it by introducing a major change. There are also cases where a show continues after one or more major character left by adding new characters and making others more prominent.
This brings me back to That 70s Show. The show centered around high school-aged Eric Foreman, his family, and his friends, particularly his relationship with the hot girl next door.
Supporting cast members have floated in and out over the years but the show always had a core of eight actors. Now two of them left and a new lead character was added. The show still has some laughs but the premise is really strained. The show has been stuck in 1979 for years. The actors are now 5-10 years older than their characters. Everyone graduated but most of them still spend their time hanging out and getting stoned in the Foremans' basement, even though Eric is long gone.
This is a prime example of a show that has jumped the shark but was not allowed to die a graceful death.
The official Jump the Shark website lets you vote on when (if ever) a show jumped the shark.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
The Last Lost
"What, is Shannon going to get hit by lightning?"
I asked my wife this about 57 minutes into last week's Lost. About a minute later Shannon was shot. Big surprise.
After three weeks of telling us that the next episode would be the most talked about of the year, it was kind of a dud. What would have been a big twist - killing a major character - was given away in the ad.
It's not like it was a surprise. Before the season started the producers announced that a major female character would die. Right there it narrowed it down to Shannon and Claire. Neither has a major story line going. I suspect that both were originally included as unlikely survivors on a deserted island. We had the spoiled rich brat who did nothing and the pregnant woman who could not do anything.
Now that we are in season two, it is no longer a deserted island so the original reason for including them has passed.
A case could have been made for keeping Shannon. Fans of her brother could still see him in flashbacks and it would complicate things even more if the survivors had to raise a baby on top of everything else.
Ultimately though, Shannon was an unlikeable and unliked character. Even a flashback showing her not inheriting her father's money didn't help much. I suspect that her step-mother was right. The ballet internship wouldn't have amounted to anything in the end.
Still it would have been a much more powerful episode if the ABC publicity people had kept quiet about it.
I asked my wife this about 57 minutes into last week's Lost. About a minute later Shannon was shot. Big surprise.
After three weeks of telling us that the next episode would be the most talked about of the year, it was kind of a dud. What would have been a big twist - killing a major character - was given away in the ad.
It's not like it was a surprise. Before the season started the producers announced that a major female character would die. Right there it narrowed it down to Shannon and Claire. Neither has a major story line going. I suspect that both were originally included as unlikely survivors on a deserted island. We had the spoiled rich brat who did nothing and the pregnant woman who could not do anything.
Now that we are in season two, it is no longer a deserted island so the original reason for including them has passed.
A case could have been made for keeping Shannon. Fans of her brother could still see him in flashbacks and it would complicate things even more if the survivors had to raise a baby on top of everything else.
Ultimately though, Shannon was an unlikeable and unliked character. Even a flashback showing her not inheriting her father's money didn't help much. I suspect that her step-mother was right. The ballet internship wouldn't have amounted to anything in the end.
Still it would have been a much more powerful episode if the ABC publicity people had kept quiet about it.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Best Picture (Animated)
Ok, the year isn't even over yet but I'm going to go out on a limb and make some predictions for best animated picture. As far as I know, all the likely candidates have already been released so I can make a year-end prediction in November.
Then I can worry about starting Christmas shopping.
There are five obvious candidates for the nomination, the CGI films, Robots, Madagascar and Chicken Little and the stop-motion films, Corpse Bride and Wallace & Gromet: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Only three can be nominated. Wallace & Gromet seems like a shoe-in. Shorts featuring the same characters have already won two Oscars. I think that Corpse Bride will also be nominated on the basis of its stunning visuals.
That leaves one slot for the three CGI pictures. I haven't seen Chicken Little yet but all of the reviews complain that much of it is unconnected gags. That seems consistent with the previews. I don't think that it will get a nomination.
Madagascar and Robots are both fun movies with rather thin plotlines. Of these, I think that Robots has the stronger plot. Also, it is a much greater technical achievement. One of their goals seems to have been to out-do Pixar in complexity of animation. Madagascar, on the other hand, looks like it was done on the cheap. My daughter, the computer animator, says that they took some shortcuts in the animation.
So, our nominees are Robots, Corpse Bride, and Wallace & Gromet.
I don't think that Robots will win. There just isn't enough plot.
Wallace & Gromet has a really good chance given their previous wins but it is really a kids movie. There are asides for adults but the movie is aimed at kids.
Corpse Bride is harder-edged. While the lesson in Wallace and Gromet is that hunting is bad, the lesson in Corpse Bride deals with women being independent rather than depending on a husband. Also, the visuals in Corpse Bride are much better.
Corpse Bride gets my vote but I will not be surprised if Wallace and Gromet wins.
note: I'm getting a lot of spam comments so I now require registration. I may have to turn off comments completely.
Then I can worry about starting Christmas shopping.
There are five obvious candidates for the nomination, the CGI films, Robots, Madagascar and Chicken Little and the stop-motion films, Corpse Bride and Wallace & Gromet: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Only three can be nominated. Wallace & Gromet seems like a shoe-in. Shorts featuring the same characters have already won two Oscars. I think that Corpse Bride will also be nominated on the basis of its stunning visuals.
That leaves one slot for the three CGI pictures. I haven't seen Chicken Little yet but all of the reviews complain that much of it is unconnected gags. That seems consistent with the previews. I don't think that it will get a nomination.
Madagascar and Robots are both fun movies with rather thin plotlines. Of these, I think that Robots has the stronger plot. Also, it is a much greater technical achievement. One of their goals seems to have been to out-do Pixar in complexity of animation. Madagascar, on the other hand, looks like it was done on the cheap. My daughter, the computer animator, says that they took some shortcuts in the animation.
So, our nominees are Robots, Corpse Bride, and Wallace & Gromet.
I don't think that Robots will win. There just isn't enough plot.
Wallace & Gromet has a really good chance given their previous wins but it is really a kids movie. There are asides for adults but the movie is aimed at kids.
Corpse Bride is harder-edged. While the lesson in Wallace and Gromet is that hunting is bad, the lesson in Corpse Bride deals with women being independent rather than depending on a husband. Also, the visuals in Corpse Bride are much better.
Corpse Bride gets my vote but I will not be surprised if Wallace and Gromet wins.
note: I'm getting a lot of spam comments so I now require registration. I may have to turn off comments completely.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Beyond Death
The current issue of Action Comics (staring Superman) features a guest appearance by the Spectre. It is a combination Halloween issue and tribute to Jim Aparo. It is also full of plot holes.
Anyway, it got me thinking about how death is represented in the comics. DC has two main dead heroes - the Spectre and the aptly named Deadman. Both died and were sent back by a greater power. The power that sent the Spectre back is, I believe, a voice.
Deadman stayed on earth due to Rama Kushna. Rama was originally inspired by eastern religions but was later rewritten.
In the 1960s, there was a character called Nemesis who was also a ghost. He came from ACG which is better remembered for Herbie.
Nemesis had a view of the afterlife in keeping with watered-down Christianity. Saint Peter's current stand-in manages the gate to heaven and has say over who can return. Nemesis's powers were a cross between Superman and Casper the Friendly Ghost - flight, strength, invisibility. He was weakened underwater. Like many heroes introduced in the mid-1960s, he didn't last long.
Spectre is more complicated. At first he was just a superhero, first in the 1940s and 1960s. Then he became the spirit of vengeance in the 1970s. By the 1980s he had become the ultimate force for good and the universe's last defense against the Anti-Monitor in Crisis. In the 1990s it was explained that he was an aspect of God. Then he retired and Hal Jordan, the Silver Age Green Lantern, got the job. Recently Jordan was brought back to life so who knows where the Spectre in Superman came from.
Deadman is a much more ordinary ghost. He is invisible and intangible. At first he seemed to walk everywhere but later he began flying. Since he cannot touch the ground (or anything else) anyway, he must have always been flying.
What Deadman could do was posses people. A trained acrobat and a good fighter, he often possessed people in order to save them. While there have been several attempts to revive the character, none have been satisfying. His best appearances were in his original series in the 1960s.
Interestingly, both Deadman and the Spectre were drawn by Neil Addams during their runs in the 1960s.
Marvel's view of death has always been more complicated. They've never shown the line of people waiting to be judged at the gates of heaven. In fact, Stan avoided the subject. When he did address death, it was because the death goddess, Hela, was near. The Silver Surfer's enemy Mephisto (a Satan stand-in) wanted the Surfer's soul and ruled an underworld full of mis-shapen creatures. Were these the tortured dead? Demons? Creations of Mephisto himself? We never found out.
We did get a hint. At one point, Mephisto sent the Flying Dutchman to fight the Surfer. It was made clear that the Dutchman was a special case. At the end he moved on to an unspecified afterlife.
In the early 1970s, the Comic Code changed and Marvel launched a line of supernatural heroes and villains. Many, like Dracula, were dead but nothing was said about the afterlife.
Around the same time, death became a supporting character in Captain Marvel. Embodied as a silent woman, she was the companion of Thanos. Because of his special relationship with death, Thanos has returned from the dead a few times.
Adam Warlock died and went to heaven, sort of. His soul was taken into a powerful gem along with his girlfriend and others. This is atypical.
I believe that in the 1980s Marvel's writers decided that when you die, any of several death gods can claim your soul which, in turn, gives them greater power. They can only hold souls for a limited time then they go on to a final reward (or are reincarnated).
While several marvel characters have returned to life from the dead or come back as a supernatural creature, none of their heroes are ghosts.
Anyway, it got me thinking about how death is represented in the comics. DC has two main dead heroes - the Spectre and the aptly named Deadman. Both died and were sent back by a greater power. The power that sent the Spectre back is, I believe, a voice.
Deadman stayed on earth due to Rama Kushna. Rama was originally inspired by eastern religions but was later rewritten.
In the 1960s, there was a character called Nemesis who was also a ghost. He came from ACG which is better remembered for Herbie.
Nemesis had a view of the afterlife in keeping with watered-down Christianity. Saint Peter's current stand-in manages the gate to heaven and has say over who can return. Nemesis's powers were a cross between Superman and Casper the Friendly Ghost - flight, strength, invisibility. He was weakened underwater. Like many heroes introduced in the mid-1960s, he didn't last long.
Spectre is more complicated. At first he was just a superhero, first in the 1940s and 1960s. Then he became the spirit of vengeance in the 1970s. By the 1980s he had become the ultimate force for good and the universe's last defense against the Anti-Monitor in Crisis. In the 1990s it was explained that he was an aspect of God. Then he retired and Hal Jordan, the Silver Age Green Lantern, got the job. Recently Jordan was brought back to life so who knows where the Spectre in Superman came from.
Deadman is a much more ordinary ghost. He is invisible and intangible. At first he seemed to walk everywhere but later he began flying. Since he cannot touch the ground (or anything else) anyway, he must have always been flying.
What Deadman could do was posses people. A trained acrobat and a good fighter, he often possessed people in order to save them. While there have been several attempts to revive the character, none have been satisfying. His best appearances were in his original series in the 1960s.
Interestingly, both Deadman and the Spectre were drawn by Neil Addams during their runs in the 1960s.
Marvel's view of death has always been more complicated. They've never shown the line of people waiting to be judged at the gates of heaven. In fact, Stan avoided the subject. When he did address death, it was because the death goddess, Hela, was near. The Silver Surfer's enemy Mephisto (a Satan stand-in) wanted the Surfer's soul and ruled an underworld full of mis-shapen creatures. Were these the tortured dead? Demons? Creations of Mephisto himself? We never found out.
We did get a hint. At one point, Mephisto sent the Flying Dutchman to fight the Surfer. It was made clear that the Dutchman was a special case. At the end he moved on to an unspecified afterlife.
In the early 1970s, the Comic Code changed and Marvel launched a line of supernatural heroes and villains. Many, like Dracula, were dead but nothing was said about the afterlife.
Around the same time, death became a supporting character in Captain Marvel. Embodied as a silent woman, she was the companion of Thanos. Because of his special relationship with death, Thanos has returned from the dead a few times.
Adam Warlock died and went to heaven, sort of. His soul was taken into a powerful gem along with his girlfriend and others. This is atypical.
I believe that in the 1980s Marvel's writers decided that when you die, any of several death gods can claim your soul which, in turn, gives them greater power. They can only hold souls for a limited time then they go on to a final reward (or are reincarnated).
While several marvel characters have returned to life from the dead or come back as a supernatural creature, none of their heroes are ghosts.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Zorro
The Legend of Zorro is fairly good as an action film and as a sequel, but it has some problems. Some are in the plot, some are with major anachronisms.
Some of the plot holes - a major sub-plot revolves around stealing some peasants' land so that a railroad spur can be finished. This is really more of an excuse than anything else since there are obviously alternatives for short-range transport.
Then there is the split between Zorro and his wife. She tells him that, if he answers a call for Zorro she should sleep elsewhere. The next thing we know they are divorced. Keeping in mind that they are Catholics and the year is 1850. Divorce just didn't happen then. Even today it doesn't happen overnight.
Then there is the Confederacy. The movie is taking place in 1850. They are very specific about that but the politics are 1860. They even have Abraham Lincoln presiding over California's acceptance into the Union. As a sop, he hasn't grown the beard yet but the real Lincoln was still practicing law in Illinois at the time.
I won't go into the southern soldiers in grey uniforms.
Now, if you are historically challenged then none of this matters.
There is a bigger problem - I don't think that there is a place for Zorro in 1850. A guy armed with a sword and whip works when fighting soldiers firing flintlocks and armed with sabers. Pit the same guy against cowboys armed with repeating rifles and it is a stretch. In some of the fights the cowboys pulled out swords. Fortunately for Zorro, they only used single-shot pistols. Colt revolvers had been invented by that time.
At one point the bad guy even says that Zorro is a relic who belongs in a museum. Since this is a second-generation Zorro who has already been active for a decade, he may well be right.
Still, the actions scenes work and they manage to gloss over most of the other problems.
Some of the plot holes - a major sub-plot revolves around stealing some peasants' land so that a railroad spur can be finished. This is really more of an excuse than anything else since there are obviously alternatives for short-range transport.
Then there is the split between Zorro and his wife. She tells him that, if he answers a call for Zorro she should sleep elsewhere. The next thing we know they are divorced. Keeping in mind that they are Catholics and the year is 1850. Divorce just didn't happen then. Even today it doesn't happen overnight.
Then there is the Confederacy. The movie is taking place in 1850. They are very specific about that but the politics are 1860. They even have Abraham Lincoln presiding over California's acceptance into the Union. As a sop, he hasn't grown the beard yet but the real Lincoln was still practicing law in Illinois at the time.
I won't go into the southern soldiers in grey uniforms.
Now, if you are historically challenged then none of this matters.
There is a bigger problem - I don't think that there is a place for Zorro in 1850. A guy armed with a sword and whip works when fighting soldiers firing flintlocks and armed with sabers. Pit the same guy against cowboys armed with repeating rifles and it is a stretch. In some of the fights the cowboys pulled out swords. Fortunately for Zorro, they only used single-shot pistols. Colt revolvers had been invented by that time.
At one point the bad guy even says that Zorro is a relic who belongs in a museum. Since this is a second-generation Zorro who has already been active for a decade, he may well be right.
Still, the actions scenes work and they manage to gloss over most of the other problems.
Friday, October 28, 2005
The Sad Life of a Trek Character
George Takei admitted that he is gay. While this does not mean that Sulu is gay (after all, Spock is Vulcan, not Jewish) it did make me think about the characters from the original Trek.
What sad lonely lives they led.
They spent decades assigned to a secession of ships named Enterprise. None of them were married. None of them moved on. They didn't even seem to have friends. Sulu was the only one to move on and get his own command.
TNG was a little better. There was some personal growth, especially Warf, Geordi and Data. Still Riker started as an ambitious young officer who thought that a tour of duty on the Enterprise would help his career. Years later he was still doing the same thing.
At least the TNG characters relaxed together and played cards.
Compare this with Babylon 5. By the end of the series everyone had been through some personal fire and no one was doing the same job as when the series started. Even bit-player Lt. Corwin moved up a bit.
UPDATE: When you look a how empty their lives are, the characters in the original Trek match the stereotype of the trekkie.
What sad lonely lives they led.
They spent decades assigned to a secession of ships named Enterprise. None of them were married. None of them moved on. They didn't even seem to have friends. Sulu was the only one to move on and get his own command.
TNG was a little better. There was some personal growth, especially Warf, Geordi and Data. Still Riker started as an ambitious young officer who thought that a tour of duty on the Enterprise would help his career. Years later he was still doing the same thing.
At least the TNG characters relaxed together and played cards.
Compare this with Babylon 5. By the end of the series everyone had been through some personal fire and no one was doing the same job as when the series started. Even bit-player Lt. Corwin moved up a bit.
UPDATE: When you look a how empty their lives are, the characters in the original Trek match the stereotype of the trekkie.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Vampires and God
I was thinking of writing something about vampires for Halloween then I came upon this article. It seems that Anne Rice has found God and will only be writing for and about God in the future. Her next book will be a first-person account of Jesus's time in Egypt as a boy.
Rice has been the most influential writer of vampire fiction in 100 years. The previous writer, of course, was Bram Stoker whose Count Dracula defined the vampire in movies and literature until the 1970s. That's when Rice's Interview with the Vampire came out.
It is very rare for a writer to take a stock character like the vampire and turn it into a genre but Rice did it. She redefined the vampire. Stoker's version was noble, foreign, and evil. He drank blood, he slept in his "native soil", he could change form and he was burnt by crosses and the sun. Rice's vampires still drank blood and avoided the sun but they could not change form and religious symbols did not affect them. More importantly, they went from being a supporting character to being the star.
Dracula hardly appears in his namesake novel. Even when Harker is living in Castle Dracula he spends little time with the Count. In contrast, Rice's novels center on her vampires. Yes, they still drink blood and kill people but that is a subtext, lost in accounts of the life of an immortal in 18th century Paris or 19th century New Orleans. You no longer fear them, instead you want to be one.
There have been hoards of imitators since then. Many are best-sellers in their own right. I am currently reading P. N. Elrod's 14th vampire novel. Most of these are about a Depression-era vampire in gang-controlled Chicago. He's the good guy, saving people and only drinking from cattle.
Most of Anne Rice's 25 books have been about vampires. She probably peaked with Queen of the Damned (or maybe with The Vampire Lestat). Both of those books re-wrote her previous cosmology. In Interview we were told that no vampire could remember where they came from. In Lestat we find out that this was a lie and Lestat himself had met the original vampires. In Queen, we find out a lot more about them. Along the way she introduced the idea of spirits.
Although Rice never quite comes out and says it, it is obvious that all of the gods, spirits, and other non-living creatures are human (or near-human) ghosts who have forgotten their own history. She also took Lestat on a tour of Heaven and Hell that nearly ruined the character. The next several novels featured other vampires with Lestat having, at most, a walk-on roll. Finally in the last novel she returned to Lestat to wrap up all the lingering plot threads from the vampire and the Mayfair Witch books.
In a way, it is a good thing that she moved on. New Orleans was central to many of her books and it will not be in any condition to inspire such literature for a long time.
Will Rice's new series be any good? She seems to think that she pulled it off. I don't know. I hope that she doesn't start a new wave of first person books about Jesus.
Rice has been the most influential writer of vampire fiction in 100 years. The previous writer, of course, was Bram Stoker whose Count Dracula defined the vampire in movies and literature until the 1970s. That's when Rice's Interview with the Vampire came out.
It is very rare for a writer to take a stock character like the vampire and turn it into a genre but Rice did it. She redefined the vampire. Stoker's version was noble, foreign, and evil. He drank blood, he slept in his "native soil", he could change form and he was burnt by crosses and the sun. Rice's vampires still drank blood and avoided the sun but they could not change form and religious symbols did not affect them. More importantly, they went from being a supporting character to being the star.
Dracula hardly appears in his namesake novel. Even when Harker is living in Castle Dracula he spends little time with the Count. In contrast, Rice's novels center on her vampires. Yes, they still drink blood and kill people but that is a subtext, lost in accounts of the life of an immortal in 18th century Paris or 19th century New Orleans. You no longer fear them, instead you want to be one.
There have been hoards of imitators since then. Many are best-sellers in their own right. I am currently reading P. N. Elrod's 14th vampire novel. Most of these are about a Depression-era vampire in gang-controlled Chicago. He's the good guy, saving people and only drinking from cattle.
Most of Anne Rice's 25 books have been about vampires. She probably peaked with Queen of the Damned (or maybe with The Vampire Lestat). Both of those books re-wrote her previous cosmology. In Interview we were told that no vampire could remember where they came from. In Lestat we find out that this was a lie and Lestat himself had met the original vampires. In Queen, we find out a lot more about them. Along the way she introduced the idea of spirits.
Although Rice never quite comes out and says it, it is obvious that all of the gods, spirits, and other non-living creatures are human (or near-human) ghosts who have forgotten their own history. She also took Lestat on a tour of Heaven and Hell that nearly ruined the character. The next several novels featured other vampires with Lestat having, at most, a walk-on roll. Finally in the last novel she returned to Lestat to wrap up all the lingering plot threads from the vampire and the Mayfair Witch books.
In a way, it is a good thing that she moved on. New Orleans was central to many of her books and it will not be in any condition to inspire such literature for a long time.
Will Rice's new series be any good? She seems to think that she pulled it off. I don't know. I hope that she doesn't start a new wave of first person books about Jesus.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Babylon 5 Governments
Unlike most Science Fiction shows, Babylon 5 concentrated on several alien races in detail. Although details are sketchy, we have some idea of how these governments were run - a better idea than we have of Star Trek's Federation, even after five series. Also, during the run of the series all of the governments suffered a major upset.
(note - I'm doing this all from memory. I may get details wrong and I probably will mess up spelling.)
First, there was Earth. The central government was Earthdome in Geneva. We know it had a president and a Senate but I don't remember a House or an independent judiciary. This might be how Clark was able to grab so much power. They did have the Nightwatch which seemed to function separately, more as a party than an arm of government. This was probably meant to suggest the KGB officer in USSR submarines with Nazi overtones.
The Mimbari were ruled by the Council of Nine. The number 3 was basic to their civilization and the Council was three members from the three castes. Later it was replaced with a council that had five members from the Workers and two each from the Religious and Warrior castes. At times there was also an individual who was separate from the Council and advised it. He could override it when he felt he had to.
The Centari had an emperor and a secondary body, the Centarum. The Centarum chose the emperor and seemed to have some political power. There was an implication that the emperor had total power but often chose to delegate most of it to the Centarum. Presumably membership in the Centarum was either directly hereditary or indirectly with the major houses putting forth a representative.
The Narns were overthrown before we learned much about their government or their world. They had a ruling body known as the K'aree and G'kar was the youngest member. How did you get to be a member? In the first season the Narn played up their role as the recent winners of a nationalist struggle against a colonial government. I'm going to take a guess here and say that they were set up something like Cuba in the 1960s with people who fought for the revolution getting government posts. After they Centari conquered them and left, G'kar refused to lead them and we have no idea what happened after that.
We know very little about the Vorlons and only slightly more about the Shadows. Kosh II said "We are all Kosh." On the other hand, Kosh II had a different personality than Kosh I and the two even fought. At the climax of the Great War, both races agreed to leave the galaxy. All of this implies that both races are individuals who can communicate through some form of telepathy to resolve all issues. No government would be needed in this case.
Babylon 5 itself started as sort of a UN, a place where the races could meet and air differences short of war. Like the UN, it was not very successful at preventing war and its ambassadors did not have much real power. This was replaced by an alliance which seemed to follow the Earth model of a president and a senate (council). The exact powers and roles of each were still evolving during the first year. Sheridan seemed to surprise people when he exercised actual authority through the White Star fleet. He also had to bargain with the council and they were free to use their own military resources as they saw fit.
So what do we learn from all of this? Probably the biggest lesson is that science fiction writers don't waste much effort on designing new types of government. Or, given the limited time available in a movie or TV series, the writers choose to save time by using types of government that are familiar to the viewers.
(note - I'm doing this all from memory. I may get details wrong and I probably will mess up spelling.)
First, there was Earth. The central government was Earthdome in Geneva. We know it had a president and a Senate but I don't remember a House or an independent judiciary. This might be how Clark was able to grab so much power. They did have the Nightwatch which seemed to function separately, more as a party than an arm of government. This was probably meant to suggest the KGB officer in USSR submarines with Nazi overtones.
The Mimbari were ruled by the Council of Nine. The number 3 was basic to their civilization and the Council was three members from the three castes. Later it was replaced with a council that had five members from the Workers and two each from the Religious and Warrior castes. At times there was also an individual who was separate from the Council and advised it. He could override it when he felt he had to.
The Centari had an emperor and a secondary body, the Centarum. The Centarum chose the emperor and seemed to have some political power. There was an implication that the emperor had total power but often chose to delegate most of it to the Centarum. Presumably membership in the Centarum was either directly hereditary or indirectly with the major houses putting forth a representative.
The Narns were overthrown before we learned much about their government or their world. They had a ruling body known as the K'aree and G'kar was the youngest member. How did you get to be a member? In the first season the Narn played up their role as the recent winners of a nationalist struggle against a colonial government. I'm going to take a guess here and say that they were set up something like Cuba in the 1960s with people who fought for the revolution getting government posts. After they Centari conquered them and left, G'kar refused to lead them and we have no idea what happened after that.
We know very little about the Vorlons and only slightly more about the Shadows. Kosh II said "We are all Kosh." On the other hand, Kosh II had a different personality than Kosh I and the two even fought. At the climax of the Great War, both races agreed to leave the galaxy. All of this implies that both races are individuals who can communicate through some form of telepathy to resolve all issues. No government would be needed in this case.
Babylon 5 itself started as sort of a UN, a place where the races could meet and air differences short of war. Like the UN, it was not very successful at preventing war and its ambassadors did not have much real power. This was replaced by an alliance which seemed to follow the Earth model of a president and a senate (council). The exact powers and roles of each were still evolving during the first year. Sheridan seemed to surprise people when he exercised actual authority through the White Star fleet. He also had to bargain with the council and they were free to use their own military resources as they saw fit.
So what do we learn from all of this? Probably the biggest lesson is that science fiction writers don't waste much effort on designing new types of government. Or, given the limited time available in a movie or TV series, the writers choose to save time by using types of government that are familiar to the viewers.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Government and Science Fiction
I got to wondering about this after watching Serenity. The movie was at least partly publicists through conservative websites. Why? Where is the conservative message? I can see it there a few different ways.
First, the biggest Republican stronghold these days is the south. Serenity should appeal there. The rebellion is the confederacy without the stain of slavery. We are told in the first two minutes that the outer worlds rebelled because of states' rights. They didn't want a strong central government telling them what to do.
Then there is the Libertarian ideal that the crew of the Serenity tries to live. They don't think of it that way but it is there.
We don't know much about the Federation. It has a Senate but no House is mentioned so we can assume that it is a single-house legislature. We have no idea if there is an administrative wing or if the Senate runs everything. We do know that they have a strong military.
This matches the Empire in Star Wars. There is a Senate and a military (and eventually an Emperor) which was originally inspired by Rome.
Then there is Star Trek and their Federation. In the original series the Federation seemed like a natural extension of the United States. The cold war between the Federation and the Klingons with the Romulans on the side matched the politics at the time with the USSR and China as our rivals. The relationship between the Federation and Star Fleet was never quite explained. Maybe it matches NATO with individual worlds contributing to a unified force. We do know that there was one star ship crewed by Vulcans.
By the Next Generation the Federation was closer to the European Union than the USA. Members got to keep their local customs and traditions but had to adapt laws and economic policy. Star Fleet was a generalized force with aliens freely mixing in the crews.
Why is Star Trek's Federation god and the others bad? I guess it is because of respect for individual rights but that is never made clear. Or, it could be that the Federation was good because our protagonists were part of the military while in Star Wars and Serenity they were opposed to the military.
I will examine Babylon 5's many governments later. It will take an entire post by itself.
First, the biggest Republican stronghold these days is the south. Serenity should appeal there. The rebellion is the confederacy without the stain of slavery. We are told in the first two minutes that the outer worlds rebelled because of states' rights. They didn't want a strong central government telling them what to do.
Then there is the Libertarian ideal that the crew of the Serenity tries to live. They don't think of it that way but it is there.
We don't know much about the Federation. It has a Senate but no House is mentioned so we can assume that it is a single-house legislature. We have no idea if there is an administrative wing or if the Senate runs everything. We do know that they have a strong military.
This matches the Empire in Star Wars. There is a Senate and a military (and eventually an Emperor) which was originally inspired by Rome.
Then there is Star Trek and their Federation. In the original series the Federation seemed like a natural extension of the United States. The cold war between the Federation and the Klingons with the Romulans on the side matched the politics at the time with the USSR and China as our rivals. The relationship between the Federation and Star Fleet was never quite explained. Maybe it matches NATO with individual worlds contributing to a unified force. We do know that there was one star ship crewed by Vulcans.
By the Next Generation the Federation was closer to the European Union than the USA. Members got to keep their local customs and traditions but had to adapt laws and economic policy. Star Fleet was a generalized force with aliens freely mixing in the crews.
Why is Star Trek's Federation god and the others bad? I guess it is because of respect for individual rights but that is never made clear. Or, it could be that the Federation was good because our protagonists were part of the military while in Star Wars and Serenity they were opposed to the military.
I will examine Babylon 5's many governments later. It will take an entire post by itself.
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