Bite-Sized Blog: Iron Man the Third

What could have been...

Saw it a few days ago, before I went to the States. I’m not going to write a full review, but I do feel sufficiently moved to comment on one thing that really got my brain whirring – the villain.

As it is, Iron Man Three is another fun superhero film with top-notch effects, some sparkling dialogue, a few very inventive set pieces, one or two moments of attempted profundity, and plenty of nods and winks to fans of the comics. In my opinion, it’s better than the second film, though not as successful as the first: it’s largely middle-of-the-road as Marvel Cinematic Universe films go.

But the villain! What an incredible, brilliant, paradigm-shifting antagonist the Mandarin was... or could have been, if the film had any guts.

MARK III ARMOUR

HEAVY SPOILER ENVIRONMENTS

Bite-Sized Blog: Weird Science Could Have Been Great

Yes, the '80s remake madness continues as John Hughes's strangest film (apparently loosely adapted from Al Feldstein's "Made of the Future," published in Weird Science #5) is due for a modern update:

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures and Silver Pictures will remake Weird Science, the 1985 ultimate nerd wish fulfillment comedy that was written and directed by John Hughes. The film will be produced by Joel Silver, who made the original with Hughes at Universal. Michael Bacall will write the script. He scripted the sleeper hit Project X for Silver Pictures and wrote the script for 21 Jump Street, another 80s-centric property that became a hit for Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill.

Now, the knee-jerk reaction would be concern about messing with any film by Hughes, who made this comedy right when he was in that wheelhouse of transitioning from screenwriter of Mr. Mom and National Lampoon’s Vacation to director of teen-angst comedies like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club (which preceded Weird Science) and Pretty In Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (which followed Weird Science).

This film will attempt to carve out its own identity by being redrawn as an edgier comedy in line with 21 Jump Street and The Hangover, which were R-rated; the studio says the rating for Weird Science is not certain at this nascent stage. The original starred Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith as brainy nerds who attempt to create the perfect woman to fulfill their heavy-breathing adolescent fantasies, only to find she is something more than a sex object. The original also starred Bill Paxton and Robert Downey Jr, with Kelly LeBrock playing the bombshell creation. It was later turned into a TV series for USA Network

Silver Pictures’ Silver and Andrew Rona will produce, while Alex Heineman will be exec producer. Uni’s Scott Bernstein will oversee the pic. Bacall is repped by CAA and Jeff Shumway.

What a missed opportunity this is. I mean, sure, it could be an alright film. And I could wake up tomorrow with wings on my ankles.

Bite-Sized Blog: Oz, The Great and Patriarchal

Oz: The Great And Powerful was intriguing in the way Raimi's own Drag Me To Hell was - more interesting as a study or commentary than as a narrative. In Oz's case, I got the distinct impression the movie was a study in the magic/trickery of cinema, the audience's participation in suspending disbelief, and the invitation of parallels to reality even in fantasy worlds. Not sure if it's intentional on Raimi's part or not, but I was pleasantly surprised.


WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE SPOILERS

Obviously this isn't Baum's Oz, it's another riff on the MGM film. Despite Raimi's transparently false protestations that this was more tied into the books, it might as well have had Evanora wearing ruby slippers. I think this was more to get MGM off Disney's back than trying to appease the Baum fandom, but in any case, it isn't the only thing seemingly stuck in the 1930s.




There's a lot of criticism of the film's apparent chauvinism and anti-feminist idealogy: the three most powerful women's conflict centres around a man, and how it was prophesied he would save and liberate Oz, with two of them even falling for the cad. Indeed, Oz is partly responsible for several very important aspects of later Oz mythology. Frankly I think the salient fact that Oz was a *fraud* who didn't actually have any power, combined with the most functionally powerful figures being women, could still be read as pretty feminist. Kind of. If you squint.

Consider: the conflict in the film is between Glinda and Evanora, with Theodora being neutral. Glinda & Evanora have a stalemate, with a slight advantage to Evanora given her machinations and politicking.  When Oz comes into the picture, he makes things instantly worse for Glinda by inadvertently causing Theodora to align with Evanora, making it two Wicked Witches against one Good Witch. Therefore, it could be argued that this isn't so much a case of  Oz saving the day, but rather evening the odds. Glinda, after all, could only do so much with a population forbidden from killing, and two witches equally as powerful as herself.

Perhaps, then, the film is simultaneously upholding and demolishing that old chestnut of patriarchy, that while women are all well and good, what civilization really needs is a man! Even if he's completely ineffectual as a ruler, wizard and general human being, the fact that he's The Wizard, not The Witch, seems to be some magical clause which causes the people of Oz to adulate and near-worship him in a way they didn't for any of the witches. Look at just about any political system in the world, and you'll see this ridiculous notion in practise: it's no coincidence that there was a black male president of the United States before there was a white female president. Were the Witches buying into the patriarchy themselves, or were they actively exploiting it to achieve their goals? If the latter, why would they bother, considering their powers are quite clear, and could provide a precedent for a more egalitarian society? Come to think of it, is Oz as ensnared by patriarchy as our world? It certainly had no apparent problems with race, with many black individuals among the Munchkins and Quadlings.

THE WONDERFUL SPOILERS OF OZ

Maybe this is one of those films where you can read both a feminist and misogynist image into it: going out of it, though, I felt that it was clear Oz' "power" was just as phony as it was in the original, and that the Witches are the true power of Oz.

Bite-Sized Blog: Fantasypunk

Ever since Lost Soul Andy introduced me to MrBTongue's series "Tasteful, Understated Nerd Rage" to me, I've been enthralled by his videos, and I may well be using them as starting-off points of discussion in future posts. This one is interesting all on its own, but some of the things he said got me thinking...

A thought came to me watching this video that I might investigate further. An abstract: I'd argue that Howard's brand of Sword-and-Sorcery could be to traditional fantasy what Cyberpunk is to science fiction.

 - Both CP and S&S typically draw from noir styles: Noir is visually styled after German Expressionism, and the typical noir hero could be considered a variation on Nietzche's Übermensch. In this form, the Übermensch is a cynical, magnetic, powerful man who nonetheless operates with a strong internal morality not governed by law, religion, or any other social construct. Sound familiar?

 - The worlds of CP and S&S tend to be full of corruption, oppression and stagnation, the haves treading on the faces of the have-nots. The world is populated with several archetypes: women are downtrodden or trapped by social circumstances, or resort to using their wiles to gain some measure of control over their destiny; brutish thugs carry out the will of craven magnates who earned their fortune either through genetics or villainy; the few genuine law enforcers contend with crooked police and greedy judges as well as outlaws; politicians are in the pocket of some sort of criminal society and more invested in holding onto their station than improving society for the disadvantaged. Over all is hanging a cloud of despair, and a sense of imminent collapse: the world is walking a tightrope between the dominance of a totalitarian regime, and the chaos of all-out anarchy, depending on which part of the world you're in. Sounds rather like the Hyborian Age, does it not? Heck, it sounds like most of Howard's work in general.

 - The "punk" aspect of CP's name suggests youth, impetuousness, the angry young 'un, critical and suspicious of authority, treasuring freedom and self-actualisation. Adding "punk" to something gives a certain sort of impression, of a surly delinquent with a sharp mind, rattling cages, tipping over bins, tearing down campaign posters. Howard began writing professionally in his teens, and his works are certainly full of this sort of thing even as he approached 30.

 - The video alleges that CP operates in a sort of "danger zone": while science fiction operates in the far future and fantasy in the far past/another world analogous to earth's past,* CP is typically set in the Not Too Distant Future, and so the issues of today can be reflected as they are, instead of applied with futuristic/fantastical examples. For example, Cyberpunk could deal with racism directly, instead of alluding to it via fantastic racism between elves and dwarves, or robots and organic life, or aliens and other aliens. You'd think this might fall apart with Howard, but I think there are two very crucial elements: first, Howard's worlds are cyclical. Civilizations rise and fall, peoples flourish and vanish, kingdoms conquer and disappear, and we have no knowledge of them save through smatterings of legends and word cognates finding their way into our languages - to apply a slight reinterpretation on George Santayana's original phrase, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The second is that the Hyborian Age is just as informed by Howard's contemporary world as it is by the past: Mark Finn explains it perfectly in Blood & Thunder, when he discusses how the huge number of migrant workers into the small town of Cross Plains, and subsequent industrialisation and economic upheaval, would have affected Howard's world. Indeed, stories like "Beyond the Black River" are as much about then-modern development as they were about Cowboys & Indians, or Spaniards & Aztecs, or Normans & Gaels, or Romans & Picts (etc), while the much maligned "The Vale of Lost Women" is given much more relevance when compared with the Cynthia Anne Parker story. The Hyborian Age is thus much closer to our modern world than the vast gulfs in time might indicate.

Thoughts?  Am I mad, or just a fool?

*Of course I disagree strongly with this very arbitrary and, frankly, untenable distinction: there's fantasy set in the future, and science fiction set in the past, and plenty of both set in the "danger zone" he discusses. But that's neither here nor there.