The Intense Beauty that Surrounds the Human Struggle
To me, historical fantasy isn’t about swords and wizards. And though it’s nice to have these things, it isn’t really about taverns and dungeons either. It certainly isn’t about elves and dwarves, despite what video game makers seem to think. So what is it that sets it apart from science fiction as an imaginative genre?
No, sci-fi has these too.
I can only speak my own thoughts on the matter. A true historical fantasy should depict the contrast and commingling of good and bad. We should see the ugliness of mankind’s deeds and the nobility of human emotions, the savagery of nature as well as its indescribable beauty, set side-by-side. For this is our world.
Neither fantasy nor sci-fi mean anything unless they somehow evoke the reality we live in. And while sci-fi (generally) explores mankind’s relationship to technology and discovery, it’s fantasy’s place to explore our links to our past and to the natural world around us. The best of both these genres also explore our connections to one another. A story without relatable characters leaves us bored pretty darn quick.
And unfortunately, fantasy isn’t willing to step up to the plate the way sci-fi does.
Okay, okay, that was a highly generalized statement. Sci-fi has plenty of cookie-cutter or just plain badly-thought-out premises. But at least most sci-fi is built around an original idea of some kind. Or an idea that’s a pastiche of other people’s original ideas. Or maybe they’ll have the courtesy to come up with an alien race or monster that looks kind of different from other people’s aliens and monsters. Just not motherloving elves and dwarves and wizards again and again and again.
Screw elves. I want a fantasy about humans. I want them to wear burlap and huddle in the dark afraid of predators. Let them dig out the earth with hand tools made of wood, and build their houses and barns and castles with years of toil. I want to see humans loving and talking and betraying one another while they shape what they can of the world around them, even as its unfathomable vastness holds them in awe. That’s what I’d really like to see more of.
Ah, well. Better get back to writing. The only way any of us can experience our perfect stories is to create them ourselves.
Stupid Max Payne Movie
It was too much to hope that this movie would be good. But dammit, if any video game movie was going to be good, this one would have been it. Coming from the original, there’s actually a story friendly to the cinematic format, and angles left to be explored that the game left up to the imagination. The movie could have really expanded on the juicy concepts from the game itself, as well as reliving all the cool noir pulp that Max Payne always heaped on with a spoon.
Instead, the movie had a formulaic action film plot in which everything creative about the game it was based on was very carefully avoided (Danger: Spoilers Ahead). Max Payne, our rugged everyman hero, is a good cop thrust into a bad situation, trying to root out the corruption that seems to have seeped into every corner of his life. In this, they stuck to parts of the original story. You still have a dangerous psychotropic drug, Valkyr, circling the streets. It’s still connected to the deaths of Max Payne’s wife and child, and is still being circulated for all the wrong reasons after being covertly developed as a super-soldier drug for the military. But the movie only touches on these plot points as though it’s obligated to, rather than have Max Payne slowly discover the pieces one by one as he goes on his journey of revenge. Sure, he shoots a bunch of bad guys, fights an intimidating super-soldier villain, and discovers that his boss and old friend was the one responsible for his family’s death all those years ago. But that’s all there is to it: good man fights bad people. It’s just boring as hell.
It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but that’s the problem. What bothers me is that anyone watching this film will think that the game has exactly the same theme. It can line up with all the other reasons people think games are an inferior storytelling medium. You can enjoy the story if you have the right mindset, but in the end you’ll just say, “Oh, our hero goes out and shoots everyone who ever wronged him. What a childish fantasy.” And as far as the movie is concerned, that would be correct. Making the bad guys so eeeeeevil that you can then kill them with impunity is indeed a childish fantasy. But without playing the original, a viewer watching the film would have no way of knowing how ironically the game makers portrayed that idea.
In the original Max Payne, you, the player, indeed step into the shoes of a tough-as-nails cop out for revenge. You mow down hordes of faceless thugs, all in the service of discovering the next clue that will lead to the people behind the cover-ups and dirty, dirty corruption. You fill bodies with bullets and you smash faces with baseball bats, and by God you enjoy every minute of it. But the game is made in such a way that, in between each of your raging bloodbaths, you are forced to question your own motives. With every drug-fueled dream sequence and every vanquished enemy pleading for his life, the game drives a little nail further and further into the back of your mind. A voice appears, while you kill and kill and kill, a voice that seems to keep getting louder, always whispering: Maybe you’re not a hero exacting righteous vengeance. Maybe you’re just a psychopath.
Please, Max! No! No, Max, I'm sorry!
Hear your dead wife, begging you to stop doing…something? Hear your crying baby? Who killed your family again? It was those guys, right? Those guys you’re going to shoot and maim and beat to a bloody pulp. Who are they again? Oh, right, they killed your family. At least, you think they did. But they did, right? I’m going to kill those bastards. I’m going to kill them! I’m going to kill all of them!
And that’s video game Max Payne. That would have made for a kick-ass movie. And the one good thing about the Max Payne film was the way they portrayed the effects of Valkyr, so I know they could have done Max’s self-questioning dream sequences to great, maybe even iconic, effect.
But as usual, the chance was squandered. I honestly believe that Hollywood purposely half-asses its video game movies because it has no respect for them and wants video games to stay in the gutter where they belong. They’re okay with making money off their franchises, mind you, but they’ll never put any effort into truly adapting the spirit of a great game into what can be a great film. Instead, we just have Max Payne, another lackluster entry in the hall of shame that is video game movies. Games are never going to drag themselves up at this rate.
Why Fantasy Keeps Going Nowhere
I would kill for a good fantasy TV show. I have often argued, and I still maintain, that fantasy as a genre has as much potential for creativity as science fiction. The people who make it are just much, much lazier. The history of fantasy on television reflects this, as all fantasy television shows are bad. Even the good ones are bad (forgive me, Xena). The thing is, fantasy has what sci-fi doesn’t: a collection of tropes so well-known, so recognizable, so easy to plug and play that they tempt the slothfulness of any writer, whether that writer is talented or not. Everybody who writes fantasy knows at the back of their minds that if they throw together a Dark Lord, a Beautiful Maiden, a Simple Farm Lad and a Prophecy involving a Magic Sword, they can just call it a day and no one will think twice about it. We just expect it at this point.
Something got me on this kick, of course. I checked out Legend of the Seeker, a relatively new show with a very impressive budget, considering its genre.1 Lots of hope to be had here, although I didn’t let my hopes get that high. There wasn’t much of a chance for that to happen, though, as the pilot consisted of the exact plot of A New Hope run through some sort of medieval fantasy translator. We’re talking a show where a person can literally watch the scenes go by, say in their head “I bet Simple Farm Lad here will find his parents dead and his cottage on fire in exactly five minutes,” and be right on the money. There was literally not a single thing in the pilot that could not have been randomly generated by a mildly retarded AI after it finished absorbing every paperback in the world to feature a sword, rose, castle or dragon on the cover.
Chronicles of Moronia, Book One.
Our hero, the Simple Farm Lad, is brash but stupid (of course). He runs into a Beautiful Maiden with the personality of a grapefruit who is annoyed by yet intrigued with him (naturally). He’s the long-lost object of some kind of Prophecy even though he’s a complete dunce, she’s far more skilled than he is but somehow can’t just go defeat the bad guy herself, the maguffins multiply and we all drown in seas of explanatory dialogue. The show’s best characters by far are the Wise Old Mage, who is at his heart also a cliché but played by a delightfully competent actor, and the main villain, who doesn’t have much to him beyond “dark and brooding” but looks a lot like the Prince of Persia. These two guys I enjoy watching, when the story centers on them.
As for the other characters on the show, I have a theory. A bus of Calvin Klein models, on its way to an underwear exhibition or something, overturned and crashed. The survivors, having gone feral, were discovered months later by a traveling Renaissance Faire, which clothed and fed them (well, clothed them anyway) and returned them to humanity. This not only explains why the characters spend most of their time standing around looking equally bored and confused, but also why they must constantly narrate their own lives through a stream of simplistic dialogue as though they would otherwise forget what they were doing mid-action. They wear quasi-medieval clothing and jaw about poor peasant’s tasks, but their body language suggests that they were never taught how to do anything but lean half-naked against things and glare intensely. At least Lucy Lawless always seemed at home plunging weapons into people’s vital organs.
It might seem like I’m being too harsh, but it’s hard to understate how much efforts like this disappoint me. This one has a budget, for god’s sake–-there are great sets and props and special effects that don’t look like someone drew on a filmstrip with a crayon. But none of this saves the tired, tired story and the Keanu Reeves-esque characters. Here’s the big secret seemingly kept from TV producers: great characters are what make or break a show. Programs like Star Trek and my still-beloved Xena had silly costumes, crappy props and often ludicrous storylines, but the characters were what made us want to watch. Their feelings, and the actions that resulted from them, seemed real to us. It’s on these kinds of connections that true fandoms are built. I know fantasy could do more of this if it wanted to. Just stop taking the easy way out.
- I know it’s based on a series of books by Terry Goodkind, but fantasy writers of both prose and live action share the same originality problems, so my complaints still apply. Besides, I didn’t want to read the damn books. [↩]
I Get to Rant About Avatar, Too
I didn’t want to watch Avatar. I knew I wasn’t going to like it. But too many people insisted I should, and I can’t properly criticize something I haven’t seen, anyway. And I must admit, there were aspects about it that I greatly enjoyed. Very rarely these days can visual effects be truthfully referred to as “groundbreaking,” but Avatar earns that compliment and then some. This film is the future of computer animation in cinema. It’s majestic to watch.
Visually, I mean. The story pisses me off.
This has already been pointed out more than once, but I have to say it in my own voice. Anyone who thinks this movie is a credit to Native American cultural portrayals is failing to grasp what it’s really about. I have no tolerance for Noble Savage bullshit, and neither should anyone else. In this day and age, the person who creates it usually means well by it, and so everyone joins in the cheering and people don’t realize that it’s just another form of dehumanization. But Avatar isn’t just a story about perfect people with a perfect culture, who sing with all the voices of the mountain and paint with all the colors of the wind, oh no. Enter the Essential White Hero, who will of course become their greatest warrior and wed the Chief’s Daughter and BLAH BLAH BLAH, even though he’s presumably never heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon or anything. This guy is a device to assuage the guilt of white people, and absolutely nothing more than that.
Have no fear, woodland creatures!
My problems with the script aren’t all ideological. Simply speaking to strength of narrative, this film had sucky characters (“sucky” being the professional term describing characters whose personalities consist only of a single trait, if that). Our hero appears to have no connection to humanity whatsoever, even though he’s, like, 26 and has presumably kissed someone and shared a candy bar with someone and played Mario Kart with someone and otherwise been privy to the nicer bits of the human race. This isn’t a Last of the Mohicans scenario, where the man has been raised by the natives and sees them as his family. He just literally stumbles into their world and is not only able to sever his previous identity without any difficulty, but will later become the perfect embodiment of their cultural ideal. Yeah, right.
The other characters are even worse. The Na’vi are a collection of various stereotypes, even down to the Young Brave who is already betrothed to the Chief’s Daughter, hates our white protagonist at first, finally recognizes him as his brother and leader, then dies valiantly in battle. You know, the guy who was probably supposed to be the actual hero of his people, but gets shunted aside to make room for a clumsy, clueless outsider, because we’re really more comfortable if the white guy does it. Then there’s Sigourney Weaver’s character, whose motivations are all over the map and whose sole purpose is to die, a collection of human buddies who are also only dimly defined, and a smattering of bad guys (pictured below) who I actually have no complaints about. Subtlety is the watchword here.
The script was obviously afraid that we’d have no idea what the movie was trying to tell us unless it held our hand the entire way, which is annoying in and of itself. But what got to me the most was that precisely zero of the human characters acted like humans. I’ve already mentioned how the hero appeared to have been raised in a sensory deprivation chamber judging by the emotional bonds he displayed towards the civilization that birthed him, bonds that, if possessed, might have actually created some tension for his character. The rest of the cast does no better–-the character played by Michelle Rodriguez, who understandably chokes when asked to commit genocide, later turns on the humans and kills dozens of them before going down. She’s a hardened marine, and many of these people were presumably her friends, whom she was willing to die beside the previous day. I just can’t buy her conflict-free turnaround. Finally, the part that really had me groaning was the very end, in which most of the remaining humans were herded onto their ships to return to Earth, never to be seen again. They will never, ever return to bother the Na’vi or bombard their planet with nuclear weapons against which they would have no defense, because it’s not like persistence is a major part of human nature or anything. We are, in fact, known galaxy-wide for our gracious acceptance of defeat.
I'm going home now.
All sarcasm aside, it’s true that there should only be one possible outcome to this plot: the flaming death of all the Na’vi. In many ways, that would actually be fitting. After all, the thing that makes white people’s history with Native Americans tragic, poignant and emotionally distressing is the fact that we succeeded in destroying them. That this movie insists on depicting a highly contrived victory, all made possible by a converted white dude no less, is just insult heaped upon insult. Avatar is not an homage to the beauty of Native American culture, but a white boy fantasy of living without guilt. Nobody should be inspired by this.
Look, I understand the desire to make the white guilt go away forever. I struggle with it myself. But indulging in daydreams about pure absolution, assimilation and acceptance into ethnic culture that is more than just acceptance, but complete and utter vindication: all this is a lie. The world isn’t fair, and if Native Americans have to watch their own culture slowly fade to nothing after centuries of abuse, then we can handle a little white guilt. We certainly aren’t going to redeem ourselves through pretending that we can just cast it off like an old, hole-ridden shirt because hey, we’re the best! We’ve got to accept this part of ourselves, because it will always be there. Life goes on, guys.
Nice Try, Disney
I’ve gone to see The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s new animated film, and I came back disappointed. Make no mistake, I’m grateful that this film exists and that it wasn’t half-assed. One thing I wouldn’t accuse the filmmakers of would be laziness. Every frame, each line of dialogue, sang of the hard work that went into this movie, and that’s a positive sign if nothing else. Many things about it, such as the voice acting, were superb. But it still wasn’t enough to rekindle my faith in Disney’s animation wing, or to challenge the notion that their Renaissance period is long dead.
For starters, the story was not as well told as in many previous Disney films. You might think it is because most Disney classics are based on fairy tales while Princess is a story Disney made up itself, but the reality is that Disney is essentially making up the story no matter what. In its basic form, a fairy tale is actually not cinematic at all. The raw story structure in most fairy tales is bizarre, dreamlike and rambling, and most of the impact of the story comes from symbolism rather than interpersonal drama. Disney’s “fairy tale” films are so heavily adapted as to be largely unique, as they have to add progression and focus to the plot and to flesh out the one-dimensional archetypical characters.
The story in Princess is not carelessly put together, but it lacks dynamic energy. It fulfills all its story needs in a paint-by-numbers sort of way, without giving the audience time to really get to know the characters or to become fully immersed in the setting. And this is the important part: the characters are interesting and likable and the setting is cool. But we are rushed from place to place and event to event so fast that we have no time to bond.
You spend about three seconds here.
What should be fascinating and evocative becomes a mushy blur, and we witness the actions of the characters while we’re still unclear as to what their motivations are. The villain especially suffers from this–he’s flavorful, unique, and badass, but we don’t know what he’s trying to accomplish until the middle of the film, and even then it doesn’t seem to make complete sense. “Surely such an interesting fellow must have more to him than that,” we think. Unfortunately, we never get to see any more.
Also, and this is key in a Disney animated feature, the music was generally uninteresting. Musical numbers, sex scenes, and fight sequences all suffer from the same form of misuse in a mediocre film: they are put in not to advance character or plot, but because the filmmaker figures “it’s about time we had one of these.” Many of the songs in Princess seem obligatory rather than sensational, seemingly cropping up whenever a new character is introduced, a plot development occurs, or the setting changes. The Cornerstone Disney Plot Songs are all present-–the heroine’s Longing Song, the Helper Song, the Love Song, and the Villain Song–-but too little character development is done to give them emotional weight. If you compare the use of music in Princess to something like The Little Mermaid, in which every song serves an important structural purpose (as well as being memorable and entertaining in its own right), it just can’t measure up.
Reading what I just wrote, it sounds as though I hated this movie, which actually isn’t true. It’s just that disappointment stings so much more than plain mediocrity. I was hoping for at least a Mulan level of quality, and I feel that The Princess and the Frog fell short. I was hoping, just as Disney was hoping, that this movie would be a needed shot in the arm for their flagging animation department, and help transfer Disney’s focus back to hand-drawn animation and away from awful 3-D and live-action treacle. Although I guess that the palpable effort they put into this film, and the somewhat underperforming result, matter less in that regard than its box-office returns. Perhaps Disney will release more traditional animated features in the future, and if this movie is the reason why, then it was all worth it.
I Hate You, Melissan!
Bitch, quit hiding behind all your summoned monsters and your elemental prince and fallen solar friends and your globe of blades and come and face me! Scared? I, the most powerful of the Children of Bhaal, Lord of Murder, shall be your end this day! Do you hear me? I’ve had more than enough of you. This ends here.
Ow! Hey, that’s mean! You’ll pay for that, just as soon as I’ve finished guzzling all sixteen potions of healing I have right here. You have got to be the sorriest foe I’ve faced thus far, you gigantic strumpet! You’re pathetic.
You’re not even an interesting villain. What, blind lust for power? Is that all you’ve got? Sure, Jon Irenicus was a bit of a crybaby, but at least he had motivations other than an “I Heart Murder” license plate. At least while I was chasing him across, through, and literally under all of goddamned Faerun I could occupy myself with contemplating how, beneath his snobby British mad scientist exterior, he was really an emo MySpace kid with pictures of the elven Queen taped to the inside of his locker.
Whereas you had nothing but your stupid twist. “Oh, I’m Melissan and I guide you to each Bhaalspawn you have to kill and I’m real nice, but then it turns out I’m going to slay you and steal your essence.” As if we all didn’t know you were a fucking bitch from the beginning!
Oh my god! You killed all my friends, you filthy whore! Quick, resurrect them! Minsc! Jaheira! Imoen! Haer’Dalis! Well, okay, maybe not Haer’Dalis, but I’ll still get you for killing him. It’s the principle of the thing.
What kind of a name is Melissan, anyway? All it is is Melissa with a goddamned random consonant on the end of it. What is that, supposed to strike fear into my very soul? And don’t think that putting it back to Amelyssan the Blackhearted changes anything. We’re always going to remember that you sucked at choosing aliases.
Melissan Joan Hart, fucking Priestess of Murder.
I don’t care if you are a Deathstalker and Bhaal’s formerly most trusted servant. Your history is probably so lame that Bioware didn’t even bother to make it up for you, and you’ve lived your whole life in the shadow of people who were born to be better than you at the one thing you’re good at: killing. That’s right, my Dad is the owner and CEO of Murder Ltd., and I’m his bratty kid that lounges by the pool and gets bitchin’ cars for my birthday, and you’re nothing but his fucking secretary. Chew on that while you’re ripping my intestines out from my eye sockets, you fat cow!
Ouch! Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!
I Love Fantasy, Except for Most of It
It would seem that the fantasy genre and a lack of originality should be diametrically opposed, but in my opinion they too often go hand-in-hand. By “the fantasy genre,” I mean that style of storytelling, whether through games or movies or literature, that transports the player/audience/reader into a world that departs dramatically from what we consider to be normal in our day-to-day realities. Thus, my definition of fantasy includes science fiction and surrealism, although these are also both distinct genres of their own. But personally, my main interest lies in “historical” or “classical” fantasy, the kind that takes its cue from human myth and the ancient world, the kind involving adventures and princesses and copious amounts of swords and sorcery.
This is my favorite type of fantasy, and it is also the type most likely to be derivative and uninspired.
We created a unique fantasy world, so our elves and orcs are slightly different from everyone else's.
You might ask why, if it is so often poorly done, it remains my favorite genre. To be honest, I can’t fully explain it myself. There is simply something about quasi-medieval settings that causes my heart to skip a beat. Something about the short, brutal, struggling lives most people led back then. Something about entire societies of people up to their necks in mud, superstition and cultural imperative, yet slogging onward towards hope and progress. In this way my vision of medieval fantasy more closely matches the interpretation of Terry Gilliam than it does that of J.R.R. Tolkien, which is odd considering that the latter is the template the entire genre is built on.
Must be a king, he hasn't got shit all over him.
Unfortunately, Terry Gilliam’s medieval fantasies are among few that I consider to be truly original. Movies and video games, especially, are guilty of simply reiterating the worlds of Lord of the Rings or its offshoot, D&D, over and over again. Don’t get me wrong, I love both those worlds, and gladly acknowledge that LotR practically invented the fantasy genre as we know it. But a continued reliance on classics at the expense of fresh ideas is weakening the genre overall.
