Richard Matheson: 1927 - 2013

One of the greats has made it to the Summerland.

Richard Matheson was one of the true pioneers of speculative fiction and horror; a prolific workhorse who disguised his genius behind accessible, unpretentious prose and an empathy for the everyman. Thanks to 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet' we can never get on a plane without worrying that there might be 'something on the wing!', but thanks also to 'What Dreams May Come' we know that 'there is more' waiting for us on the other side, too.

Unlike Ellison or Simmons or Gaiman or Bester, on whose works I have slowly sipped, my experience with Matheson's efforts have been more of a frat party chug; a fast-paced and delirious consumption of his novels, short stories, and teleplays that is, to date, ongoing and unlikely to stop.  Truly, I only met the man and his brilliance for the first time a few years ago, but I saw no need to take out relationship slow: his work is endlessly satisfying and refreshingly addictive. No one who's read the original 'I Am Legend' will ever be able to look at the Will Smith flick of the same name and find even an atavistic shade of its dark resplendence, its wrenching, unflinching examination of loneliness and private despair.  Likewise, anyone who thinks they know haunted houses hasn't spent anytime with the original, the best, the only Hell House.  Whether he was writing about a deranged department store clerk going mad before lunch or a coven of witches turned into weapons by the U.S. Military, Matheson made the unknowable known (whether we liked it or not) and was more than wiling to remind us that the monster was us all along.  He inspired Stephen King, who shamelessly and with pride admitted he outright ripped off Matheson on more than one occasion, not to mention a host of other writers (yours truly included) who jealously tried to mimic his elegant approach to the awful and awe-ful, always somehow falling short.  And for those of us who saw The Twilight Zone as a mirror held uncomfortably close to our own world, Matheson's ideas had no equal.

Many of his works were permeated with the precepts of parapsychology and the concept of the mind as an energy field that survives physical death, a notion that made his ghost stories frighteningly plausible and made his seminal 'What Dreams May Come' an inspiration to millions.  When you die, Matheson postulated, you are still the same person you were on Earth: the same hopes, the same failings, the same ambitions.  'Death,' he said, 'is simply continuation on another level' and Heaven is 'a state of mind', a place where one builds a house wrought from the good deeds and loving relationships fostered for all eternity.

I hope Mr. Matheson was right on that one, because I hope one day to visit that house.  Perhaps he'll have me for tea and we can discuss the finer points of writing.  I know he'll have a great view with a fine balcony and he won't begrudge me smoking a pinch or two of Balkan Supreme.  In the meantime I can only continue to quaff his great works at a fever pace, and hope for a day when I might be able to say half as much as he had to say with one tenth the aplomb.  

'Man of Steel'

It tickles!

Though I am a seasoned veteran of John Byrne's seminal run of the Superman comic following the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot (I still have first printings of the whole stretch, and woe unto me for not taking better care of them), my favorite interpretation of the Man of Steel was and remains the Mark Waid/Alex Ross's Kingdom Come. I loved it because among other things it imagined a doomsday scenario that wasn't just extreme, it was ironic: the world was going to be overrun by rampaging metahumans styling themselves 'superheroes' and it was up to Superman to either show them how to behave or else face an indiscriminate extinction event courtesy of us homo sapiens. Though every hero in the DC universe took part, the burden of setting the example fell to the World's Greatest hero because, well, hey, who ELSE could do it, right? It was a spectacular character study of Superman because it presented him with a quandary he couldn't solve with his fists – try as he might – or his usual laundry list of homespun, simplistic platitudes. This was a Superman who was frequently paralyzed with indecision, rueful of his actions and consumed by guilt when anyone – even those who would call him enemy – had to die for the greater good, a concept which (as then, so now) had become thoroughly subjective.  The only regrettable thing about this perspective-shifting story was that it was an Elseworlds tale, mere 'what if' whimsy relegated to the speculation of a trillion trillion alternate universes.

Whether or not Kingdom Come was one of the influences behind 'Man of Steel', the magic makers decided to tackle the weighty notion of Superman as a burdened savior straightaway, a young man's cross to bear rather than the product of age and wisdom and dangerous familiarity with his charges on Earth. But they don't just touch on it; they dwell on it, make it the one and only issue of the entire movie. The result is a finished product that bypasses virtually every other quality we've come to expect from stories of the Man of Tomorrow – action, humor, fun, wonder, romance – in favor of a meticulous deconstruction of the how one man might shoulder the weight of the world. It tries too hard, misfires frequently, and comes off mostly like a funeral dirge with a hefty sermon tossed in on top.

The script was penned by David S. Goyer, whose career is getting a tremendous shot in the arm thanks to his creds from Nolan's 'Dark Knight' trilogy. He's doing so well, in fact, that he's also been retained to write the 'Justice League' movie and its anticipated sequels whenever those make it to celluloid. I find this troubling; I simply don't like the idea of one man writing all these films. Goyer has obviously struck a rich vein with his approach to comic book flicks and the studios seem to have warmed to him (though they hated his earlier, more original fare like 1998's 'Dark City'), which makes me worry that he will be loathe to take chances and do anything daring that goes beyond the formulaic safe zone as he pumps out the hits. 'Man of Steel' is achingly formulaic, though the film mixes up the obligatory childhood scenes and formative moments by intercutting them with Supes as he appears today. It comes across as a very transparent attempt to mask the colossally boring first hour, a by-the-numbers checklist in which the audience is told, with minor variations, everything we already know about Kal-El's childhood, his parentage, etc. Watching it reminded me of the 'Spider-Man' reboot from last year, albeit not (quite) as insulting to the audience.

Not that their aren't plenty of opportunities to feel insulted, or lectured, or preached to. If you want overbearing subtext, folks, this is the World's Finest.

We have Krypton, with Russel Crowe at his mumbly best (still not a match for Brando) telling a room full of One Percenters that their neglect of the climate and insatiable lust for energy is dooming them. The coup attempt by General Zod is an excellent introduction to his character, although we lose five minutes watching his forces and the Kryptonian 'good guys' battle it out with ships and sigils we can't recognize and therefore don't know whether we should cheer or gasp when a giant cruiser explodes in the background.

We have Pa and Ma Kent, played by the always-good-when-he's-just-acting Kevin Costner and Diane Lane, still excruciatingly hot no matter how many laugh lines and age spots they put on her. They impart Morals and Values 101 on the adolescent Supes with a litany of teachable moments pressed straight from the cinematic cookie cutter. Still, it's saying something that the scenes in the Kansas heartland are actually the least sententious of all Clark's painfully extracted life lessons. Even the scene where his powers go haywire as a lad (making him look not a little bit like a special needs child in the middle of a medical episode) is a useful plot point for the third act, though we do see it coming a mile away.

We have Superman swatting down a military drone dispatched to spy on him, dismissively tossing it at the feet of the very same commander to whom he had earlier stated: “I'm about as American as they come.” SIDE NOTE: The commander's bemoaning of the drone's price tag after trillions of dollars of real estate have already been laid waste is one of several unintentionally funny moments.

Then, of course, there's the Christ imagery. This is already well-plowed earth, so I won't dwell on it. So much has been said of this already I will actually admit to being disappointed there weren't more comparisons to Jesus: of the six or more scenes mentioned by other sources, I saw only three or four at the most in my viewing. Having said that, those scenes are dreadfully, drastically over-the-top and about as subtle as a brick to the teeth. Yes, there was no reason for the Last Son of God – excuse me, Last Son of Krypton to mention he is 33 years old at the time he begins his ministry – er, career (as a rule superheroes never mention how old they are) but ol' Kent manages to sneak it in nonetheless, the only reason being so even the dimmest of bulbs can arrive at the conclusion that a forced-perspective shot of a stained-glass Jesus (at Gethsemane no less) and a blatant in-flight crucifix pose hadn't already driven home.

But if Superman is Jesus, does that make Zod the Devil? Not in 'Man of Steel', and not the way Michael Shannon portrays him, and here we come to one of the truly bright spots in 'MOS'. Zod is a lot of reprehensible things in this film, but he is not evil incarnate. From the beginning he comes across more like a maligned patriot, a tunnel-visioned warhorse who uses abhorrent means to pursue what is actually a morally defensible goal. He wants nothing more than to save his race, same as Jor-El, same as anyone in his position would want. His revolution in the film's opening moments is the product of desperation more than anything else, and when Krypton implodes despite his best efforts you can feel genuine sympathy for him. We learn that everyone born on Krypton is engineered from birth to fulfill a specific cause; as a warrior born to defend his people, Zod is following the compulsion ingrained in him by thousands of years of genetic conditioning. When he decides to make Earth his new Krypton he is implementing a last-ditch scenario to bring his people back from the brink of extinction. And Earthlings? Well, they're in the way. Regrettable, but would you step on an anthill if it meant saving your species from annihilation? Shannon is the best actor in this troupe; he handles the role with subtlety and skill, at no point crossing the line from fanatical to cackling maniacal (regrettably, the character's subtle difference in motive and philosophy versus Superman II precludes him from screaming 'KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!'), infusing the character with his own set of burdens that are ofttimes easier to relate to than Superman's.

The final showdown is a 30-minute CGI wank-fast that, sadly, looks like every other superhero showdown we've seen in the last few years. I worry visual effects have reached the apex of what a super-powered brawl can and would look like. The goodies and baddies smash each other and go flying for a country mile, wrecking everything in their path, which has always puzzled me: one would expect that, be it the force of a human fist or an atom bomb, an evenly matched opponent would be able to stand his ground. But no, that don't sell tickets, kid: apparently we're still expected to gasp every time one of these steroid cases whacks another one into the next county. And again. And again. Bottom line: the action gets repetitive terrifyingly fast.

One more note on that: when Superman (spoilers!) saves the day, are the people of Metropolis actually supposed to thank him? The final showdown does more damage than a thousand 9/11s, obliterating whole swaths of the city and reducing a substantial chunk of real estate to powdered rubble – that's irrespective of the damage caused by Zod's whatever-the-hell, who-gives-a-shit terraforming weapon (a contrived and – I guess – necessary plot device the likes of which Goyer clearly loves). Yet for all the mayhem there is next to no attention paid to the tens of thousands of people inside those buildings, the potentially millions of innocents who couldn't possibly have gotten out in time when skyscraper one crashes into skyscraper two, taking out skyscrapers three and four with it. After two hours of moralizing about the Man of Steel's obligation to help people, he does squat to move the fight someplace isolated (which Supes in the comics always makes a point of doing) and the sunshine/lollipops/rainbows aftermath suggests he didn't even help with the cleanup.

SIDE NOTE: I have a feeling the widespread destruction of Metropolis was a calculated gimmick, one that will allow the CGI artists a chance to show a 'new' Metropolis rebuilt for the sequel in which it will look less like a real urban center and more like the City of Tomorrow from the comics.

In the end we're left more exhausted than exhilarated, more overwhelmed than breathless. And we have only the Man of Steel himself to thank for that. While the story is okay, the execution decent if blah (some typical sci-fi plot holes aside, plus lots of pseudo-science crud), and the supporting cast well-realized, it comes back again and again to poor old Clark, who might as well have spent to movie in a hairshirt rather than a smashing new set of redesigned tights. Henry Cavill has the best physique of any who wore the cape before him (sorry, Dean Cain), but as an adopted son of Earth he is a downer to have around, taking not even two minutes to relish his powers or enjoy the good things about this planet he so loves. The great Christopher Reeve, whose legacy as the best Superman is further cemented thanks to 'MOS', always played it a little coy, slightly aloof, like he was enjoying the job despite the crap it involved. Watch the Richard Donner version again and you'll see that little upturn in his mouth, that knowing smirk as he saves someone from an awful, near-death situation (catching the helicopter, anyone?). He's taking care of business and having fun while he's doing it; 'Don't worry, Miss: I've got you.'

Yeah, that was 1978 and this is 2013. What of it? What is the point of all this gravity when it drags on everyone, including the man who can defy it at will? This Man of Steel is so metaphorically weighted down he has forgotten he can literally fly.

And Cavill? Mono-syllabic, mono-expressioned, one dimensional. I don't know much about the man as a performer and I'm prepared to say that the script didn't give him much wiggle room, especially since he has a grand total of one minute as the bespectacled 'adult' Kent. There's a stumbling block for the sequels, by the way: in the film's final, (again) unintentionally hilarious scene we see Kent set up shop in the Daily Planet, and here there was a monstrously squandered opportunity for Cavill to actually act. Being maskless, Superman has always had to rely on subtler things to conceal his identity, ensuring no one connects him with the awkward, nerdy Kent. Reeve mastered this in a way no other actor to wear the cape has ever come close. Cavill did absolutely NOTHING to change his posture, voice, or hair; the glasses and the glasses alone are supposed to conceal this angelic Abercrombie model in our midst, leaving the snickering audience to wonder how Lawrence Fishburne's Perry White ever made it past copy boy for his total lack of basic observational skills.

Mentions (both honorable and dishonorable):

• Chris Meloni: stellar as usual, underutilized
• Amy Adams as Lois Lane: competent but her tough-girl reporter is quickly overwhelmed by the lunacy of the second and third acts and she misses a lot of opportunities to be Lois Lane and not just your typical damsel
• Zach Snyder: he's maturing as a director (lot of lessons learned from 'Watchmen', I suspect) but he's too in love with glamour shots and tricksy camera work. Get Michael J. Fox off the rig and cool it with the shaky handheld garbage. Two people conversing in a room does not call for a wobbly shot or that 'documentary feel'. Ditto for the sudden zoom-ins from foreground to background.
• Geek alerts: a 'Lex Corp' tanker truck gets booted around, a 'Wayne Enterprises' satellite gets destroyed, and I'm pretty sure a blink-and-you'll-miss-it glimpse at a smartphone showed a headline reading 'Aquatic Men'.

Heartache in Westeros

Recently, who knows how recently depending on when you're reading this, HBO aired the 9^th episode of the third season of 'Game of Thrones', an episode which depicts one of the most wrenching and emotionally hell-fraught moments of George R.R. Martin's 'Song of Ice and Fire'. It is the scene in which two principal characters, probably the two most consistently moral and wholesome of the lot, are fiendishly skewered and killed bloody dead by those who were supposed to be their allies while attending a matrimony feast. 'The Red Wedding' as its long been known to readers, is one of those benchmark moments in fantasy reading even the most jaded of us never forget; the fake-world equivalent of remembering where you were on 9/11 or when JFK was shot.

HBO did a very good job of it. In fact, in a few ways they did it one better than Mr. Martin himself, even if they took a few liberties with the nuts and bolts of the who-was-where and the how-she-died. It was shocking and ugly, evil and terrifying, mean-spirited, heartless, powerful, nauseating, heart-breaking and thoroughly difficult to watch. Everything such a scene should be.

For longtime readers, I think, it's a relief to get this one out of the way. It's been three seasons now of waiting for viewers-only to catch up with the rest of us re: The Goings-On in Westeros, from the beheading of poor Ned Stark to the death of the dandy fop Renley. But the Red Wedding was the throat-slashed elephant in the room and I'm glad the rest of the world now knows why we grandfathered-in dwellers of Martin's world have spent so long shooting sidelong glances to one another whenever the conversation turns toward GoT and the subject of happy endings, cute couples, the certain future of certain characters, and the quaint notion of love triumphing over all and letting bygones be bygones.

Those who count themselves fans exclusively of the show, however, have had, well...a mixed response. To the ones who loved it and the ones who are sad, and the ones who would call themselves both, I'm with you. Then there are the ones who just out and out hated it.

I followed it for the better part of a day: legions of people posting and tweeting their vitriol: 'HBO betrayed us', 'I'll never watch again', 'you've lost me forever'. 'I'm done', etc. To which I can only say: you stinkin' little liars.

No, I'm betting you each $42.38 that you are not done with Martin's song for this simple reason: it is only because you were so emotionally invested in the characters in the first place that you now ache the way you do after seeing them suffer and die the way they did; it is only because you loved them that you wanted to see them come away clean, their virtues intact, their vices forgiven, the Universe in a benevolent mood for the good guys and not the villains for once. But where the HELL is the fun in that? I'll probably never convince you, but I will rest assured you'll tune in again next week, and next season, and every season thereafter, even if you must do it with a fifth of vodka and a box of tissues by your side. Why? Because a TV show made you feel, that's why. Books can do that, too, and paintings and poems and songs. We never fling a book across the room unfinished because it makes us cry, or stirs us to frothing anger, or makes us feel energized like we just quaffed liquid lightning, do we? No. Usually we fling a book across the room because it's awful, or its boring us to tears. If you're thinking of staying serious and making good on your threat, reconsider: there is much about Westeros we readers still know that the rest of you don't, and while I won't give anything away, I will promise you this: there are reckonings on top of reckonings and then some to come, my friends.

Finally, to the people who blame the writers when a show doesn't go their way, and accuse them of having 'god complexes' or 'screwing the viewers'. This is a phenomena I've witnessed over and over on hit TV shows (I suppose it happens in books, too, although the reaction is understandably muted compared to that of a popular program): blaming the writer for the outcome of the show, the result of him/her holding all the cards, production-wise. To which I can only say, you have a very interesting and very incorrect view of employer-employee relations. On most TV shows the writers are somewhere between the janitors and the production assistants on the clout scale, and unless they are sharing credits with the producers, executive producers and/or creators, they write within stringent parameters and can be overruled on a whim by any number of people much higher up the totem pole than they.

In the case of 'GoT', the show creators are indeed also the head writers, but remember this is a work that is being adapted from an existing piece: Mr. Martin's stellar novels. Please to also remember that the show creators are working very, very closely with Mr. Martin to bring about the spirit and the details of his work in a meticulous manner, with little deviation from the source and only then with Mr. Martin's blessing. We know this to be the case because Mr. Martin has already gone on record stating he has actually revealed the story's end to the show creators so they might begin properly building future seasons around the expected finale of the series which is, of course, ongoing.

So don't blame the writers. Blame Mr. Martin if you must blame a writer, but what on Earth is the point of that?? He created the world, he birthed the characters you so loved, and he gosh-darn well killed 'em too, and has the right to continue killing them at a pace and in a manner of his choosing. Which brings me to a point on which I have lingered many times on other tangential subjects:

The writer doesn't OWE you anything.

Remember that.  Tattoo it on the back of your damn eyelids.

A lot of people like to use that as the ultimate excuse to exert leverage over any writer who creates something that goes on to be popular: 'we' made it popular, therefore the writer OWES us the ending we want. This has long been the battle cry leveled against George Lucas by anyone who didn't like the Star Wars prequels, which is virtually everyone: we made him rich, he owes us the movies we always fantasized about.

I didn't like the last Star Wars films either, but honestly people, fuck you and think. The writer owes you nothing, and that he has chosen to tell his story they way he feels it should be told does not mean he has a 'god complex'; it simply means he wasn't thinking of YOU when he sat down that day to slaughter three or four of his protagonists. It's his work, or elsewise a work adapted from his work in good faith. That means if Martin chooses to end his Song of Ice and Fire as a dream in Bob Newhart's head, it's his prerogative. Would you take back all the joy and delight and heartache and laughter you've experienced up till now just to prove a point, or to hurt the one who's hurt you? Trick question: you can't.

So embrace that sense of betrayal, love that lump of lead in the pit of your stomach when you see your fake friends die. It means you got something genuine out of your simulated experience, and that is a thing to be celebrated, not regretted. And when you meet Mr. Martin at ComicCon or at a book signing, scream in his face “You asshole! I cried for a week and I couldn't stop shaking!”, and Mr. Martin would likely as not take it as a huge compliment, and ten to one he would take it in a very un-godly way. There is nothing more extraordinary you can say to a writer than “you made me feel it.”

In that, the writer has already given you absolutely everything he can ever hope to give.

Don't expect more.