John Carter
This past weekend so the release of Disney's John Carter (Disney: The first distributor ever to do summer blockbusters in the Winter!), based on the literally 100-year-old Barsoom series of pulp adventures written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. John Carter of Mars, as the franchise is referred to, is considered the pretext to most of the great works of sci-fi and fantasy in the 20th century, having inspired the likes of Flash Gordon, which inspired Buck Rogers, which inspired Star Wars, which inspired a whole bunch of stuff, and so on. And now that we live in an age of high-budget special effects and brand-name recognition being the key to success, it's only natural that Burroughs's version of the Red Planet become the next great Hollywood blockbuster. And yet...it doesn't look that good.
In its opening weekend, John Carter made $30 million domestic and $70 million internationally, making for a total of $100 million (those high school math classes really paid off, didn't they?). Now, a sane person would be overjoyed at the prospect of making a tenth of that money over three days, but remember, this is Hollywood. John Carter is estimated to have cost $250 million, which means that its impressive opening weekend raked in enough money to pay the special effects guy who made Tars Tarkas have green skin. So why did this movie do so (relatively) bad at the box office?
For starters, the advertising. Omitting any mention of Mars, Barsoom, space, green four-armed people, etc. from the title of the movie buries the lead. A movie called John Carter just sounds...boring. You have a space epic involving alien lizard men, giant ape monsters, and a wicked hot red-skinned lady in skimpy dress (seriously, this movie is worth seeing for Lynn Collins alone. She kills it in the movie and looks jaw-droppingly fantastic while doing it). Show off what you got!
Next comes the fact that there wasn't as much merchandising. Disney shot themselves in the foot when they didn't release all nine books in the Barsoom series together, or any toys to promote the film. This is a part of Hollywood that I know very little about (as opposed to the rest of the film industry, which I clearly have a masters degree in), but doesn't it seem like a kid would get more excited about a John Carter movie if he had a John Carter action figure with kung-fu grip and little plastic swords he can stab himself in the eye with? I sure would be.
Finally, there were the reviews: They weren't positive. Last I checked, Rotten Tomatoes has the movie at 51% approval, or by high school standards, an F. And, admittedly, the film is flawed. The pacing is slow, the mythology is mostly dull, the Thark race is the most interesting part of the movie and they're mostly a B-Story, the villains range from boring to confusing, and Taylor Kitsch is only servicable as an action hero. However, I still had a lot of fun with it. The action works, the visuals are awesome, there's genuine comedy in it, and, again, Lynn Collins kills it as Dejah Thoris. I'm asking you to please, PLEASE see this movie; if it gets a sequel, it'd probably be a lot better.
The Lorax
Beating John Carter at the box office was The Lorax, Illumination Entertainment's adaptation of Dr. Seuss's 1971 children's book. This film has captured my interest without me having to see it because of the baggage it brings as an adaptation.
See, based solely on speculation, my generation seemes to be much more nostalgic than the previous ones. I think it's because our nostalgia is more rooted in the media we absorbed as children, and how entertainment in the late 80's/early 90's was more specialized than it was at other times and children's entertainment in particular was more distinct and varied. That's why it interests me whenever people dig up relics of their nostalgia and point out the more intellectual aspects of it that they can see now that they're adults. Dr. Seuss's books a prime example of this because they're, to a degree, universal and because a lot of them do have bigger ideas at work. "The Sneetches" was about antisemitism. "Yertle the Turtle" was about Nazi Germany. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" was a reinterpretation of the Germanic epic poem Beowulf, told from the perspective of its initial villain, the monster Grendel. Likewise, "The Lorax" was blantantly about environmentalism.
A lot of the reviews I'm seeing for the Lorax movie is that it's broad message gets lost or is undercut. The book was a bleak cautionary tale about the dangers of overconsumption and short-sighted business practices; it's pretty much an anti-corporate message. The movie tries the same thing, despite the fact that it has 70 corporate tie-ins, including an SUV. Furthermore, it apparently changes the antagonistic Once-Ler's character from an opportunistic businessman to a wide-eyed innocent led astray by his greedy family. The primary antagonist of the film becomes corporate head Aloysius O'Hare, a man so cartoonishly evil, he's one business venture away from making enemies with Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
The reason The Lorax movie fascinates me is because when I first saw the trailer (because my ADD-rattled brain doesn't recognize a movie as existing until it's being pitched to me), I wondered if Hollywood could take a book so renowned for its style and its message, stretch it into ninety minutes, and keep the style and message in tact. In short: No, apparently they couldn't. But, I probably shouldn't say, as I haven't actually seen the damn thing. Maybe I'll catch a matinee sometime this week, because god knows I'm not paying a full ten bucks for this crap.
Mass Effect 3
A week ago saw the release of Mass Effect 3, the conclusion to Bioware's video game trilogy. The Mass Effect games have been highly praised for their storytelling and characterization, and that's on full display in the third game. However, the ending of the game and series has gotten a lot of people angry, and I guess I can see where they're coming from, but I really don't have a problem with it, and I'll tell you why. Incidentally, I'm going to be absolutely spoiling the ending, so be warned.
Set in the distance 26th century, Mass Effect follows the exploits of intergalactic soldier Commander Shepard, and his ongoing attmept to prepare for the coming of the Reapers, a race of ancient machines who wipe out nearly all organic life in the universe every 50,000 years. Mass Effect 3 begins with the Reapers landing on Earth and taking over, driving Shepard and his allies off and forcing them to forge new alliances across the galaxy and build an army to take on the Reapers, while simultaneous ensuring the creation of "The Crucible", a weapon that is capable of destroying every Reaper across the universe.
The final hours of the game are Shepard's assault on Earth, as he fights of Reaper ground troops and makes his way to the catalyst that will ensure the Crucible's functionality. When he gets there, after friends and enemies have died and he himself has been gravely injured, Shepherd is confronted by the Crucible itself, an AI that explains the Reaper's goals and origins and explains how Shepard can defeat them.
What Shepard does is decided by choices the player makes not only throughout the game, but throughtout the previous two games. One of the impressive things about the Mass Effect series is that players can import their saves from old one into new ones; i.e. the Commander Shepard a player created and made choices with in Mass Effect 1 can carry on to Mass Effect 2 and 3, which changes the events of each game based on the previous ones. Yet with the ending of Mass Effect 3, the three different methods of defeating the Reapers all have essentially the same results: Shepard dies, the Reapers stop attacking Earth, the mass relays (the technology through which intergalactic travel is made possible) are destroyed and Shepard's allies survive, albeit having crashed and stranded on an alien world. Many gamers have taken the endings as Bioware saying, "Hey, remember when we said your choices in the previous games had weight and meaning in the series? Well forget that! We're too lazy to think of different endings, so here's this one played again three times!"
The gaming community has not taken this well. Polls and petitions have gone up across the internet, asking Bioware to release downloadable content that will change the ending of the game, providing more diversity and closure to this epic narrative. To an extent, I get what they're saying; something as big as Mass Effect deserves a conclusion that feels like the culmination of three games worth of space travel, grand heroes, larger-than-life villains, love, loss and intergalactic adventure. But really, I don't mind the ending, mostly because of my personal experience with it.
See, before the assault on Earth, I assumed that it was possible for Shepard to fail his mission and for the Reapers to continue their mass extinction without anything to stop them. This means that during the final mission, every time someone said something about the allied forces losing, my heart seized up, and I worried that a galaxy of sentient life was about to go down the toilet because I screwed up. So when I got to the end and Shepard sacrificed himself to destroy the Reapers, I was relieved. I was happy in my success and cautiously optimistic that my allies did survive. And really, I was just happy with the story. To dust off an old quote, "It's not the destination, it's the journey". Everything building up to that final moment on the Crucible was an emotional roller coaster and a fantastic story. Mass Effect 3 is an excellent game, regardless of the ending, and that's all there is to it.
Whew. That was longer than I expected. Still, fun. If you have any thoughts on those things I talked about, send 'em my way. If you have any ideas on what I should talk about, do the same. I'll see you next time.
