Summer of the Superhero

I love superheroes. To me, superhero or comic book movies are "fluff, about nothing" the same way romance novels are "fluff, about nothing." Which is to say, they ain't.

What does a superhero do for us? He shows us what's possible, what we can do. He shows us what it means to be extraordinary, in the way we all long to be extraordinary. He shows us, too, the cost of uniqueness, the loneliness, the exclusion from society. He shows us what it means to be truly different, in a way that the rest of the world will never understand.

Most of all, he makes choices: Use my power for good, or for evil? Tell the truth about my identity, or tell a lie? Keep my power and be an outcast, or excise it and try to become normal? Control my power, or have it control me? Jump Christian Bale immediately, or wait long enough for him to take a breath and say "Hey, d'you wanna -" (OK, that last choice was me. Sorry.)

The Spiderman movies have lots of fans, but Spiderman is not for me. Peter Parker is not smart, rich, strong, or funny. He's not even conflicted or complex. He is, in short, a boy.

But the superhero movies of the summer of '08 are a feast for a girl like me. Not only do we get superheroes, but all of them are grown men. It makes life interesting.



Iron Man

The good: An actual smart hero - not just a hero we're told is smart, but one who is actually shown as smart. Brilliant, in fact. And cool.

Casting of Robert Downey, Jr - he's no pretty-boy actor, and he has a lot of edge to him. And he's funny. And his voice is great. And he was obviously working out big-time, which is nice. And he can deliver a zinging line with the best of them.

A good script - that actually sort of made sense (I'm looking at you, Transformers), was not sappy or stupid (I'm looking at you again), used all the plot points it introduced without dropping them (ahem, again) and ended on a quirky, upbeat note.



The bad: Gwyneth Paltrow. Ugh. What were they thinking? Could they not at least cast someone with an iota of sex appeal?

Gwyneth Paltrow's character, Pepper Potts - one place these movies always fall down is in the heroine roles. They can't help it - they're man-movies, and these are women imagined by men. And so we have to deal with characters like Pepper Potts, though she's hardly the worst of them (I'm looking at you, Spiderman, and [sniff] you, Batman). Actually Pepper could have been better with a brisk rewrite, preferably by a woman. She wasn't too far off the mark, but she wasn't there, either.

The villain - not bad, but see below for better.



The Incredible Hulk

The good: Again, the casting. What is the deal with Edward Norton? Why is he so fascinating? 'Cos, he is. I'm not alone here either, since he gets chicks like Jessica Biel and Salma Hayek. He has some kind of mojo going on.

Norton's Bruce Banner has one goal: To get rid of the freakishness inside him. Unlike Iron Man's gleeful enjoyment of power, Banner is unwilling and hates what he's become. He doesn't make peace with it, really. The second movie of the summer to feature my favourite kind of hero - the brilliantly smart one. Norton is great, of course. He always is.

The heroine - I didn't think I would, but I really liked Liv Tyler in this. She had no chemistry with Norton (the only woman, I suppose, who can resist the mojo), but the story didn't force it on them. She was sweet, and smart, and really feminine. She's really beautiful, too. She should make more movies.

The villain - this movie is a lesson in how to write a villain. Give him a clear goal, that is in opposition to the hero's. Make the achievement of his every goal a setback to the hero. Build his character arc, scene by scene, the same way you do the hero's, until an irresistible force meets an immovable object in the climax. And if you can, cast Tim Roth. He rocks.



The Bad: Hulk's bangs. His purple pants. His weird, squeezed face. His spaced-out teeth. Hulk, when you look at him, is really sort of ridiculous. Movie makers need to put some effort into making him scary. The first scene Hulk appears, which is mostly in the dark, they succeed. The rest of the time - wtf? The LOTR movies were years ago - we can do better animation than this. Surely?

And they never do succeed in answering the Pants Conundrum, the mysterious quirk of physics that makes Hulk's pants grow when he does. Though this is somewhat merciful, as nobody wants to see (or animate) a giant Hulk wang waving over New York City.


Hellboy

The good: The visuals here are - I don't even know what to say. They haven't made words to describe the visuals here. Whoever came up with these, I hope I never get a glimpse inside their head.

That thing in the old-style scuba suit - what was that thing? It was really witty, whatever it was. I laughed at every line it said, and its little flapping valves when it talked.
I've never seen a story in which an indescribable, inexplicable thing was so funny. Actually, I laughed a lot in this movie, which was weird.

The heroine is half decent, too.

The bad: Hellboy himself is, well, weird. Even if you like him, you have to admit he's deeply weird. I don't really get the romance, but they are kinda cute together. I suppose.

And then, we come to the master class.



I admit it unashamedly: I am a huge Batman fan. Batman Begins was the best thing to happen since sliced bread. The Dark Knight is better.

I'm not going to go into any detail here, since the movie only opened yesterday and I don't want to spoil it for anyone. All I'll say is this: This film is brilliant, fast-paced, gripping, thoughtful, philosophical, and fascinating. It is also - if you didn't happen to catch the title - relentlessly dark. I like dark. I write dark. This movie is somewhat disturbing, and scary, and if you've seen Heath Ledger's Joker, you've seen a glimpse of just how dark it goes. Trust me, it goes darker.

The only negative I can mention - the same as Batman Begins - is the heroine. I won't say more. Just - please, guys, next time out give Batman a better heroine. That's two strikes. Do better next time, K? Thanks.

Other than that, don't change your casting, which is perfectly fine, fine, fine:



And that is all.

Happy moviegoing,
Abby

Midsummer Moon by Laura Kinsale

I am amazing myself this summer by actually reading books off my TBR pile - including Kinsale's Midsummer Moon, which I bought a few weeks ago.

It's an unusual book, which is usual for Kinsale, who is an unpredictable writer. It's about Merlin, a female absent-minded genius inventor, and the stuffy duke who falls in love with her, amidst intrugue and family drama and lots of other stuff.

Other stuff, aside, really - this book is about Merlin, and Merlin alone. Which is strange, because she is easily the most inaccessible and contradictory character in the book. She is portrayed as a brilliant inventor, but so very absent-minded that she has no social skills and wonders if one can take a post-chaise to Afghanistan. This is fine if played for gentle laughs, but is unsettling in a heroine, the central heart and soul of a book.

Wandering into disturbing territory is her childlike innocence of sex. Really, wouldn't a woman of scientific bent, with unlimited access to books and educational material, have an inkling of how sexual reproduction works? The scene in which the hero actually has to explain that what they've done is where babies come from not only squicked me out, it stretched my suspension of disbelief.

Still, when Kinsale is on, she's on, as when she describes Merlin's invented flying machine:

Like a montrous white bird it appeared, dwarfing Shelby and the crowd below it, an immense pale shape that loomed for an instant on the horizon and then resolved into wings as the thing exploded into full view, launched from the hill's crest to mount the air... It seemed to hover, like a monstrous demonic angel, casting a shadow that rippled over the crowd and sailed across the trees and lawn. A taut rope, a flimsy string at this distance, connected it for another moment with Shelby's racing mount, and then that fell loose, leaving the thing free to soar as the stallion shied and came to a lathered halt.

Ransom, the hero, who is watching this scene, shows his terror in nearly every packed sentence. "Monstrous", "dwarfing", "exploded", "launched", and of course "monstrous demonic angel" put across the unbearable tension. He sees the rope as a "flimsy string", not strong enough to hold the machine, which is repeatedly referred to in horror as "the thing". Neat turns of phrase like "resolved into wings" and "a lathered halt", as well as great verbs like "rippled" and "sailed" and "shied" fill out each sentence, letting them explode like small strings of fireworks. This is the kind of treat Laura Kinsale gives you when you read her closely.

In the end, I liked Merlin after all. Her internal journey, to keep her passion and her individuality while falling in love, was an interesting one. (On the minus side, however, I wasn't as enamoured of Ransom's use of deception to manipulate her more than once - a device Kinsale used, though less heavily, in Flowers from the Storm).

And I had some sympathy when I got back some contest scoresheets, in which I didn't final not because of my writing, but because one of the judges didn't like my heroine and marked me down. "I dislike your heroine," the judge sniffed, "and would not care to read about her further."

Well, then, to each her own. Not every heroine is going to be liked in this world. Even the brilliant ones.

Stuff

I haven't been online much. It's too nice outside!

However, I've made some good headway on Manuscript 3 - the first chapter had to be rewritten a few times before I was happy with it. Now I'm off and running through chapter 2 and beyond.

And I've been reading, reading, reading. Reviews coming soon.