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Despite the fact that I like history and I like movies,  I don’t think a lot about about the history of the movie industry.  But I was reading the other day about the 1964 movie The Fall of the Roman Empire, which I’d never even heard of, but sounds very interesting, as it has a very strong cast.  (Too bad Edward Gibbon didn’t get screenwriting credit.)

The film was a fairly bad box office failure, reminding me of another epic historical film that famously lost money: Cleopatra, which I blogged about here.  It wasn’t that people didn’t want to see Cleopatra; it was just that it was so expensive it couldn’t make back its massive cost.

It seems like “epic” movies were big in the 1960s, until they ran into bombs like Cleopatra, at which point the industry turned towards smaller, more “personal” movies, until George Lucas and Steven Spielberg came along and turned things back toward the epic scale.

I think “epic” movies–think movies with ornate sets and large crowds–became prohibitively expensive to make, so they turned away from them in the ’70s.  Then the advent of CGI made it possible for the genre to be resurrected.  Look at the Wikipedia article on historical epic films, and take note of the dates:

Examples of historical epics include Intolerance (1916), Gone with the Wind (1939), The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Cleopatra (1963), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Barry Lyndon (1975), Gandhi (1982), Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997), Joan of Arc (1999), Gladiator (2000), Troy (2004), Alexander (2004), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and Les Misérables (2012).

Now, the “new” epics are not as really the same as the “old” epics–it’s hard to put your finger on exactly how, but there is a feeling of unreality about the new CGI based movies.  They lack “grittiness”–a term normally associated with the non-epics made in the 1970s, but which applies to the macro scale as well.

“Capriccio Romano”, by Bernardo Bellotto. 1740s. Image via Wikipedia.

It can be done–one reason I think the Star Wars prequels are better than people give them credit for is that they do a better job emulating the “feel” of the bygone epic films than most other modern epics do.  George Lucas may be over-reliant on CGI, and he may have done more than anyone else to usher in the era of cheap epics, but he himself knows what he’s doing when it comes to CGI effects.   This could just be because Lucas (and Spielberg) are old enough to remember the era of the original epic movie era, and so can understand them enough to imitate them expertly.

But now that CGI is so prevalent, and makes epics so easy (relatively speaking) it makes all epics too overdone, too focused upon spectacle, and loses the deeper meaning.  I believe that some historians feel the same thing happened to cause the decline of Rome.   “Bread and circuses” indeed…

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I saw Star Trek Into Darkness yesterday.  There is a plot twist of sorts in the movie, which a friend of mine spoiled for me, although I don’t think it detracted from my enjoyment.  But be warned, I will spoil it in this review.

Let me begin by stating that I–alone of everyone who saw it, as near as I can tell–didn’t much care for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I thought the first Star Trek movie was better, even though it was 50% exterior shots of the Enterprise doing nothing. Wrath of Khan was lame because the titular character was a completely over-the-top cartoon villain, constantly quoting literature for no reason.

I mention Wrath of Khan because this movie is practically a remake of it.  Benedict Cumberbatch plays a criminal who turns out to be none other than the alternate-universe Khan.  In the beginning, his Khan isn’t that different from his Sherlock Holmes–he’s a brooding man in black who hangs around London.  But he does a good job as the film goes on–in my opinion, better than Ricardo Montalban did in the role.

Anyhow, in the first part of the film, Kirk is relieved of his command of the Enterprise for violating the Prime Directive like he always does.  This lasts for about ten minutes until the criminal-not-yet-known-as-Khan kills the new Enterprise commander and Kirk is reinstated and sent on a mission to bring him to justice, by firing a mysterious new kind of photon torpedoes at him.

Alas, it develops that Khan has gone to a Klingon planet, and a Federation ship cannot go there without risking war.  Even so, one Admiral  Marcus tells him to do it anyway; war with the Klingons is inevitable.  So, Kirk and the Enterprise and a mysterious new crew member named Carol head off. Except for Scotty, who resigns because he doesn’t like the look of the new torpedoes.

They arrive at the Klingon planet, send a message to the fugitive that they will blast him with torpedoes if he does not surrender, and are then attacked immediately by (what else?) Klingons, who are in turn attacked by a mysterious hooded figure who is obviously Khan.

This is my favorite scene in the movie: Khan is not shone close-up or center frame, but appears silhouetted against a large glowing orange background firing his weapons at the Klingons and taking them down with ease. When they are all disposed of, he turns his attention to Kirk and asks “how many of those torpedoes are there?”  When the reply comes: “72”, Khan immediately says “I surrender.”

It’s a great scene, and very unnerving.  Here you have this obviously highly-capable villain who could easily take on the three people sent to capture him, and yet he is surrendering to them.  Normally in these action-adventure flicks, it’s the heroes who get captured by the villains at this stage of the game.

Unfortunately, the film goes downhill after that.  There are revelations that Admiral Marcus has been lying, trying to start a war with the Klingons, that Khan’s people are in cryogenic pods sealed in the torpedoes, that Marcus revived them for his war… bottom line, Marcus is a jerk, but Khan is ruthless and willing to harm innocents in his mad quest for vengeance.  After many explosions and lots of running, falling and punching, it all gets sorted out, with the heroes none the worse for wear.

Spock gets overly-emotional at the end.  It’s out of character, as is the romance between him and Uhura.  Dr. McCoy also does something unbelievably stupid when he neglects to save a sample of Khan’s miraculously regenerating cells.  They are an incredibly useful for medical purposes, and yet he barely pays them any mind?   Too often, the script uses clever one-liners at the expense of characterization.  There is also a pointless cameo by Leonard Nimoy, reprising his role as original Spock.

Star Trek used to have a lot of talking, punctuated by the occasional fight.  These new movies are mostly fighting punctuated by banter.  It may be a bit higher-quality banter than you’d get in most sci-fi action movies, but still that’s what it is.

It’s a mildly entertaining film. Kirk is a good hero, and Khan is a good villain.  It’s a shame they don’t get to interact more, because what scenes they have are very well done.   I felt like there was more verbal sparring between Shatner and Montalban in the original than there was between Pine and Cumberbatch in this one.  If they had just remade the original more faithfully, shot-for-shot even, with this cast, I think it would have been better.

As the original Khan, literature student that he was, might have been moved to remark: “it is full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.”

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Here’s an interesting article describing an event in which two great filmmakers, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, forecast radical changes in the movie industry.  The bit that stood out for me:

Lucas and Spielberg also spoke of vast differences between filmmaking and video games because the latter hasn’t been able to tell stories and make consumers care about the characters.

There are two possibilities here:

  1. This is an attempt to paraphrase that oversimplifies, and consequently loses the sense of what they said.
  2. Lucas and Spielberg don’t know what they’re talking about.

If they actually said anything remotely like that, they simply have not been paying attention.  Video games have been telling stories since the beginning.  “Super Mario Bros.” is the story of a man trying to rescue a princess from a giant turtle.  It’s not a great story, you may say, but it’s a story all the same.  And there have been films that were just as bad (if not worse) in the story department...

As for this “hasn’t been able to make consumers care about characters” business, that’s even more of a laugh.  I like Lucas’s Star Wars films quite a bit, but Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic II can put any character Lucas ever wrote to shame. BioWare had to actually go back and try to “fix” the ending to one of their games because fans were so anxious to know what happened to their favorite characters.

Perhaps their confusion can be explained by the remainder of the paragraph from the same story:

Which isn’t to say [games and movies] aren’t connected. Spielberg, in fact, has teamed with Microsoft to make a “TV” show for Xbox 360 based on the game Halo and he is making a movie based on the Electronic Arts game Need for Speed.

Well, there’s the problem.  If those two titles are what they think video games are like, I can see they would have the wrong idea.

Here’s what’s ironic about this: these two cinema legends are saying there are huge problems with the movie industry, and then going on to exemplify one of the problems themselves: arrogance.

It’s even worse, though, because it’s not just the movie industry that thinks games can’t compete in terms of story and characters–it’s the game industry, as well!  The powerful entities in it, at least.  And to complete the irony, the most vapid, characterless, hackneyed, special effects-driven games are churned out in the name of being “cinematic”!

I hope gaming doesn’t get ruined trying to emulate the methods of an “imploding” industry.

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I’ve written on here before about how film adaptations of books are usually (though not always) unsuccessful, because the stories told in books are usually optimized for book form, and so don’t work as well on screen.  But what about books adapted from movies? Do they have the same problem?

Again; yes, usually.  But sometimes they can complement the movie well. I think it’s actually easier for a novelization to enhance a movie than for a movie to enhance a book.  You can probe the motivations and details of the characters more thoroughly on the page. But with movie adaptations, it’s more likely you’ll lose content rather than gain it.

An example of a bad novelization is the Star Wars: Attack of the Clones book by R.A. Salvatore. The whole thing feels off. It lacks much of the quick pacing of the movie, and when we get to “hear their thoughts”, as it were, the characters don’t really match up with how they seem to be acting in the film.

You don’t have to look far for a much better novelization, though:  Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover is a great adaptation that does a very good job illuminating other aspects of the story and fleshing out the characters in a way not possible in the movie.  One thing that’s not communicated in the movie, but which Stover includes, is the point that Anakin is very sleep-deprived during the events of the story. This helps make his decisions much more understandable.

I read a novelization of the movie The Mummy Returns, and it was about what you’d expect for a novelization of a popcorn action-adventure flick.  It’s entertaining on the screen, but dire on the page.  I think many novelizations really are nothing more than cash-ins.

One question that occurred to me as I was thinking about this issue: between books and movies, which medium do you think is more conducive to nuance and subtlety in storytelling? My first inclination was to say “books”, but then it is true that you have to spend a lot more time describing something in a book than in a film. “A picture is worth a thousand words”, as they say. What do you think?

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Spoilers ahead!

As you probably know, the film is a prequel of sorts to Scott’s Alien, which I have never seen.  Nor have I seen any of the sequels.  So, I can’t comment on what the events depicted in this film mean for the rest of the series.

The film begins with some archaeologists finding cave paintings of giants pointing at a constellation of stars.  These paintings match up with similar ancient artworks from other, distant civilizations. Based on this, a wealthy old man finances an expedition on the spaceship Prometheus to this constellation to meet the alien creatures presumed to be there. The man explains in a video to the crew—after they have woken up from years in suspended animation—that he will be dead by now, but his dream is that they meet the aliens. This is also where the film’s best line occurs–“By the time you see this, I will be dead.  May I rest in peace.”

The main characters are the two archaeologists, Drs. Elizabeth Shaw and Charles Holloway, a robot named David, and the cold, corporate-type heading the mission.  The supporting crew of the good ship Prometheus are all a bunch of outrageously clichéd and stereotyped characters, most of whom are so undisciplined and incompetent that it’s easy to see why they need David to run the entire ship.

Naturally, they go exploring caverns within the alien planet and soon enough some of the obnoxious secondary characters get attacked by aliens. Gradually, as crew members become infected, they ultimately conclude that the humanoid aliens–the giants in the paintings–were wiped out by a sort of bio-weapon they were creating—to wit, snake-like aliens found roaming around the tunnels. Despite this, the wealthy old man, who is not dead after all but had been secretly in suspended animation, has gone to talk to the last surviving alien.

Unfortunately, said alien reacts about like you would expect, killing the old man and ripping apart the android.  Then he blasts off in his spaceship and Dr. Shaw somehow intuits that he’s going to destroy the Earth.  Luckily, the crew of the Prometheus makes a suicide attack on his vessel, and bring it to the ground.  He survives, and pursues Dr. Shaw into a wrecked escape pod, but she is saved at the last minute when one of the snake-like aliens attacks the humanoid alien.  The film ends with Dr. Shaw stealing an alien ship and flying off to find the real alien home world.

If that summary seemed rushed, I apologize—but so did the movie.  It always seemed to be building to some big payoff, only to have the big payoff happen in a rush and then hurry on to the next thing.  There was a rather  disturbing scene which I shall not describe, but which is moved on from so quickly it feels unbelievable, given the circumstances.

The acting in the film is very good. It’s too good actually, because the acting outpaces the quality of the characters.  The biggest exception to this is Charlize Theron, who plays the corporate commander of the mission—her acting is mediocre, but then so is her character, so it’s hard to blame her.

Michael Fassbender plays David, whose most notable character trait is that he is obsessed with the movie Lawrence of Arabia.  Fassbender does a good job channeling Peter O’Toole-as-Lawrence, but it’s not clear why David does this, except maybe that they thought by inserting references to a better movie, they could raise the quality of their own. The robot’s motivations are generally very hard to follow, and it was never completely clear to me who he was working for.  He seems to make decisions based solely on what needs to be done to advance the plot.

Noomi Rapace does a very good job imbuing Dr. Shaw with some charisma and likeability, which is vital because otherwise the movie would be unwatchable.  You can’t help but root for her character, despite the fact that a lot of what she and everyone else on the mission does is stupid.  Or if not stupid, utterly inexplicable.  (Actually, the assignments break down like this: utterly inexplicable plot-driving actions: David.  Obviously stupid actions: everyone else.)

It’s never clear why or how things occur: how does Shaw know the humanoid alien is going to destroy the Earth?  How does the pilot suddenly figure out that it’s an alien weapon-making plant?  How did they even manage to make the giant leap that there must be intelligent life on this one planet in this constellation based on some cave paintings?  It’s a weak basis for launching a trillion-dollar space mission.

I read on IMDb that Guillermo del Toro delayed his film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella At The Mountains of Madness because Prometheus was so similar to his plans for the film.  I’m surprised I didn’t realize it until I read Del Toro’s quote, but yes, this is not surprising, since the plot of Prometheus is similar to Lovecraft’s book.  Both stories include explorers finding remnants of an alien civilization driven to the point of extinction by monsters of their own creation.  In both stories the aliens are suggested to have created humanity.  Prometheus even includes the same kind of chases through dark mountain tunnels described in Mountains of Madness.

The difference, as I might have predicted, is in certain subtle touches that make Mountains more interesting.  In Lovecraft’s novel, the “creator” aliens are treated as tragic figures, destroyed by their own scientific ingenuity.  (Like Frankenstein or, “the Modern Prometheus”) In Prometheus, it’s just one set of bad aliens vs. another set of bad aliens.  Even more significantly, at the end of Mountains, there is ambiguity as to what the final horror was. The reader never learns what Danforth saw behind the mountains.  There is some ambiguity in Prometheus‘s ending as to what the creator aliens were doing, but it feels more like ambiguity resulting from sloppy writing than a deliberate effect.

I realize after reading this, you must think I hated this movie.  I certainly  didn’t think it was great, but I didn’t hate it either.  Apart from the one disturbing scene, I found it a decent suspense flick while watching it, and most of the problems didn’t become apparent until I started to think about it afterwards.  It’s just that the film ultimately lacks anything really frightening or intellectually stimulating. It would have been better if it had ended with the alien setting off for Earth, his motivations open to interpretation, and Shaw and the rest were left to fend for themselves on the alien world.

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“The fans are all upset. They’re always going to be upset. Why did he do it like this? And why didn’t he do it like this? They write their own movie, and then, if you don’t do their movie, they get upset about it.”–George Lucas

I was thinking a bit more about the Mass Effect 3 ending.  I may do a post later on with my thoughts on it specifically, but while I was thinking about it, the idea occurred to me that it was so disappointing because it was so anticipated.  Fans had years to think about how the Mass Effect series would end; and so whatever happened would likely disappoint them.  It is an intrinsically bad ending, don’t get me wrong, but its badness was amplified by how much everyone had been thinking about it.

The same thing happened, for me anyway, with the Harry Potter series.  A big plot point, discussed by fans and even used in the advance marketing of the last book was “is Snape good or evil”?  Everybody had two years to think about this question, and we all knew what was going to happen.  Even if you bet on the wrong outcome, chances were you’d heard alternate theories that turned out to be correct. It may have made it sell better to promote the debate, but it weakened the book’s dramatic power.

It’s hard to surprise your audience with twists when you are telling a story with long intervals between each installment.  The only way out is to not leave clues to what’s coming, but then the endings or plot twists will feel unsatisfying; like they just came out of nowhere.  The best plot resolutions have to have been logically set up beforehand.

Sometimes a writer can stumble on some good twist in the middle of a series.  For instance, few people see the famous twist in The Empire Strikes Back coming, unless someone has spoiled them on it.  I’ve heard that this is because George Lucas only decided to do it after A New Hope was released, so he hadn’t left enough clues to give it away before hand, but was able to satisfactorily retrofit his twist on to the second film with the vague setup given in the first. But he was very lucky.

Lucas also didn’t have the internet to contend with.  If he had, some random fan probably would have accurately guessed the ending by pure chance while speculating on some forum.  I see this as the inevitable fate of the Half-Life video game series: if they ever do release Half-Life 3, there is no way someone won’t have already guessed what the deal is with the G-Man and posted a huge essay about their theories to be discussed on some forum.

There’s no question that internet fandom has intensified this problem; for it enables like-minded people to interact and ponder their favorite series.  I don’t think this was as much of a problem before the internet, even though there were stories that appeared in installments in magazines and the like.

This problem is lessened a bit if you are not doing a sequel that directly continues a particular story.  J.J. Abrams was very smart to come up with the alternate timeline business for his new Star Trek movies, because it pretty much allowed him to do whatever he wanted.   And although it still does not really live up to its title, I think a lot of criticism from Fallout fans of Fallout 3 was blunted because it was set far away from the other games.  In other words, it’s easier to do a series that is a loosely-related group of stories in a certain setting or around a set of themes than it is to tell one coherent story over installments. And it’s easiest of all to just tell your story in one shot.  To bring us back to Mass Effect 3, I’m convinced that had they condensed the story of the whole series into one game–with the same endings–they would have gotten way fewer complaints.  On the other hand, they also would have made less money.

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I saw most of the classic movie The Invisible Man on TV last night.  I was surprised by how good it was, almost entirely due to the performance of Claude Rains.  I’ve mentioned before that he was a great actor, and this movie really shows it.  It’s a tough role, since a lot of it is just voice over work for his invisible scenes, and during his actual screen time he’s covered by this weird bandage-and-sunglasses outfit.

The plot is that a scientist discovers a chemical mixture that makes him invisible, and then gradually goes mad with a desire for power as a result of it.  The scene where he is outlining his plan for world domination to his terrified friend is especially chilling.

 

Now, as I think I have mentioned on here before, I don’t like horror stories that explain everything bizarre that happens in them with rational, scientific explanations.  That kills the mystery, and mystery is important in horror.  I also don’t like horror stories where the horror is nothing really weird or alien, but just a lot of wanton criminal brutality. Both of these thing are true of The Invisible Man however, and yet I’d have to say that from what I saw, it’s the best of the  “Universal monsters” series.  How can this be?

Well, in my opinion, because it’s not really a horror story.  I don’t know why it was billed as such. It’s really more of a psychological thriller that tries to show what happens to the man’s mind once he gets power combined with a sense of having been persecuted in his past.  It’s a morality tale on the old “power corrupts” model, as far as I can see.  The invisibility thing is just a plot device to explore this.  Maybe it’s more clear in the book, which I have not read.

It’s still not a great movie–some of the supporting cast seemed to think they were in a comedy, and while the special effects must have been stunning at the time, they look fairly lame now. But it is rather interesting all the same, and much more compelling than, for example, any of the old “Mummy” movies.

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The word is that J.J. Abrams might be making a movie based on the inexplicably popular video game series Half-Life. (My analysis of the overrated Half-Life 2 is here.)

Adaptations fail in the majority of cases because a story is usually engineered specifically for its original medium.  As mediocre as Half-Life the game is, it would be way worse as a movie.  So, they really can’t do an adaptation.  It would have to be some other story in the Half-Life universe.   But the Half-Life universe is, honestly, pretty mediocre itself.

I frankly don’t see any way this could turn out well, unless they get Ross Scott to play Gordon Freeman.  I’m sorry, but Freeman’s Mind is the best thing to come out of that franchise, and hopefully at some point the contractual imbroglio will be resolved and Scott can resume making it.

As for Valve’s Portal series, which Abrams might also adapt, it is a much better game, but again it seems like a waste of time to adapt it. This is precisely because it is so well-suited to game form.  The gameplay is an integral part of what makes it fun.  It would still be amusing, I guess, to hear the humorous lines, but the game lets you do that and enjoy the gameplay. You can have your cake and eat it too.

Now, there are cases where the original medium is not the best, and there are some games that might have been better as something else.  Metal Gear Solid is probably better as a movie, at least from Sons of Liberty onward. Neverwinter Nights 2 probably would be better as a book.  Duke Nukem would have been better if it had never existed at all. But in general, stories are designed for the medium they were originally created in.

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I was too busy to address this when the news broke; but let me just say that I think the Star Wars/Disney thing is terrific news.  I am an avid, if somewhat unorthodox, Star Wars fan.  I like the prequels more than the originals.  I think most of the “Special Edition” changes were good.  I think the end of KotOR II is perfect, and that the game as a whole is the best thing ever set in the Star Wars universe.

Many fans are worried about it; they’re scared it will “ruin” Star Wars.  Star Wars fans are, I have come to realize, about the most fragile bunch of pessimistic nervous Nellies I’ve ever seen.  Honestly, they’re worse than Democrats when it comes to having no confidence in their own side.

I’m not saying it’s a sure thing that the new movie will be good.  Maybe it will be worse than the “Holiday Special”.  But Star Wars isn’t going to continue at all unless somebody is willing to take some risks.  It all goes back to what I said here, during the most recent existential threat to Star Wars.

Sure, it won’t be exactly like A New Hope all over again, but so what?  As a melancholy Vrook remarks to Zez-Kai Ell in KotOR II when they return to the destroyed Jedi Enclave: “It is not as it was…”  And as Zez-Kai Ell thoughtfully responds: “But, perhaps, that is for the best.”

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I happened to see some of the 1979 movie The Amityville Horror on TV the other night, which was convenient coming on the heels of talking about The Haunting.  I liked it pretty well, although several scenes bore a close resemblance to some in the earlier film The Exorcist.   I’ve already noted one similarity here, and there was also a scene where a police detective talks to a priest that resembled a scene from that famous horror film.  Even so, I thought Amityville seemed to be a vastly superior film.  I want to see the whole thing some time.

It’s not as subtle as The Haunting, but it still moves slower and more insidiously than the “shock” horror movies of today.  And I like that.  I was a little disappointed in the ending where they escape from the house.  In the allegedly “true story” on which the film is based, the family did not explain what had finally caused them to leave the house, saying it was “too frightening”.  Now, whatever you think of their motivations, you can’t deny that this “leave it to the reader/viewer” technique is way scarier.  The movie should have done that, too.