Noah asked me why I didn’t like the LOTR films, then added that he didn’t see the Narnia films because they sounded bad. For me that raises the question of how the Narnia films sound different than the LOTR films, aside from having little English kids in the cast. It’s still a lot of fantasy and swords and an epic clash between the deformed and the comely.
I get the same thing sometimes when I see a big Hollywood film that’s meant to be a blockbuster but flops. Sometimes you can tell they won’t make it, either because no one was on their game or because somebody with power made exceptionally strange decisions (Hudson Hawk, the magnificent Wild Wild West). Other times I don’t really get why the movie is singled out as being so bad. Ishtar, for example, strikes me as unusually good; I love Elaine May, and Warren Beatty gave one of his few decent performances. The Deep Blue Sea, which is about supersmart giant sharks, seemed like all the other big-monster action films. Maybe it was so run of the mill that people made it a scapegoat for the tons of other product they had sat through.
Then there’s Batman and Robin. I really can’t tell why it’s worse than the other Batman movies, by which I mean the ones that started with the Tim Burton film and ended, I guess, with Batman and Robin. I saw Batman and was pretty indifferent, tried to watch the second film and walked out, missed the third one. Then I saw Batman and Robin and was again indifferent, except that it had Uma Thurman in it and she was funny and looked great. Otherwise the movie seemed like all the other body-armored, black-metaled, big-shot-supporting-cast Batman footage I had seen.
I’m told Batman’s armors had nipples that time around and that it made a difference. Still doesn’t seem like much, though.
So the critical principle mentioned in this post’s title would be: If you liked all that other shit, what’s the matter with this shit?
Well, I haven’t seen the Narnia movies; the CGI in that was supposed to be bad and Aslan wasn’t scary. That last especially is bad news for fans of the books.
I didn’t like any of the Tim Burton Batman’s that much.
But what you’re really asking is, “Why are some examples of a genre better than others.” And then it’s a case by case basis. Lord of the Rings, for instance, had really good special effects and managed to stay true to some of the best moments in the film. The part where Eowyn talks about wanting to fight for her homeland for example; the actress who delivers it sounds totally heartfelt and desperate and innocent — just really well done. Made me tear up.
I mean, yeah, if you’re not into the genre, you’re not into the genre…but that doesn’t mean everything in the genre is exactly the same.
I mean…you like some super-hero comics and don’t like others, right? You can explain why you like this one and not that one…but, on the other hand, surely you’d see why someone on the outside might look at them all and say, “this is all ridiculous stupid crap. How can you even tell the difference?”
Ok, I understand there’s good and bad fantasy adventure or whatever. But until you’ve seen or read the work in question, how do you tell the good from the bad? So I was curious about what were the giveaway signs that the Narnia film would be a dud. It sounds like the problems at issue were all technical, namely special effects. At least I assume special effects would be the reason Aslan wasn’t scary.
Offhand, I’m not sure I could tell a good superhero comic from a bad one unless I’d taken a look at it or at least read a synopsis. To me the stuff all sounds the same. But if somebody told me the artist’s proportions were off or the dialog was recycled, I’d probably give it a miss. I guess that’s analagous with how you sized up the Narnia movie.
BTW I liked fantasy adventure when I was a kid and would be up for a halfway decent adaptation of Elric or Dorian Hawkmoon. But I guess I am out of tune with the genre now. All the pomp and circumstance gets on my nerves, whereas I liked the equivalent trappings in the old-style Bond films, and by “old-style” I mean the ones with Pierce Brosnan. I saw a couple in the 90s and they were fun.
I think you can usually make a good pre-judgment if you know whose involved sometimes–I don’t need to watch the new Kevin Smith movie to know it’ll have shitty cinematography, and I know that an Uwe Boll movie isn’t going to be any good. I noticed you mentioned Deep Blue Sea–I’d argue that it isn’t like most nasty animal flicks, and that’s pretty much attributable to Renny Harlin, who has a talent for making weird, overstuffed versions of standard action shit. Mindhunters, Long Kiss Goodnight–those movies are standard, yes, but they’re weird takes on the genre, full of overblown asides.
I think there’s some value to your original question “if you like this shit, what’s wrong with this other shit”, but I’d argue that some stuff ends up exceeding it’s boundaries when you’re talking genre work. Fincher’s termite art style control makes Se7en a more interesting, “better” serial killer flick than something tossed off like Kiss the Girls, Manhunter’s cinematography and editing make a better Red Dragon movie then the one that Ed Norton was in, that sort of thing.
But I’m more director/cinematography obsessive then I am content, so maybe I’m just not the right kind of audience member to ask.
Good lord, you liked the Brosnan films? I saw a couple recently, and they were about the most joyless movies to sit through I’ve ever experienced. The Craig one’s are much, much, much better.
Aslan being unscary is not necessarily solely CGI. It could be script too. It suggests that the filmmakers missed the point in a kind of catastrophic way, in any case.
Well, I read Narnia as a kid and I don’t remember being scared by Aslan. That scene where he gets killed was disturbing, but Aslan himself didn’t bother me. Had his stern side, of course, but he had his tender side too, kind of like God.
I guess really my post asks 2 questions. 1) If you like one genre film, why be turned off by another film in the same genre and with a similar pedigree? (LOTR, Narnia. Answer: You’d heard the fx were poor and the treatment of a key character sounded off.) 2) If a movie strikes me as standard issue but competent, why do people who like similar films dislike the film that strikes me as standard issue but competent? (Answer: Tastes differ, I guess. For instance, Tucker finds Deep Blue Sea “weird and overstuffed,” whereas I found it routine. What was the weird and overstuffed part? All that comes to mind is Samuel Jackson getting eaten.
(The Long Kiss Goodnight struck me as interesting mainly because it had a female action lead and tried to make up for it by giving her a black male sidekick who was a total boob. I guess the idea was to reassure the white-guy action audience. It was the one of the few times that objectionable racial or sexual politics kept me from enjoying a film.
(But all my opinions must be weighed against the fact that I liked Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.)
well, perhaps for me the lord of the rings movies & narnia could be considered the same type of thing, as i had never read the books in question. i enjoyed the hobbit but found lotr too boring to get through, & the narnia books were excluded from our otherwise very fantasy-friendly childhood bookshelves for reasons that were never made explicit.
so i saw the lotr movies with friends who were giant fans of the books, & i thought they were well-acted, especially the hobbits (& including gollum) & generally very pretty to look at, but i knew that at least half the movies went over my head, & that i was not caring about a lot of the stuff i was supposed to care about.
when narnia came out, i started hearing reviews of the books & movie, about how the books were big blunt christian apologia, & the movie was being sold as the anti-harry potter, a fantasy movie to indoctrinate children into christianity instead of witchy paganism.
christian apologia are automatically a turnoff for me (& i figure the reason my parents never read me the books), as i was raised with the idea that i had to guard against assimilation & missionaries (seriously, missionaries & mcdonalds were the two biggest bogeymen at my elementary school). not that apologia have no value, or can't be appreciated even by those who don't believe in christianity, but it's a minus for me personally.
so i didn't go in with a totally open mind (i went with my husband, cause he liked the books as a kid & generally likes big effectsy fantasy flicks), & i did end up hating it. the story didn't move me or engage my imagination in any way, i didn't identify with the three angelic kids or the one evil kid, & all the christian stuff really started to piss me off.
the worst was the aslan-sacrifice scene, with all the ugly stunted warty subhuman things (whatever they were), which so resembled those old medieval paintings of the mob mocking jesus on the stations of the cross that i studied in art history, that i can't believe it wasn't intentional. i jabbed my husband & whispered "see all those evil little demon things? that's me. that's jews."
he, of course, told me i was making things up. just like a guy who never went to grad school. but that is my lotr vs. narnia data point anyhow.
Hey, do it as a post!
tom, no, i feel like i don't have enough original or in-depth to say on the subject, besides "i liked those ok, hated that one, i'm a jew, blah blah." & i already got into a bit of a flamewar on a science fiction blog once over whether the little cackly demons were an antisemitic slur.
but i am going to write a post about the nebbish vindication effect. tonight. hopefully.
Tom, to address #1, I’d say it depends on where the film comes in the cycle. LotR’s “fantasy epic” cycle went through Narnia and many lesser lights, and Golden Compass killed it; compare the “grimy/cold horror films with kids painted white copied from Asian horror,” goes Ring-Ring 2-about 400 others-The Unborn, and then to pasture, I’d say.
And people tend to prefer what they see first (at least I do).
Also, I think the terms of production (crazy money, huge committees, massive egos) plays in, compressing these cycles into just a few years. (LotR was 2001; the Ring was ’02.) So in lit/comics/metal, riffs develop over several years, but in film a genre’s played out in half a decade. Then, if the Western cycle of the early 90s is an indicator, it’s off to TV.
(i’m still waiting for the Hollywood cycle of Tommy Lee Jones as Alien in Coffee Commercial movies.)
Bill, that’s an interesting point about the rise and decline of genres. The thing is, I like present-day superhero comics better than the originals (for the most part)and that is one genre that’s been done and redone and redone and screwed up and redone again.
Miriam, to me the idea that the Narnia film has got anti-Semitic caricatures in it is worth a blog post. But I think just about anything is worth a blog post. I know when I read blogs I don’t demand essays, just anything that will keep me reading for a few paragraphs.
For me, the difference between Narnia and LoTR was the POV characters. Narnia (at least the first one, which is the only one I’ve seen) is told from the point of view of children, whereas LoTR is told from the point of view of adults. As I’ve gotten older, I have trouble connecting with a film if it’s told from a child’s perspective.
Though for some reason, I don’t have this problem when it comes to dark fantasy, like Pan’s Labyrinth.
Tom – I think the Burton Batman movies are better than the Shumacher ones by just about any metric you might want to use. I guess the Schumachers are campier, but Burton uses camp more effectively and with more complexity. Otherwise, though, the Burtons have better performances, they have a more coherent sense of design, their stories are better and better told, they are richer emotionally and thematically. Batman Returns is as beautiful a tribute to freaks and outsiders as Edward Scissorhands.
With Ishtar, I think the critics/press really turned against it before they had even seen the movie. I expect they wanted to give Beatty some comeuppance.
Also – Renny Harlin is the low rent version of Paul Verhoeven.
Ishtar has indeed received bad press… but I’m biased: http://www.ishtarthemovie.com.
LL Cool J has a parrot, he’s a cook: pirate!–the end fully embraces the til-then latent homoeroticism by getting rid of the female so that the two men can be together, all to the sounds of one of the men rapping about how his “head is like a shark fin”–that’s just off the top of my head. I’m not saying I particularly “like” what Renny Harlin does–i’d put him even lower than the low-rent Verhoeven, but yeah, I think he’s usually making sure to jack stuff in, even if it’s just product placement for that vodka he loves.
Oh, and the Aslan sacrifice scene was pretty creepy shit.
Boy, all that passed me by in Deep Blue Sea. Two guys were left? I thought it was just LL Cool J.
Oh yeah, Tom Jane makes it after Saffron Burrows basically sacrifices herself. For no good reason, if i’m remembering it correctly. The real clincher is that they start playing the LL Cool J song almost immediately, so that you’re watching these two jackasses sunning themselves while listening to one of them sing about how awesome he is.
Mindhunters is even more of a “huh” film, in that they shot it in such a way that any of the final four people alive during the last 20 minutes or so could be the bad guy. So it’s an entire movie with no real mystery, since the entire thing is decide-able in the final frames. Ridiculous shit, but it embraces it. Also, a dude gets Mr. Freezed to death by a Rube Goldberg contraption.