There used to be a time when I let things slide. Mediocrity would slip right by me and I wouldn’t even notice. Or maybe I’d wave at it. My point is, I didn’t have standards. What I did was good, regardless of how good it actually was.
Looking back, I shouldn’t have been surprised that my first attempt at a novel got so many rejections. For one, I now know that rejections are good. They show you’re doing something. But more importantly, it was crap. It was predictable. It wasn’t written all that well and I didn’t go to the pains I go to now to revise and edit things. I had help in the second go-round, sure, but it still wasn’t all that great.
I know, now, that the problem might be that I spend too much time revising. Trying to get my work to be perfect could consume all of my time. It’s not going to be perfect. It’ll never be perfect. The idea will be to get it to a point of “good enough to not suck.”
I approach role-playing in games the same way. I used to let myself get away with things like “my character is the son of a god” or “ye olde powerful dragons blessed me with immortality.” I realize now how silly, unnecessary and downright juvenile those ideas are, and I’ve ranted about it at length.
Like my manuscripts, I’m worried about my characters being good enough to not suck. This pertains to both their backstories and how I play the game. It’s a lot easier to avoid cognitive dissonance when the tank of the party messes up a pull and wipes the group, when their character’s description has them being a beautiful, all-powerful, liked by everyone and lust object of all NPCs Mary Sue. “So you’ve seduced the Queen of the Dragons and kicked the Lich King’s ass in single combat, but can’t keep the aggro in the first pull of this dungeon. Right.”
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe this is coming off as me being a bit of a dick. I know this is stuff some people don’t want to hear. They don’t like the notion of somebody disliking their special little snowflake of an on-line avatar. And I might get told that not sharing my knowledge with others who don’t have as much experience as I do with this sort of thing is rude, even mean.
But sitting down across from a struggling writer and helping them get a better idea of how to frame their narrative, breathe life into their characters and have the plot make sense is one thing. Dealing with strangers who can’t be bothered to use proper fucking punctuation is another.
Maybe it’s pretentious to have standards. Maybe I’m a mean-spirited puppy-kicking old man for not wanting to waste my time being forced to role-play with people who fail at it. Maybe I’m going to while away the rest of my life mumbling to myself as I pore over the 137th draft of my manuscript because I don’t feel it’s good enough, yet, and I assume everything I do sucks.
I think e-readers are cool. I like the idea of not having to cart a bunch of books, even paperback ones, onto a plane where weight is always a factor in how much you can carry and how much of a pain in the ass you’ll be to the people behind you. But it’ll be a while before I pick one up, and not just because of budgetary constraints.
For me, a thin plastic device will never have the same feel in my hands as that of a few slain trees and copious amounts of ink.
It’s the same reason I go about revising the way I do. Once the first draft is done, I take advantage of a printer and actually put the words down on paper. Then into a binder or series of folders it goes, to be picked apart with a pen. Words are crossed out, moved, scribbled in the margins. Were I more ambitious/creative person, I might even take scissors to it, revising the work in decoupage form. “Hey, check it out! I turned Chapter Six into this coffee mug!”
Okay, maybe not.
But it’s physical. It’s a real thing. It’s every bit as necessary, to me, as a rejection letter. It’s evidence that I’ve created something. Granted, in first draft and even second draft form, it’s unlikely to be something of stratospheric merit. But it’s still something that sprang out of my imagination, ran right down my arms, flowed into the page and took on a form & function all its own.
My point is that, in order to get the thing organized in a way that it makes a lick of sense to other people, I need to work with it physically. Doing so in a word processor or electronic medium will never quite do it. I might put the revision right back into a word processor, but this middle part of the work, that first transition from raw creation to refined marketable product, happens in the real world, as something tangible, a sacrifice made by the aforementioned pulp and pigments.
Besides, I couldn’t have looked at a scroll bar in an e-reader the same way I did the first five volumes of Scott Pilgrim and wonder where the hell the time went. Both finishing a book and finishing that step of revision are accomplishments, and they feel more like accomplishments worth enjoying if there’s the physical feel of closing the back cover.
A lot of production companies, investors and even film-makers like to assume that we, as a movie-going audience, are stupid. They think we can’t handle movies with deep characters, complex plots or themes that transcend a work and try to tell us something about ourselves. So more often than not, a movie about giant fighting robots or girls with guy trouble or unlikely partners solving crimes tend to be watered down in such a way that they’re palatable to the blandest, lowest common denominator of palate out there. Thankfully, some other projects aren’t afraid to take a chance on something smart, to take conventions we as an audience might take for granted and flip things around just to see what happens. Kick-Ass falls into the latter category, not only in that it adapts one of those comic books that looks at super-heroes from a completely different perspective as most mainstream IPs, but also in that this adaptation differs quite a bit from the book. I wouldn’t know, since I haven’t read the books myself, so I’ll be cribbing notes from critics far better (or at least better known) than myself.
Dr.PunchyWright can hunt me down later and break my face if it really becomes an issue.
Taking cues from the Spider-Man movies back when they were still good, Kick-Ass introduces us to a teenage high school loser who is both a social outcast and an unashamed nerd. He does well enough in school to not be in the slacker crowd, he certainly isn’t a jock, he’s practically invisible to girls (which he claims is his “only real superpower”) and among his friends, to paraphrase his own words, he’s not the funny one. And yet, it’s living this kind of mediocre existence that leads him to buy a dopey-looking wetsuit, pick up a baton and start fighting crime. Or trying to. Mostly, he gets the crap beaten out of him. However, somebody with a camera phone tosses his exploits at the Internet, and WHAM, he’s a star. He’s a super-hero. And he’s getting pulled bodily into an escalating confrontation between a sadistic mob boss who’s also a family man, and a devoted father/endearing daughter team who are also sadistic costumed vigilantes.
Kick-Ass, as a comic, seems to be in the same vein as Watchmen or Wanted, taking a more cynical view of the world of super-heroism and trying to inject a dose of realism or humanity into the characters involved. Of the three, Watchmen weathered the transition to the screen the most intact, with its themes and nuances preserved in a nearly immaculate fashion. It’s a haunting commentary on the human condition couched in the deconstruction of super-heroes in general. Wanted was changed almost entirely from its comic book roots, which is a shame because a lot of the fun in that work comes from the way its protagonists behave given that they have super powers but none of the constraints of being ‘heroes’. Read the book if you want to know what I’m talking about, but what Wanted got right was the theme of doing something with your life that gets you out of the mundane things that you know in your mind are slowly killing you, but you do them anyway because it’s easier to get paid for that crap than it is to try something new and potentially dangerous. Kick-Ass also changes, ejecting as it does a lot of the cynicism from the printed page and opting for a more balanced moralistic stance. Sure, some of the stuff on screen is dark and a jab is taken at the audience’s expectations once or twice, but on the whole, part of what makes the experience so good is that it’s more interested in having fun than pointing out how pathetic you are.
As a character, Kick-Ass is aware of how pathetic he is but he doesn’t let that stop him. He’s determined to at least try to make a difference, and it leads to him being extremely endearing and a true underdog of a hero. I think that some people might overlook Aaron Johnson’s work entirely but I can’t do that in good conscience. This is a solid leading role and as much as the movie is almost stolen entirely from his character, Johnson still comes through on the other side with a performance that is one of the best I’ve seen in a movie like this since the first two Spider-Man films.
In fact, Kick-Ass is, in terms of being endearing and realistic, almost a better Spider-Man than Spider-Man was. This film made me miss those early days of Tobey Maguire getting to know his powers and trying like hell to win Mary Jane’s heart. Both his Spider-Man and Aaron Johnson’s Kick-Ass have as their core power, not radioactive webbing or gamma rays or a magical MacGuffin, but real heart and a never-say-die attitude. If Kick-Ass as a film were a more cynical work, the optimism that fuels the teenage hero would have him dead in the 89th minute, the camera pulling back from his broken and lifeless body before cutting to black as some ironically upbeat music plays.
The film isn’t without some delicious soundtrack dissonance, however, and when it comes to that sort of thing, I will be hard-pressed to name a better example than Hit-Girl going to town on bad guys with bladed weapons to the music of the Banana Splits. Chloe Moretz completely owns both this role and pretty much any time she’s on screen. She’s the Comedian from Watchmen only 11 years old and wearing pig-tails: completely aware of how damn depraved her actions are but not giving a shit because she’s slaying bad guys. She knows that what she does shocks onlookers and will leave the cops who show up at the scene speechless, and that’s the whole point. If this is what she does to folks who break the law, what chance have you got? Better put down the cocaine and turn yourself in before you end up with a balisong in the throat, boss.
A lot of critics cried out in dismay at the very notion of this little girl perpetuating and, even worse, being the target of this level of high-energy, unabashed and completely bone-crunching violence. They seem to think that sick thrills or cheap laughs would be derived from the end result. It’s like the outcry that emerged when BioWare advertised Mass Effect included sex: completely uninformed and totally wrong. No, Hit-Girl’s exploits are not played for laughs. The way this girl has been brought up is entirely backwards. She knows it, her father knows it, and the audience knows it, too. However, she makes the most of what she’s got, because railing against her father’s vendetta is only going to make things worse. She wants her father to be happy, and the most expedient way to do that is to cut a bloody swath through the people who made his life miserable. Hit-Girl is a smart, dedicated and deep down very compassionate character, even if she is violent, cruel, foul-mouthed and maybe a little cracked. She’s got more complexity than most female characters in films today, and I for one am glad that the makers of Kick-Ass didn’t pull a single punch when it came to putting her through her paces.
Speaking of Hit-Girl’s upbringing, another strong performance in Kick-Ass is Nicholas Cage as Big Daddy. His costume, performance and methodology are clearly a send-up of Batman, but his character is unconstrained by Batman’s one rule of not killing his opponents. If Batman did ever eschew that rule, it would look a lot like this. As a result, Big Daddy might be one of the best depictions of Batman ever, if that makes any sense. Cage does some things with the character that are at once fantastic and downright strange, and it’s a testament to his capabilities as an actor that are sometimes undercut by a bland concept or bad screenwriting, like National Treasure,Next or Ghost Rider. In fact, I’m going to say this right now, and I don’t care who knows it: I like Nicholas Cage. I think he’s talented and I enjoy watching him on-screen, even if I’m laughing at his ass. Half the crap he does isn’t necessarily his fault, and even when he’s off, he’s still memorable. I like him. There. I said it.
In terms of the rest of the production, Christopher Mintz-Plasse may surprise some of the fans of McLovin in his turn as a fellow comic-book fan donning a costume and calling himself Red Mist. It’s part of a plot that works very well and hums along without losing the audience, bolstered by the musical choices in both soundtrack and score. The film isn’t perfect, as the low budget shows in places and sometimes the film seems to have a bit of filler here and there, but it never gets in the way of the movie being fun. I get the feeling that a lot of the look and feel of the movie comes right out of the comics, and as much as the blacker portions of the story and theme have been left behind, the result still manages to take a jab at us as the audience as much as it puts its characters through the wringer. Like the changes made to Watchmen, my suspicion is that Matthew Vaughn and company kept to the spirit of the work while changing things up a bit to make the story a bit more suited for the silver screen.
Regardless of all of that, Kick-Ass kicks ass. Provided you’re a fan of super-heroes and not put off by the sort of hyper-realized violence that would be right at home in a Sam Peckinpah or Paul Verhoven flick, it belongs on your Netflix queue if not your DVD shelf. It’s a brutal, no-holds-barred, steel-toed-boot-to-the-crotch-while-laughing-all-the-while action comedy that has no fear, no hesitation and no limits. It’s a roller coaster through a demented carnival of bright costumes and gushing blood that occasionally smacks you in the face with a water balloon with profanity scribbled all over it in Sharpie.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
There’s something I don’t get regarding Inception.
I was able to follow the plot. I understood the characters and their motivations (if most of them are indeed real, which is a matter of some debate). I even followed the logic and rules of dreams as explained within the movie.
I don’t get why people think it’s so damn confusing.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Christopher Nolan’s films are confusing. I think that’s the wrong word to use. I’d be tempted to call them complex, instead. I think the confusion some people are experiencing is due to Inception being an entirely different animal than a lot of the stuff that ends up in cinemas. There’s a big difference between a movie like Inception and something like Revenge of the Fallen. Let me see if I can illustrate.
The basis for pretty much any of the Transformers boils down to “Dude! Remember that really good cartoon from the 80s with all of those toys that made boatloads of cash? Let’s do that, only live-action! And 3-D!!” Other than that, there isn’t a whole of thought involved. Most of the lean tissue burned to bring you the adventures of Shia LeBouf and Megan Fox is in rendering the Transformers themselves, rather than giving them something interesting to do or even noticing that most of the cartoons that I grew up with had little to nothing to do with the humans. It was all about the giant robots beating each other up. While you do have that in RotF, it’s shot so poorly with such loud sound effects and obnoxious humans as window dressing, turning what could have been epic throwdowns into a muddled mess. A little thought would have gone a long way.
Inception is, to paraphrase MovieBob, the notion of Freddy Krueger being James Bond. Considering dreams, and dreams within dreams to boot, are the basis for the film’s action and plot, a lot of thought is put into their construction, the characters’ interaction with them as an environment, rules for getting into and out of various dream states and myriad ways in which things can go horribly, horribly wrong. On top of this already complex construction, we have the character of Cobb, his motivations and all of his baggage. It’s all carefully woven together, and the end result is shot and cut in a way that’s never confusing in and of itself. You don’t need trick photography and glitzy CGI when the story, characters and themes are this deep and thought-provoking.
See the difference? Transformers is pretty mindless entertainment, as airy and essentially empty as the popcorn the audience is shoving into their mouths. Now, I don’t mind switching my brain off from time to time. I think it’s necessary, as the damn thing tends to overheat. But I have ways of finding mindless entertainment on the cheap. I have the Internet, after all. Hell, a lot of World of Warcraft is pretty mindless.
But WoW costs me $15 US a month. A movie costs me around that per show, once pop and snacks are factored in. When I go out of my way to leave my cave, making sure I don’t stink and possibly getting shoved into a tiny seat next to somebody twice my size, I want to get my money’s worth. I want a good story, relatable characters, maybe an underlying theme or two and the notion that the movie’s about something other than special effects and sex appeal. I don’t mind special effects and sex appeal, but again, I have the Internet.
The more of those things I see in a movie at the cinema – story, characters, themes, etc – the more I enjoy myself, the more I feel I got my money’s worth and I might even feel inclined to spend money again to repeat the experience or get more out of it. I like being challenged to think while I’m being entertained. Challenging movies are complex ones.
I liked Revenge of the Fallen about as much as some of the shorts I see on the Internet, through YouTube or what have you. It was amusing and kind of entertaining but I’m in no hurry to watch it again. Watching Inception, on the other hand, was an experience I deeply and thoroughly enjoyed, not just because of the cool gun fights and attractive stars and incredible special effects, but also because it made me think. It didn’t handwave my attempts to understand its philosophical or psychological basis, like the Matrix movies or Waking Life does. It didn’t try to shove my cognitive functions into a locker after taking its lunch money, like Revenge of the Fallen or Jumper did. It wants me to figure it out. It’s written as a labyrinthine puzzle with all of the pieces present but disconnected. It’s up to us to solve it.
I guess most movie-goers, especially the kind of folks who frequent College Humor for a daily guffaw, can’t be bothered to solve it. They just want their entertainment. They want to be pandered to by the likes of Michael Bay and Bungie. I don’t get the mentality, though. I don’t understand an unwillingness to be challenged. I can’t comprehend reluctance, or even outright refusal, to step outside of the expectations of mediocrity to experience something new and interesting, even if it’s complex. Is the mundane really that comfortable? Is the thought-provoking really that frightening? Is this what’s wrong with America?
I’m going to stop this line of thought before I verge into that forbidden zone of political posturing. Suffice it to say that I don’t get it. I don’t get the jokes. I don’t get the criticism. I don’t get the confusion.
Dichotomies of personality are fascinating to me. Studying Jungian psychological theory and philosophy could eat up a great deal of my time and probably make my reviews of films like Dark City, Inception and even The Dark Knight more interesting. But I tend to be a lazy slacker, while wanting to do things that require intellectual effort. My own dichotomy is one I need to study and discern, because lately it’s kind of been pissing me off.
I’m a dreamer. I look up towards the stars, away from the mundanity and mediocrity of the world, and I see what could be. I envision things that haven’t been created yet. I feel urges within myself to create those things, to bring them to life. I’ve almost always got an idea on my mind, a snippet of fictional conversation or a scene of drama or flashes of action, even as I’m going about mundane tasks. I’d like to think that this little touch of insanity is what’s keeping me sane.
On the other hand, I’m a slacker. After expending energy in a day’s work, especially when it’s at a job I attend just to keep my bills paid, I want to relax, to enjoy not pushing myself, to treat or reward myself for surviving another day. I’ve already burned a lot of lean tissue over the course of the daylight hours, I tell myself. Stress just makes my already dwindling lifespan shorter, and spending more time making myself miserable is wasteful.
Nights like last night make me stop and correct myself, examine my thinking. Both writing and playing games became stressful. Granted, at one point I was trying to do both at the same time because a lot of time had already been lost in the afternoon and evening, which probably didn’t help matters. The point is this. The game ceased to be fun; it felt like a job. The writing was going nowhere; the blinking cursor of the document seemed to mock my creative impotence.
Every day is a series of choices. We choose to get up and go to work, or not. We choose to pursue what’s important to us, or put it off for another day. We choose to push ourselves to excel, or hold back for fear of the critics. We choose to reach for the stars, or just watch those who’ve already achieved orbit because our arms hurt.
I think lately I’ve been making the wrong ones, from how I spend my time to how I view my projects. Last night was bad. Today should be better, but only if I choose wisely.
