This past week has been rough on me, not giving me the time to properly review what I wanted. I’ll throw open the floor to questions, though, and I’ll start with one of mine: What do you want to see reviewed?
I like moral dichotomies and moral conflicts in settings. I even, on occasion, enjoy the epic struggle between Good and Neutral, or Candy and Chocolate. But when you have a conflict between the forces of Light and Darkness and they represent Good and Evil every time, well, I get a little exhausted by it. The next go-to option is little better. Order and Chaos? Nowadays that seems to be just as overplayed as Good and Evil. Sometimes even more— or worse, it’s supposedly about Order vs Chaos but these are just synonyms for Good and Evil. (more…)
(Originally published at Ganriki, by Serdar Yegulalp. I felt his thoughts would be useful here.)
Of all the questions that inspire diverse and deeply subjective responses from anime fans, one of the most prominent has to be the question most every newcomer to anime asks, and finds the answers at least as confounding as the question itself: Where do I begin with this stuff? The evangelical fan, the fan who wants that many more fellow fans to share his obsession with, waits with bated breath for that moment to arise, and may well spend no small amount of energy trying to invite others in. But does introducing people to anime really make them into fans? Or do fans arise a good deal more spontaneously than we’d like to believe?
It’s a good question to ask. I have myself grappled with it long and hard, and for a long time stuck with the argument that for everyone out there not (yet) into anime, there’s an anime for them of some kind. For the Harry Potter fans, you maybe give them Fullmetal Alchemist or Soul Eater. For the CSI and Law & Order crowd, perhaps Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex or Psycho-Pass. Any number of lists like this already exist, or could be drawn up to connect present and future fandoms with present and future anime titles.
What I don’t think any of this does, though, is create new anime fans, in the sense of people who are into anime as a single, broad, overarching subject of interest. And from everything I’ve seen, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
No magic wand for fan-making
One of the big myths of fandom, any fandom, is that the uninitiated can be made into fans if they are only exposed to the right material. For a long time I wanted to believe that people I knew who were generally uninterested in anime could be made curious about it by exposing them to some of its most creative, maverick, and generally excellent productions. I know better than to think this now, not merely because it’s untrue, but because it presumes things about fandom that aren’t true either.
People not motivated to seek out a given thing may nod and smile if you put a good example of it in front of them, but they generally don’t get primed to seek the rest of the subject out on their own. Case in point: Comic book movies haven’t caused a mainstream surge in interest in comic books, just in comic book movies, and that’s mostly because they represent some modestly novel wrinkle in how summer blockbuster entertainment can be assembled and deployed. The comics themselves are still not part of the picture for most people.
Likewise, if you, a fan, put a given show you love in front of someone else, a non-fan, and they react with polite indifference or nonchalance, it’s not because the other person is an idiot — and it’s also not because you lack for the right pitch to give them, or the right material to expose them to. It’s because the ways we acquire tastes and share them with like-minded others are not so straightforward as all that. It’s better to be an ambassador for the things you love than to be an evangelist for those things, but not always easy to tell the difference between the two behaviors.
From what I’ve seen, people have to really want to be a fan of something, especially when it’s a large and overarching category of things — anime, for instance. You’re better off respecting that for what it is than trying to turn it int something it’s not. And even many people who are fans of a given anime or three are not necessarily anime fans — meaning, their interest in those particular anime is dictated more by their interest in the things themselves, rather than any curiosity for anime as a whole, let alone for Japan itself.
This last insight — that anime fandom doesn’t always translate into curiosity about the culture that created it — was something I had to learn about and get over fairly early on. If someone else liked a given anime or three and that was it, that was fine. If Japan wasn’t a topic of interest for them generally, that was fine too. Demanding a better grade of fan (whatever might be meant by “better”) by insisting that they replicate my path into fandom wasn’t likely to do anything except alienate others.
Besides, the way to have a better kind of fan isn’t about having them duplicate the experiences (and, presumably, the responses to those experiences) that led you, or anyone else, into fandom. If anything, it lies in the opposite path: allowing a fandom to be that much more welcoming of, and interested in, people who have something new to bring to the table. When you open your ears and learn about what it is that brings people to something, it becomes easier to see that you have more in common than you have setting you apart.
Friendship over fandom
What matters most, I think, is not the act of recruitment, but the act of friendship over something found mutually interesting. The now-defunct anime distributor Central Park Media once had the motto “World Peace Through Shared Popular Culture”, a sentiment I think is the right idea. It matters more that you are able to bond as people over something than as fans.
Case in point. Not long ago a friend of mine showed me an episode of Free!, which I had up to that point avoided. I sat with them and watched it mostly to be social. To my surprise, I liked it a lot, and I plan to talk more about it in the future, since I think the popularity (read: notoriety) of the show says a lot about the ways people try to claim ownership of their entertainment. On the other hand, DRAMAtical Murder (which they also showed me) didn’t have anything to offer me, though; it just isn’t my thing. Our friendship was in no way diminished by this revelation.
Putting the friendship first, and valuing that most, changes the way this whole process unfolds. If I’m good friends with a great many people, and they all share a taste for something that I don’t (Firefly, Irish reels, what have you), that’s no guarantee I’ll inherit their tastes on anything but the most superficial level. What’s more, friends tend to respect each others’ interests — if they don’t, they don’t tend to remain friends in the first place — and so the shared interests in any given friendship tend to equalize around the things everyone can enjoy without feeling obliged.
Let me put it this way: No fandom deserves to be represented by people who value being pushy over being receptive, and who value their own expectations over someone else’s actual responses. To that end, the best way to get people into anime probably doesn’t revolve around how to get people to watch your favorite show and love it too. It’s more about embodying how anime fans — or fans, period — can be some of the best friends a person could have.
The heist is a popular plot, from the lone hobbit sneaking into a dragon’s lair to a well-planned robbery with military precision. The core requirements for a heist are the thieves, the target, and the victim. To play up the thieves, either the victim is engaged in a a shady business or the target is a supposedly impossible to break into location. With the original Ocean’s 11, it was a mix of the two.
Released in 1960, Ocean’s 11 featured Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, who essentially decided to make a movie together for the fun of working together. The work they chose was Ocean’s 11, based on the story by George Clayton Johnson, who also wrote Logan’s Run. The story was published the same year as the movie’s release, and appears that film and book were meant to compliment each other. This creates an interesting situation.
I haven’t read the book.
Normally, I would, but it was while watching Ocean’s 11 that I discovered it, too, was an adaptation. That said, for the purposes of the review, I’ll just focus on the movie. If I can find the book, I’ll take another look at Ocean’s 11 with an eye on the movie being the adaptation.
Back to the movie, Ocean’s 11 starred Frank Sinatra, as mention, as Danny Ocean, a former sergeant in the 82nd Airborne. He is offered a job by Mr. Acebos to perform the heist of a lifetime, the robbing of five Las Vegas casinos on New Year’s Eve. Ocean pulls together his former squadmates in a manner similar to Seven Samurai, giving the audience time to meet each characters, including his former lieutenant, played by Peter Lawford, squadmate turned entertainer, played by Dean Martin, squad’s driver Josh Howard, played by Sammy Davis, Jr, and electrician Tony Bergdorf, played by Richard Conte. Bergdorf initially refuses the job; he’s just fresh out of San Quentin and wants to spend time with his son. However, a visit to the doctor reveals that he has cancer, so Bergdorf agrees so he can get money to help his son’s future. Bergdorf does warn that his luck is sour and could cause problems for the rest of the team.
At the time of filming, January 11, 1960, Las Vegas wasn’t the neon-lit monument to gambling that it is today. The Strip, where the five casinos Ocean was going to hit, was only on one side of the road; the other side was desert. Hotel rooms were separate from the casinos, and the entertainment areas were more intimate. The five casinos, the Sahara, the Riviera, the Desert Inn, the Sands, and the Flamingo were the main casinos in town. None had the surveillance then that they have today; electronic cameras watching everywhere, electric access control, and fail safes that locked down the cash are innovations that came after Ocean’s 11.
Ocean introduces the plan to hit the five casinos. Howard gets a city sanitation garbage truck and is the one who will pick up the loot. The remainder of the 11 split into teams of two; each team infiltrates, in one form or another, one of the five casinos. Harmon performs at one while others, like Borgdorf and Peter Rheimer, played by Norman Fell, dress the part of employees. The insiders spray paint that can only be seen under black light with special glasses, marking the areas that they’ll need to go to get the cash. Explosives are set at an electrical tower and in each of the casinos’ backup generators, ensuring the lights will be out long enough. At the stroke of midnight, as “Auld Lang Syne” plays, the lights do go out and the casinos robbed. The loot is placed into bags that are then dropped in the garbage where Howard picks them up.
Borgdorf’s luck sours as he tries to get to the rendez-vous with Ocean and Harmon. His health takes a turn for the worse and he drops dead in the confusion. Police have been called by the casinos, stretching out the officers to the point where roadblocks are set up to search cars that are leaving. Howard gets stuck in one, but is told to keep going. The stolen cash rides off in the garbage truck under the noses of the police.
The next day, Mr. Acebos reads the paper and has a good laught; millions have been stolen from the casinos and cannot be found. In Vegas, Ocean’s crew tries to figure out their next move. When Borgdorf’s wife is seen, they get the idea to have the money leave with him in his coffin. A late night break-in at the mortuary later, the loot is placed in with Borgdorf, with $10 000 ($79 268.36 today) kept aside for his son. Borgdorf’s wife, though, decides that she doesn’t want to transport the body for burial and has the funeral in Vegas, followed by a cremation. The commentary for the film, provided by Frank Sinatra, Jr, indicated that the ending had been changed from the original in the story. While the money did get burned in the original story, the ending featured a plane crash instead. Jack Warner, CEO of Warner Bros, didn’t like the end implying that Ocean and his crew died and ordered a new one written.
In the time between the release of Ocean’s 11 in 1960 and Ocean’s Eleven in 2001, both security and Las Vegas itself had changed greatly. Vegas, while still in the middle of the desert, grew. Casinos and hotels merged into one building, the space for shows increased, the sheer amount of square footage dedicated to gambling expanded, and the nighttime was lit as bright as day from the lights along the Strip and other gambling locations. Security embraced the silicon chip, allowing for computer controlled access, cameras in every possible location, background checks on employees becoming the norm, and laser grids. The heist pulled off in 11 would not be possible in Eleven.
The remake, Ocean’s Eleven brought together several of Hollywood’s biggest stars together. This time around, George Clooney played Danny Ocean. Instead of being a veteran of World War II, Clooney’s Ocean is a con man getting out of prison after a job ended badly for him. First thing he does is build a small bankroll through gambling, then he recruits Rusty Ryan, played by Brad Pitt. Just as 11 and Seven Samurai, Eleven shows the recruiting of the team. Instead of fellow veterans, the new Danny rounds up nine more criminals, from grifters to contortionists to even a demolitions expert to rob the Bellagio, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand, three of the most profitable casinos in Vegas at the time. The three are also run by Terry Benedict, played by Andy Garcia, a vindictive man who doesn’t settle for just re-arranging kneecaps when he can destroy a life instead.
The group studies the floorplan of the casinos and the central vault, planning on completing the heist during a championship boxing match. The expected take is over $150 million. Eleven shows the work the team does to set up the theft, from determining the timetables of guards and cash pick up to Benedict’s personal routine. The latter is assigned to Linus, played by Matt Damon, who finds out Benedict has a girlfriend whose name Lunus can’t discover. Rusty, however, does know her name – Tess Ocean, Danny’s ex-wife.
In the original 11, the heist was a challenge, rob five casinos at once during their busiest time. In Eleven, the stakes are more personal, at least for Ocean. Rusty tries to have Danny sit the heist out, but Ocean has other ideas. The plan continues, despite small problems that get in the way, including Benedict having security follow Danny. Ocean’s team take advantage of the confusion, helped by Basher, played by Don Cheedle, and his EMP bomb taking out the power during the boxing match.
Ocean’s Eleven is a great example of how the progress of time affects a remake. In 1960, most Americans would either be a veteran or know of one, from either World War II or the Korean War. In 2001, without compulsory enlistment, there weren’t as many veterans of the Gulf War and the Vietnam War was almost thirty years in the past. A squad of veterans breaking into an installation better guarded than Fort Knox would take a direct approach. A team of grifters and con men, on the other hand, uses a more delicate touch. With the leaps in security technology, the heist had to become more sophisticated; the weak spot is always the human element.
The march of history may change the details from 11 to Eleven, but the core element remains; the heist by a team dedicated to pulling off the impossible. The gathering of the team, the showing of the preparation, and the actual theft were in both films. The biggest change comes from what happened to the money. In /11/, Ocean’s squad ran the heist as a challenge, with Duke Santos coming in late as the opposition. As a result, cinematic karma required that the money be lost; Ocean’s squad had dirty hands. Only Bergdorf’s son, the innocent, got to keep any of the stolen cash. Meanwhile, in /Eleven/, while several of Ocean’s recruits were along because of the challenge, Danny’s goal was to cause financial harm to Terry Benedict, the greater evil. Thus, the money got split amongst the Eleven and Tess found out exactly what type of person Benedict was.
Next week, the September news round up.
At the risk of accidentally helping the next would-be conqueror and subsequent ruler of the world, I want to talk about dystopias today.
When I read about cultures, past and present, there are some different things that I automatically start looking for or asking myself. When I see an imbalance of power, what comes to mind is “Where are the dangerous elements to the present power structure, and how have the rulers co-opted these elements and/or played them against each other so that they won’t pose a threat?” (more…)
There are movies that become the go-to source for adaptations. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is one such film. In Seven Samurai, a village gets overrun by an army of bandits, intent on abusing the farmers and taking their crops for their own purposes. The farmers send three men to find ronin, masterless samurai to help defend the village. The men find seven: the experienced Kambei, his young disciple Katsushiro, his friend Shichiroji, the strategic Gorobei, good-willed Heihachi, the taciturn master swordsman Kyuzo, and the poser Kikuchiyo. Kikuchiyo follows, despite attempts to drive him away. As the samurai train the farmers and prepare fortifications, Katsushiro meets Shino, the daughter of one of the men sent to find the ronin, and begins a relationship with her.
Shortly before the bandits are due to return, two of their scouts are found and killed and a third captured. After questioning, the location of the bandits’ camp is revealed. A pre-emptive strike on the camp sees it burned down, but at the cost of Heihachi’s life. The bandits attack the village and run into the new fortifications and farmers trained to fight back. After a battle inside the village, the bandit chief is defeated, though several of the samurai died in the fighting, and the famers are able to plant a new crop.
Seven Samurai was one of the first movies to show the recruiting and gathering of the heroes into a team, a trope that’s commonplace today, appearing in The Guns of Navarone, Marvel’s The Avengers, and the pilot of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Seven Samurai became Japan’s highest grossing movie after its release. Naturally, it was ripe for being brought across the Pacific Ocean to be remade in Hollywood. John Sturges took the story and placed it in the Old West with the 1960 film, The Magnificent Seven. The samurai became gunslingers who get hired by a farming village in Mexico to protect it from marauding bandits.
The plot of The Magnificent Seven parallels Seven Samurai. The gunslingers, veteran Chris, hotheaded Chico, Chris’s friend Harry, drifter Vin, hard luck Bernardo, cowboy Britt, and outlaw Lee, train the farmers in using guns and defending themselves. Chico falls for Petra, one of the villagers, while Bernardo gets to know three children. The bandits attack and take heavy losses, forcing them to retreat. However, Chico learns that the bandits will return; they have no food and need the village’s supply. The gunslingers move out to surprise the bandits, but are surprised themselves to find the bandit camp empty. Calvera, the bandit leader, returned to the village and, with the gunslingers gone, the villagers put him in charge out of fear. The gunslingers are chased off. After a debate, the group, with the exception of Harry, decide to return to the village to fight Calvera and his bandits. When the gunfight erupts, the villagers join the gunslingers. Harry returns in time to prevent Chris from being shot, but is shot fatally himself. Calvera is shot, the bandits are defeated, and the surviving gunmen go on with their lives.
The Magnificent Seven performed well in Europe but not well in the US. The European success allowed for three sequels and several similar films, including the Italian sword-and-sandals film The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (I sette magnific gladiatori) in 1983 and the 1980 space opera, Battle Beyond the Stars.
By 1980, science fiction on the silver screen had transformed. Gone were the B-movies with cheap effects like Them. Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, both released in 1977, raised audience expectations of special effects, as did 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1978’s Battlestar Galactica, 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture and 1980’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. A green-screened ant made to look the size of an office tower would not do. At the time, CGI wasn’t even a pipe dream; TRON wouldn’t be out until 1982 and The Last Starfighter wasn’t released until 1984. All the effects had to be practical, which could get expensive. Roger Corman, producer of Battle Beyond the Stars, never started a movie that he knew wouldn’t make money.
The king of exploitive B-movies, Corman has a reputation of being cheap. While George Lucas was able to make Star Wars with a budget of $11 million, Corman’s was just $2 million, or twice that of Sharknado. With that princely sum, the crew of Battle Beyond the Stars had to make all the sets, costumes, starship interiors, and starship exteriors, and make sure all that met expectations. The art director, Jim Cameron, had a task in front of him. That very same Jim Cameron would go on to create movies such as The Terminator, Titanic, and Avatar.
The plot of Battle Beyond the Stars should be familiar by now. Akira, a pacifist planet, is visited by Sador, played by John Saxon. A warlord with an army of mutants called the Malmori, Sador threatens the world into submission with the threat of his flagship’s main gun, the Stellar Converter. The Stellar Converter does exactly what it says on the tin; it converts planets into stars. Sador gives Akira a few days to decide its fate, then leaves, leaving behind a two-man starfighter to watch the world. Realizing that there’s little the inhabitants of Akira can do, the council sends young Shad off to recruit mercenaries and purchase guns to teach the Akirans how to fight. Shad heads off in a former corsair ship, the property of the last warrior of Akira, and the ship’s computer, Nell. Shad’s education is too much to overcome when the Malmori ship fires on him; he cannot shoot back. However, the ship also has speed and can outrun the Malmori fighter.
Young Shad’s first stop is at Dr. Hephaestus’ station, where he hopes he can purchase weapons. The station appears deserted when he arrives, though. Shad lands his ship and enters. He is brought to Nanelia, Hepaestus’ daughter and only other living being on the station. She takes Shad to Hepaestus, whe the good doctor explains that Shad will be remaining to become Nanelia’s companion and lover. Shad turns down the offer and breaks out of the station. Nanelia, taken with the young man, assists in the breakout and follows a short while later. The two split up, Shad to look for mercenaries and Nanelia to wait in the Lambda Zone for him.
While trying to figure out where to go next, Shad is alerted to a long-haul starship being attacked by jackers who are trying to hijack the cargo. The pilot of the ship, Space Cowboy, sends off a distress call. Shad moves in, finding a loophole in his code of conduct, but still cannot bring himself to shoot someone in the back. Despite being on manual, Nell destroys one of the jackers, getting the attention of the other three. With the jackers now facing him, Shad shoots them all down, getting the thanks of Cowboy as he escorts the transport to the next port of call. Sador, however, got there first and uses the Stellar Converter on the world, destroying it. The cargo of weapons, fully paid for, needs to go somewhere, and Akira is much closer than Earth. After a bit of persuasion, Cowboy agrees to help teach the Akirans how to use the guns.
Shad heads back out, still looking for mercenaries. He runs into a white, glowing UFO, and is brought on board. The crew of the ship is Nestor, a being and race that has multiple facets but one mind. Nestor is bored and, on hearing of the plight of Akira, agrees to help for no payment at all. The experience would be payment enough. Shad then find Gelt, an assassin who is so well known in the galaxy that there is no place for him left to live. Gelt has immense wealth, more than anything Akira could offer, but Gelt only has two desires; a meal and a home. After leaving Gelt, Shad is challenged by a small ship, one faster and more maneuverable than his own. After a brief mock battle, the pilot, St-Exmin, a space valkyrie, tags along, hoping to find a battle worthy of her. Meanwhile, in the Lambda Zone, Nanelia is taken prisoner by Cayman, a reptilian being who is intent on selling her to the highest bidder. Nanelia explains why she was there and, hoping that Cayman would be more interested in being paid as a mercenary, mentions Sador. Cayman agrees to join her, the only payment being Sador’s head.
Seven ships return to Akira, where plans are drawn and fortifications created to defeat Sador and his mutants. There would be only one chance to destroy Sador and his Stellar Converter; the ship has to drop its force field long enough to let the weapon fire. In that moment, one of the mercenaries could open fire in that precise shot to destroy the weapon and possibly Sador’s flagship. Sador returns, launching starfighters to deal with the ragtag fleet, but the recruited mercenaries are too much for the mutants to handle. On the surface of Akira, Cowboy leads the defense, holding off Sador’s ground troops.
After the first wave of fighting, Gelt has been mortally wounded, forced down after a collision with a Malmori fighter. Shad orders his people to bury Gelt with a meal, fulfilling his end of the deal. One of the Nestors allows himself to be captured. Sador’s top interrogator, known for keeping a victim alive through the incredible agony, starts torturing the Nestor. Having no pain resistance, Nestor quickly succumbs to the torture and dies, becoming Dako’s first premature death. Sador orders Nestor’s arm grafted on to him, replacing his damaged one. The remaining Nestors manipulate the arm, trying to slit Sador’s throat. Dako manages to take away the knife and remove the arm.
In retaliation, Sador resumes the attack, this time to get in position to use the Stellar Converter. The mercenaries meet him head on, but the force field on the flagship is too much. Ship after ship is destroyed, but St-Exmin manages to fly her tiny ship into the Stellar Converter’s bay, damaging it before going out in a blaze of glory herself. With the Stellar Converter out of action, Sador wants to personally deal with the last of the mercenary ships and its pilot. The last ship, Nell, has Shad and Nanelia on it. A nuclear blast wipes Nell’s memory, resetting it to when the last Akiran warrior was young. When Nell gets caught in a magnetic net to be drawn within Sador’s flagship, Shad uses the net to help accelerate, landing within the vessel while setting Nell to self destruct. Nell, still not all there, has Shad and Nanelia get into a lifepod for launch. The countdown is awkward, but Nell hits zero. The explosion starts a chain reaction through Sador’s ship, destroying it. Akira is saved.
As mentioned, Battle Beyond the Stars was a low budget movie. Despite that, the effects, while showing their age, don’t look as old as they should be. While Corman kept costs down by using interns and film school students, those very same people were able to come up with solutions and sets on the fly, staying up late and overnight as needed. Corman had bought a lumber yard to use as a stage, but kept the old sign up. There were people who came in to purchase lumber who were hired to build sets. Meanwhile, the big-name stars, George Peppard and Robert Vaughn, were placed in memorable scenes but weren’t used throughout the movie, allowing Corman to only pay for the days they were on set. Richard Thomas, being in the midst of wrapping up his role of John-Boy on The Waltons, was looking for a different type of movie from what he had done in the past. He still had money coming in from The Waltons, so could take a cut in pay, allowing him to be in most scenes. Editing pulled together the various shots, especially during the climactic battle, creating a movie that leaves viewers on the edge of their seat, helped by a soundtrack by James Horner. Elements of the music would appear later in 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan*.
Battle Beyond the Stars is not a simple remake of The Magnificent Seven or Seven Samurai. Just as The Magnificent Seven brings the samurai drama into the Old West, Battle Beyond the Stars brings both the Western and the samurai drama into space. Yet, the core, the threatened people needing outside help to fend off a villain, remains in each instance. The gathering of the warriors, whether ronin, gunslinger, or mercenary pilot, remains intact. While there are some minor changes, the warriors are recognizable no matter the version. Battle Beyond the Stars‘ Shad, The Magnificent Seven‘s Chico, and Seven Samurai‘s Katsushiro are the same character, just transposed to a new setting. Helping with this is Robert Vaughn’s characters in both The Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond the Stars; Lee and Gelt are both wanted and too recognizable to appear in public. St-Exmin and Kikuchyo fill the same role. For a B-movie exploiting the popularity of Star Wars, Battle Beyond the Stars took efforts to be recognizable as Seven Samurai as a space opera and succeeded.
Next week, Ocean’s Eleven.
* While The Wrath of Khan‘s soundtrack is distinct from Battle Beyond the Stars, Horner’s style can be heard in both, particularly in the use of the call of the hunting horns.
Marvel, being one of the Big Two with DC Comics, has a large number of heroes in its stable. Many got their start during the 1960s, when the threat of nuclear war was a palpable threat but the power of the atom was being harnessed for beneficial means. Characters from this time featured a brush with radiations, from Peter Parker being bitten by a radioactive spider and gaining power to Professor Xavier taking in the children of the atom to become his X-Men. The focus of the review, Daredevil, was splashed as a young boy by radioactive waste leaking from a barrel*. The waste destroyed his sight but amplified his other senses, allowing him to see using a form of radar. The sight isn’t perfect; small details can’t be made out nor can he determine colour, but the power allows him to target opponents.
Matt Murdoch was the only child of “Battling Jack” Murdoch, a former pro fighter who got mixed up with organized crime to make ends meet. Matt’s mother was missing, presumed dead. After the accident, as Jack tried to go straight, Matt tested out the extent of his new found abilities. Unfortunately for Jack, there is no retirement plan from the mob. Matt soon became an orphan, but he was determined to be there for people who needed help. Murdoch worked his way through law school, and teamed up with Franklin “Foggy” Nelson to work in the old neighbourhood, Hell’s Kitchen. Where Matt Murdoch, lawyer, couldn’t get justice, Daredevil could. Along the way, Daredevil made a few enemies, including the Kingpin, who controlled crime in New York City, and Bullseye, the Kingpin’s assassin. Ben Ulrich, reporter for the Daily Bugle, was more thorn than enemy, but her did deduce that Matt Murdoch was Daredevil.
/Daredevil/ was created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett, with Jack Kirby providing the character’s original yellow and red costume, later replaced by an all red costume. While Lee was the first writer on the title, others followed, including John Romita, Sr, Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, and Frank Miller. Miller’s run in the 1980s was key to increasing the title and the character’s popularity, introducing a film noir style to the comic. Once given the reigns as writer, Miller changed Daredevil’s backstory, altered the personalities of the supporting cast and rogues gallery, and revitalized the title. The introduction of Elektra and her relationship and romance with Daredevil occurred under Miller’s watch.
For the 2003 film, Daredevil, script writer Mark Steven Johnson dug heavily into Frank Miller’s run on the comic. This is where I need to make an aside, to set up the remainder of the review. The version used for this review was the director’s cut, not the theatrical release. A featurette on the DVD goes into detail about the differences between the two. The theatrical release was mandated by the studio to be a PG-13 rated action film running under 100 minutes (actual runtime was 103 minutes) and included a romance between Elektra and Murdoch that was consummated onscreen. The director’s cut restored at least a half-hour’s worth of footage, including scenes between Matt and Foggy, a subplot about an innocent man accused of murdering a prostitute that led to a link through to the Kingpin, and Murdoch’s use of a sensory deprivation chamber to get peace. The cut also removed the love scene, showing Matt having to leave Elektra because of heroing business, and changing the plot, according to Johnson, from a “you stole/killed my girlfriend” ending to becoming a hero. The director’s cut has a total runtime of 133 minutes and received an R-rating from the MPAA.
The biggest change in the movie with the director’s cut was the feel of the movie. While there was still action, the changes brought the movie towards film noir, the same style that Frank Miller used during his tenure with the comic. The story starts in media res as Daredevil drops into a Catholic church. He explains what is happening, putting most of the movie as a flashback, starting with how he got the powers, how he lost his father, Jack “The Devil” Murdoch, to a mob hit, how he became the Man Without Fear. The first appearance of Daredevil is after Matt loses a case trying to prosecute a rapist; in costume, Murdoch tracks down the rapist and ensures that justice is served. Ben Ulrich, a reporter for the New York Post** specializing in urban legends***, has been following Daredevil sightings, trying to track down the elusive being. That night, Murdoch hears the murder of a young woman just before he seals himself inside his sensory deprivation chamber.
The next morning, Matt and Foggy meet for breakfast. Both notice an attractive woman enter the diner. Matt tries to get her interest, using his blindness as an opening for an introduction. When the woman leaves without telling Matt her name, he follows her to a playground. Naturally, the woman is annoyed at being followed and tries to show Matt the error of his ways, forcefully. They trade martial arts moves, nothing to injure the other, enough to first dissuade then to impress the other. Elektra Nachios gives Matt her name, but not her number or address; she’ll find him.
Afterwards, Matt rushes to the courthouse to meet with Foggy and their new client, a young man accused of murdering the woman Murdoch had heard overnight. Matt, able to hear the young man’s heartbeat, is reassured that the man is innocent and takes on the case. Meanwhile, the Kingpin, already upset about a leak in his organization, has to deal with a partner who wants to retire, Nicholas Nachios. The Kingpin calls in his best assassin, Bullseye. Bullseye has a power; he always hits his target, no matter what he throws.
An evening soiree later, Nicholas Nachios leaves in a rush, Elektra following. Matt detected the father’s elevated pulse and follows as Daredevil. He sees Bullseye take out the bodyguards and jumps into the fight to protect father and daughter. One of the first actions he has is to block a thrown missile from hitting Nachios. Or, as Bullseye put it, “He made me miss.” The fight ends when Bullseye hurls Daredevil’s baton at Nachios. An explosion makes it impossible for Daredevil to see the baton properly with his radar sense and the baton impales Nachios, killing him.
Elektra sees to her father’s funeral, then continues her training. She was never in a good place to see the fight and blames Daredevil for killing her father. Elektra manages to track down Daredevil; Bullseye tracks them both. In the major fight sequence of the film, Bullseye injures Daredevil and kills Elektra****. The flashback catches up to the beginning of the film as Bullseye enters the church to finish the job he started. During the fight, Matt discovers the identity of the Kingpin and that he was responsible for his father’s murder. Defeating Bullseye, Daredevil leaves the church to confront the Kingpin.
As mentioned, the movie uses the Frank Miller run on Daredevil to the point where Miller gets a cameo as well as Stan Lee. The film noir style is used for effect, giving the movie a grittier feel and setting up the sense of loss Murdoch has with Elektra. The acting holds up; Ben Affleck is able to be both Matt Murdoch and Daredevil, while Jennifer Garner makes Elektra memorable despite a lack of screen time. The main problem is pacing. Frank Miller’s run covered four years, a lot to pack into a two hour, fifteen minute movie. The director’s cut does involve most of the character’s supporting cast in one way or another, but there are moments where the film drags a little and where it feels rushed. A movie may have been the wrong format for the story told; a mini-series or a short TV series might have worked better, but wouldn’t have had the pull that a feature film does. It’s not even a case of too much story; the theatrical release managed to cut a subplot without too many issue. However, a longer format, one that could develop relationships, both beneficial and adversarial, would have helped.
Next week, Battle Beyond the Stars.
* The same radioactive waste then spilled into the sewers of New York and on to four adolescent turtles. Really.
** The Daily Bugle is considered to be part of Spider-Man’s mythos, and Sony has the rights to that part of Marvel while Twentieth Century Fox had the Daredevil rights, since reverted back to Marvel.
*** In a missed shout out, Ulrich mentions that there are no alligators living in the sewers of New York City. He never said a word about turtles. The alligator may have been the Spider-Man villain, the Lizard, if Fox had the Spider-rights instead of Sony.
**** Or apparently kills. She gets better for the spin-off movie, Elekctra.
This post originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on August 28th, 2014.
I’ll come right and say it: I’m tired of elemental systems that shamelessly rip from the Greek, Chinese, or Japanese, especially when they do so without really understanding what these people were getting at. Like, if you’re going to go with Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, would it kill you to read a little Empedocles, and maybe Aristotle or Proclus or something? Just doing that would give your system a blast of fresh air to differentiate it from the rest of the crowd.
But all this, it’s been done already. Like I want to say to every fantasy author who refuses to move beyond Tolkien, can we do something else now? I’m sure that somebody can play the old hat and make it look like new, but Sturgeon’s Law applies doubly-well when it comes to beating dead horses: most of it is sheer, undiluted crap.
The second half of this article will discuss some lesser-used elemental systems but first I want to discuss, you know, making your own. Discard your assumptions and everything you know or think you know about the universe. Get into the mindset of the culture that this system is embedded in, whether it’s magical or purely philosophical, and ask yourself “What would make sense to these people?”
Not everyone used the same elements. That’s why we have different systems to begin with. And— this cannot be emphasized enough— question all your assumptions. “Would they really think that this thing was fundamental or important, or is that just an idea that I’m bringing to the table?”
Limyaael gives a few examples of this philosophy in action: “Perhaps your own imaginary culture is very heaven-oriented, and chooses as the elements sun, stars, moons, and cloud. Perhaps the sky, earth, and sea are considered elements, and nothing else is, because nothing else is a place that humans can travel through. Perhaps snow and ice are important to northern cultures, but not to southern ones.”
But remember: “If you’re trying for a serious tone, the twee addition to elemental magic ruins it, especially when it has nothing in common with the other elements. Restrain yourself.”
Limyaael, incidentally, was (I think) referencing the Babylonian system in that second example of hers: it also included “wind,” for a total of four elements, and “sky” was analogous to the aether in the Greek system. It was non-terrestrial stuff (in one of my projects, where elementals seem to be partly influenced by cultural perceptions of their element, Sky elementals kind of resemble astronaut zombie things whose suits may only be “suits”).
There are three systems that I’ve dabbled notably in. The first is based on the Chinese Bagua or trigrams: Heaven, Wind, Water, Metal, Earth, Thunder, Fire, and Wood. The second was written for an entry in my Culture Column series: Absence, (three-dimensional) Space, Sky, Fire, Earth, Water, and Flesh. As the article explains each one was thought to lead to the next, and the thought process manages to be both logical for the culture and pretty unlike anything else that I’ve seen before.
The third, which doesn’t have a good presence anywhere on the web, was very biocentric and based on Bone (inanimate substance), blood (animating force), flesh (animate substance), fear (the compulsion away from things), and desire (the compulsion toward things). The latter two come into play because, in a possibly materialistic twist on the concept, the mind was considered to be just as much a part of the world as anything else, and it was decided that everything could ultimately be understood as either “wanting to get something” or “wanting to avoid something.”
Flesh, or animate substance, could exist without an animating substance, as demonstrated by the existence of things like earthworms and jellyfish, which apparently didn’t have any blood to speak of. On the other hand, things that did have blood could be counted on to become inanimate if they lost too much, so obviously there were some beings that needed an animating substance and some that were solely Flesh.
(I’ve said it before, but feel free to take any of the ideas that I drop in public)
If you’d like some homework then here’s a project for you: Figure out a system used by a people who reasoned that if the universe was born from chaos or void, then the real fundamental elements were absences, not presences. Before fire there was cold. Before light, darkness.
What else would there be in this system?
IRL elemental systems
The classic (and Classical) elemental system is Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. Aether was added by Aristotle, who reasoned that because the first four elements were corruptible but no change had ever been observed in the Heavens, the universe beyond must be made of another, incorruptible “quintessence.”
Aristotle assigned as well special qualities to the basic four: Air and Fire were hot, Air and Water were wet, Earth and Fire were dry, and Earth and Water were cold. Proclus thought that the elements had special qualities but gave his own system: Fire was sharp, subtle, and mobile and Earth was blunt, dense, and immobile. These could be considered “more fundamental” than the other two because they were fully opposed and shared no qualities. Air and Water were almost transitional: Air was mostly like Fire but lost sharpness in exchange for bluntness and Water went one step further, losing subtlety to denseness.
Jābir ibn Hayyān left out Aether and added “the stone which burns,” sulphur (representing combustibility) and mercury (metallic properties). Paracelsus built upon Hayyān’s additions and discarded the original system entirely in favor of sulphur (flammability), mercury (volatility), and salt (solidity). In burning wood, mercury/cohesion left in the form of smoke, the fire was the manifestation of flammability (which acted upon the mercury/volatility in the wood), and what remained in the form of ash was the salt, or solidity, of the wood.
In some astrological systems, the opposing forces were Air/Water and Earth/Fire. The Tibetan system was like the Classical but the fifth element was (three-dimensional) Space.
The Japanese Godai, which were broader and more symbolic than the Classical: Earth was solid things, Water was all liquid, Fire was that which destroyed, Air was moving things, and Void was things that were outside of normal experience.
The Chinese Wu Xing were also symbolic, more steps in a process than ever-distinct substances, and they are often translated as “movements” or “phases.” Wood fed Fire, which created Earth, which held Metal, which was used to hold Water, which nourished Wood. On the other side, Wood (roots) divided the Earth, which absorbed Water, which quenched Fire, which melted Metal, which chopped Wood.
If you base your system off of either of these then see what you create when you keep in mind that they’re not just the Classical Greek system with an element or two added on or switched out.
What else could you draw on? Howabout:
- The four (or five) humors: Sanguine/Blood, Melancholic/Black Bile, Phlegmatic/Phlegm, and Choleric/Yellow Bile (with the optional “Leukine,” associated with white blood cells). If you’re going for some kind of magic system, emotional powers based on the humors haven’t been overdone yet.
- The four (or five) cardinal directions: North, East, South, and West (with the optional “Center”). This may seem weird but if you’re inspired by the Tibetan emphasis on Space then you can be assured of having fresh territory to trod if you figure out how to base the elements entirely on Space.
- The seven chakras: Time/Space, Dark/Death, Aether/Light/Life/Lightning, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth.
“My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days, a time of peace when the Avatar kept balance. But that all changed when the Nitrogen Republic attacked…”
Your turn: What’s another elemental system that you’ve found or made yourself?
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Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
This post originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on August 14th, 2014.
Why bother with a fandom?
This is a follow-up to the previous article, Fandom and Fanfiction.
Karen Hunton of Build a Little Biz describes the members of a fandom as having these qualities:
- loyal – they want what you have and aren’t interested in competitors
- avid – they will soak up anything and everything you have to offer
- ambassadors – they will proudly tell people about you and what you do
- protective – they are the first to oust a complainer, a copycat, or a troll
- keen – they are happy to provide feedback, test offerings, do trial runs
Do you want that stuff? Do you want it?
Kevin Kelley explains that you only need 1000 True Fans to make a living. If you have 1,000 people willing to spend $100 on you every year then that comes to an income of $100,000, minus expenses. That is some good stuff right there. And Karen Hunton’s listed qualities are as good a description of True Fans as any you could find.
So how do you develop a fandom?
You need to get them invested
One of the biggest things that you can do is give your audience “feels.” Make them cry. Make them laugh. Make them hang off the edges of their seats. You know this thing.
But the feels, they are important. Let’s take a look at TV Tropes for a moment, shall we? Most works have subpages to catalog: Crowning Moments of Awesome… Tear Jerkers… Nightmare Fuel… Funny Moments… Heartwarming Moments… and more.
As TV Tropes says on the Emotional Torque page, where these are grouped: “The overriding goal of all storytelling is to get a reaction from the audience— a laugh, a tear, a desire to change, or maybe a desire to kill the storyteller.”
And when you deliver feels, the fandom makes so much music about your work that they can make a radio station webpage that plays nothing but that music over and over and over (I must confess that most of my non-story writing is done to Skaianet Radio).
You also need to build a community. Do you see how I bolded that last bit? That’s because it’s important. Fandoms are groups of people. Get them talking with each other. Get them to feel like there’s this super special connection that binds them all together and makes them, in at least that one respect, similar to each other.
(And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll make sure your work is good enough that the super special connection is well-deserved. Your goal is not to con the marks into sacrificing their boondollars for transient things. It is to touch their souls in some way.)
And interact with them. Be approachable. Comment on the forums. Respond to emails. Ask them questions. Be involved. If you are not part of the community then they will not follow you, they will follow the work, and that’s not too good if you want to ever step away and do something else. Or, you know, just plain be supported in your work.
If your fans love you, and not just your work, but at the very least appreciate you because you’re responsible for the work, then you won’t have to worry about living in the gutter because everybody stole your work and nobody passed a penny in your direction for it.
(I mean, there are other reasons, too, but this is a pretty good one too)
You need to get them active
This ties into the community aspect a lot, because when the fans are active they’re usually going to be active with other people, or their activity will spur activity in others. But get them active.
Harry Potter and Lost were very responsible for the creation of the Wild Mass Guessing pages on TV Tropes. Pretty much every detail was an element in somebody’s theory, because both works had proven that it was worthwhile to analyze the little things.
This is how Kate885 described the situation (in a Livejournal post that, unfortunately, I seem unable to find again, a long time later): “Chances are good that we as a fandom have figured out almost every last detail of DH [Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows]. We are the infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters. The only thing left to do is discern which pieces are true and which are false. But, after two years— somebody has come up with every theory that is theoretically possible.
“I remember, back between OotP and HBP, someone actually came up with the theory that Voldemort could be keeping himself alive by splitting parts of his soul and putting them in containers for safekeeping. Yes, someone managed to correctly predict Horcruxes before we even knew what they were called. If you shoot enough arrows in the dark, sooner or later you hit the target.”
Think about that for a second. Imagine what this is implying. The amount of activity that is behind this.
If you had one thousand fans who liked to spend any portion of their time figuring out the mysteries or future events of your work, do you think that they could probably be counted on to spend a lousy $100 a year on you? Do you think that they would become your 1,000 True Fans?
“Become” is an important word there. Your True Fans will analyze and theorize and discuss, of course, but it is not that someone becomes a True Fan and then analyzes and theorizes and discusses. Rather, there is something in your work that is worth analyzing, or theorizing about, or discussing, and in process of time the person who does that becomes a True Fan.
But you need to have something worth analyzing, theorizing about, and discussing.
Oh, and fanfiction? Gets people invested. Writers and readers both. In case it wasn’t obvious.
When people get active, they get invested. They don’t spend their time writing a story or making a song or creating a goshdurned video game and then turn around and decide “Meh, I think I’ll stop caring about this.” Once they get active enough you’ve got a feedback loop that’ll generally only terminate if you do something asinine, because it is human nature to justify your involvement in something that you have already invested time and money in. Every book they buy increases the odds that they will buy the book, and if somebody has read two-thirds of the way through Homestuck, then you can be pretty well counted on to finish the last third if for no other reason than that you have read the equivalent of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
It’s called effort justification.
But again, and this is where I have to say, “Use your powers for good, and not for evil”— If you decide to try to use Psychology Wizardry to con people into passing over coin for veritable mental poison, then first, it’s probably not going to work out like you want because the Real Good Stuff is common enough that it’ll show your work for the fool’s gold that it is and, second, you’re an asshole and you should feel bad.
You need to give them something to work with
I remember a conversation at Dark Lord Potter that got onto the topic of why the Harry Potter fandom had gotten where it was. It was pointed out that a major factor— not necessarily the biggest, just big— was, paradoxically, that there was so much room for improvement in the series. There were holes, there were things that didn’t make sense, and there were plot decisions that weren’t liked, and so the series straddled this weird place where it was awesome enough to be worth reading but sucky enough that you wanted to go in and fix the stuff you didn’t like.
As evidence, this commenter brought forward the sheer number of Alternate Universe, “Fix,” and worldbuilding fics in the Harry Potter fandom, especially relative to some other fandoms. DLP especially sometimes has a love-hate relationship with JK, lauding her for this quality over here and mercilessly tearing apart the series’ flaws over there. But DLP is also notable for the volume and quality of work that its members produce, and it is in no small part due to this very quality in Harry Potter.
Now, I wouldn’t suggest intentionally sowing flaws in your work so that people can tear it apart. That’s… That’s pretty damn stupid, okay? But it illustrates the concept.
A better example: Some works don’t garner much fanfiction because they’re not well-known, or they’re just not fun. But some are well-known and well-loved, but still pretty sterile. Why is this?
Because everything gets wrapped up. There’s no room to fill in. There’s nothing to explore after the curtain closes. There are no mysteries left.
So leave things open. Keep some threads loose and untied. Give your audience something to chew on.
Want extra homework? Read The Dynamics of Fandom: Exploring Fan Communities in Online Spaces, available here.
Your turn: What else can be done to build a fandom?
