Phase II Settles NuTrek's Hash

Just so you know I haven't forgotten about my post on Abrams' Trek, I came across this delightfully playful little video.  Acme solves everything!

Reading Howard With A Sense of Humour

I may have come under fire for wasting everyone's time yesterday, but hopefully this'll be more worthwhile. Unlike Arthur Knowledge, the commentators of this article appear to be intelligent, reasonable human beings who happen to be grossly misinformed. It is my duty as a Howard fan to correct and enlighten them on several key issues.

The place: Discover Magazine Blog.  (Why is it always the sources that are supposed to be informed and intelligent that end up getting things the most wrong?).  The gentleman in question is Razib Khan, but a certain chap named Leviticus says some things that are just... Well, you'll see.

I don't really know what to make of this.

So. Huh.

How can a film's main character have no character development when the film is a Bildungsroman, which is - practically by definition - about a child developing into an adult?

How can one be a fan of Mako, and yet be incapable of correctly pronouncing his name?

And, most pertinently, is it possible to review Conan the Barbarian without resorting to gay jokes?

One of these is not like the other

The second part of Mark Finn's interview with Adventures Fantastic (the first part of which I swore I commented on, but apparently haven't) is up, and as ever, Mark has a lot of things to say.  Mostly in the manner of the Texan, natch.

However, the beginning of the interview just hammered something home to me:

Howard films…I have to tell you a quick story, an anecdote.  We managed to get ahold of a copy of Solomon Kane from a friend who taped a bootleg.  My wife Cathy was real excited to sit down and watch it.  We were five minutes in, and she said, "Was this Robert E. Howard right here?"

And I said, "No."

Then she said, "Okay."  And we watch a little bit more.  He goes through the things he goes through and he's killing people left and right, and she says, "This has got to be Howard."

And I said, "No, this isn't in any of the Solomon Kane stories."  

"Huh."

I said, "I'll tell you what.  I'll let you know when the Howard stuff shows up 'cause I'll probably get real excited about it."

She goes, "Great."

Thirty minutes go by.  She says, "He's met the family now.  Is this Howard?"

"No, this isn't Howard."

We get to about ten minutes before the end, and she says, "Honey, is there any Robert E. Howard in this?"

I said, "Well, the guy's name is Solomon Kane." 

She said, "Honey, that doesn't count."

The friend I went to the cinema with to see Solomon Kane didn't ask, but then, I'd been bleating about SK's divergences beforehand and told her that this was basically a made up story featuring a dude called Solomon Kane.  Come to think of it, I think I might do a Youtube video of Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, Kull the Conqueror and Solomon Kane consisting *only* of the elements one can find in the original stories.  A bit like the purist edits for Jackson's Lord of the Rings, only they'd be about 10 minutes long.  Altogether.

This part spoke to me too:

You know, it's a little sad that the best one of the bunch is still the old "Pigeons From Hell" Thriller episode.  Boris Karloff's adaptation of "Pigeons From Hell" still stands out as following the storyline.  Which is such a novel approach.  Why didn't I think of that?  Why not just take something from the books?  How simple and how basic.  “No, no, no, you don't understand, Mark, we've got to rewrite Conan so that he's on a quest for vengeance.”  Oh, cause that hasn't been done to death.  Yeah, yeah, that makes prefect sense.  Yeah, why not, why not?  In fact, I got an idea.  Why don't you have a Vikings kill his family.  We've never seen that before in a film. 

It just makes me crazy that these guys in LA have…I don't think it's ignorance.  I think it's a willful self confidence there that feeds an ego that has to be the size of C’thulhu.  It's the only thing that makes sense.  If I come to them with a proposal set in a savage land in a distant time about a guy who walks into town out of the wilderness and through strength, cunning, guile, his own wits, he pulls himself up by his bootstraps to become the most famous rogue in town.  But because he's still new in town he hasn't counted on the forces of civilization rallying around him, and so the story ends when he's betrayed and has to leave town.  And they say, "What's the name of this piece?"  and I say, "Krogan the Mercenary".  They'd be like [snaps fingers], "Awesome, we'll run with it.  It'll be just like Walter Hill did in Last Man Standing.  Yeah.  We won't give him an origin.  No, it makes him mysterious.  Perfect!  I love it!" 

That should be the Conan movie.  That should be the Conan movie.  But no, noooo, let's give him a family.  Even though Robert E. Howard's stuff so seldom uses family for anything, much less a motif for vengeance.  Usually it's an excuse to move away.  

Inspired by Mark's post, I created a little bit of comparison between the fantasy films and television series which we've seen in the past decade.

The Harry Potter film series - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

The Lord of the Rings - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

The Chronicles of Narnia - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Bridge to Terabithia - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

The Golden Compass - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Stardust - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Hogfather - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

City of Ember - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

The Spiderwick Chronicles - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Coraline - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

The Twilight film series - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Conan the Barbarian - made up a story, characters, themes and settings that can't be found in the original literature. Bares no resemblance to any of the original author's actual stories.

A Game of Thrones - stuck to the story, characters, themes and setting of the original literature. Some egregious changes, a few additions and many omissions, but it's at least recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories.

Can you see anything unusual there?

*As James noted in the comments, calling some of these "recognizably an adaptation of the author's actual stories" might be over-generous on my part, but in comparison to Conan the Barbarian...

The Gollancz Fifty

Awesome news: to celebrate the company's 50th anniversary, the folk at Gollancz compiled a list of the 50 best science fiction and fantasy novels they've published (keep in mind that last part, since there are a few very obvious missing names).  Guess who made it!

The Art of the Troll Quote

From Know Your Meme:

Troll quotes are image macros that consist of an image, a quote, and a recognized speaker, though none of the three match up to each other. The concept, as the meme name suggests, is to use such images to troll fandom boards for any of the three elements to get reactions to them.

And from its official website (for every meme worth its salt has its own domain):

1) Get a picture of someone people idolize. Obi Wan Kenobi, Barack Obama, Captain Kirk — any beloved public figure will do.

2) Slap on a famous quotation from a similar character from a different book or movie. Pick something close enough that a non-fan might legitimately confuse them. If you’re using Captain Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, for example, you’ll probably want to grab a quote from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica.

3) Attribute the quotation to a third character, from yet a third universe. This way, nothing about your image is correct, and you’re trolling fans of all three characters at once.

This amuses me far more than it should.  These images range from the spectacular:

To the political:

To the ones that just seem truly right:

So, I decided to come up with one of my own:

Too subtle?

OK, last one, then I'm done.

I never thought I'd read a worse review of Game of Thrones than that one in The Guardian, but The Telegraph managed to do it.

So, Game of Thrones was on...

As a GRRM skeptic, you'd wonder why I'd bother watching HBO's latest series.  Well, truth is, I don't hate A Song of Ice and Fire - or, at least, A Game of Thrones.  Martin's a good writer, there are some really interesting elements to the series, there are some fantastic chapters, and I even liked some of the characters.  I certainly appreciate the straying from the common threads in recent fantasy being little more than shallow Tolkien clones.  However, I don't think it's the Greatest Piece of Fantasy Fiction Of Our Times either.  I don't think the infusion of profanities, gore, violence, incest, and Machiavellian court conspiracies is anything unique to Martin by a long shot.  I think the world's setting has a lot of fundamental issues which aren't really addressed in favour of the court intrigue.  Even the appropriation of historical events, individuals and cultures isn't some fresh, original idea. Thus, my biggest problem with Martin isn't necessarily with his fiction, but the fact that it's being lauded as some great, paradigm-shifting renaissance that's never been done in the history of fantasy.

So it gets a mite irritating where moronic pundits allege that incestuous royals, morally ambiguous protagonists, grim and gritty settings and frank depictions of violence and sexuality somehow didn't exist in fantasy prior to 1991. Even Tolkien dealt with those themes in The Silmarillion.  Don't even get me started on people who think that making everyone a bastard-with-a-dark-past-sordid-flaws is inherently superior to making everyone clear-cut heroes and villains.

However, let's forget all of that.  Let's forget all the idiots calling Martin the greatest fantasy writer in history, or the morons who think sex in fantasy was trapped between Patronising Escapist Fairy-Tales and Puerile Adolescent Wish Fulfillment until Martin came along, or the people who think adding sex and violence automatically makes your setting very grown up.  On its own merits, away from the hype colossus of its followers and the ill-judged opinions of infinitely uninformed journalists, A Game of Thrones is... a pretty good book.

And, wouldn't you know it, a pretty good book looks like it's going to be made into a pretty good series, if the first episode of HBO's Game of Thrones is anything to go by.

This is why I have the "What In Blazes" tag

What we have here is a pornographic parody of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

What we also have here is one of the most logic-defying situations I can think of: a pornographic motion picture with a plot that sounds more interesting than the last three official Star Trek films combined.

Watch the video: despite it being ostensibly for a pornographic film, it's completely worksafe.  I have no idea how that happened.

Looks like I'm not alone against the Game of Thrones pundits

"You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant."
 - Harlan Ellison

No sooner do I have my say about the useless media coverage around A Game of Thrones, then Cimmerian Shield Wall alum Brian Murphy has a comprehensive round-up of some of the absolute worst, some of which I was going to comment on, but then I realised Brian did more in his swift dismissal than I could. Especially since most, like that utterly odious piece from The Guardian (that old Bête Noire) which I hated the most for its attempt to come off as so very mature that ends up doing the very opposite, aren't even worth the effort of point-by-point disintegration.

Luckily, there are others.