'The Wolverine' - The Mutant Maverick's New Solo Outing Rings Sadly Hollow

True story: the first comic book I ever bought with my own money was the 'Wolverine' trade paperback collection. I couldn't have been more than 10 or 11 at the time. My father drove me across the river to a store I had never heard of but had seen advertised on TV so, the logic went, it must have been the best. I wanted the best for my first solo excursion into the world of heroes and villains.

It took me a long time to pick it out, to measure it carefully against some other selections set aside as prospective finalists, (my father looking distracted at this point, and drumming his fingers on his pant leg), and to finally settle on that book, and that alone, for I recall that lone volume took almost every dime I had. Even as we drove away I worried about buyer's remorse, that perhaps in settling for only one actual, physical comic I had somehow come away with a bum deal. But there was just something about that glossy white cover that sang to me: Wolverine, claws bared, in the middle of a furious dogpile of masked ninjas armed with an inconceivable compliment of edged weapons. One of the assassins was trying to strangle him from behind with a length of chain and ol' Canuklehead was biting down on the chain like a feral dog. I wondered if that scene was in the book itself, and if Wolverine would actually bite through the chain.

I didn't know – couldn't have known at the time – that chance had pointed my dowsing rod straight at one of the greatest works of comic literature available in the day. 'Wolverine' – written by Chris Claremont, drawn by Frank Miller – remains on my shelf twenty-something years later, only a little worse for wear. I still pick it up and give it the occasional re-read. It holds up, to say the least. It wouldn't be until years later, after reading the 1970's flashback book 'Classic X-men', that I would fully understand just what 'Wolverine' did for the mutant with the adamantium claws: it took the largely one-dimensional Logan, a narrative trail mix of ex-Canadian secret agent, stock badass and cigar enthusiast, and made him whole. Originally depicted as an unstable psychopath, the Claremont-Miller experiment muddled Wolverine's manic blacks and whites into nebulous grays, re-imagining him as a ronin adrift in a world that wouldn't have him, conflicted, lovesick, yearning for purpose. Some may argue for Barry Windsor Smith's Weapon X, but I maintain that it is the single best work on the character, and a damned entertaining read, too. If ever there was a comic-to-film adaptation that I'd want in the bottom of my soul to see done right, it is this.

Which brings us to The Wolverine, Marvel's latest entry in the world of 'X' and the second movie to rest entirely on the shoulders of what has become their flagship character. And don't try to counter that with 'Spider-Man'...Spider-Man is one lousy offering away from joining 'Highlander' in the 'Dear-God-Quit-While-You're-Ahead' bin.

What is this movie? It's a question with which I'm still tussling. To wit: it is most certainly NOT an adaptation of the Claremont-Miller book, although it does borrow from it, both in selected macro elements of the plot and in little details and homages seeded throughout. It's a redemption tale, certainly, both for Logan and for the rainmakers at Marvel looking to gloss over the odious 'X-Men: Origins' flick, which flamed out for no other reason than it was a story that didn't need to be told. And it is a balancing act between the calloused comics readers who continue to ache for a celluloid vision to match their fantasies and the everyday theatergoers who haven't done the reading but whose comprehension – and wallets – are crucial to the bottom line.

The endgame of such a sullied mash-up is, I'm sorry to say, something of a disappointment. Just writing that makes me feel like Radar O'Reilly announcing Col. Blake's plane being shot down at the end of M*A*S*H. It's tragic, but these days making pictures is war by another name, and with comic-films serving as the vanguard of the box office assault, casualties are inevitable.

The Wolverine finds the Logan summoned to Japan by the elderly industrialist Yashida, a man whose life he (very improbably) saved during the bombing of Nagaski in '45. Yashida has since become the patriarch of his clan and the richest man in all Asia. Now terminally ill, he wants to have one last powwow with the man who took an atomic blast wave to the back for him. Seems cheating the Reaper all those years ago has made Yashida somewhat covetous of life: he doesn't want to go and he thinks he knows how he can stay. He proposes 'transferring' Logan's regenerative powers to him, subsuming his vigor while allowing Mr. Clawhands (a lot of Wolverine's nicknames are corny so I will be referring to him occasionally as 'Mr. Clawhands' – fair warning) a chance to live out the course of a normal life and die naturally. When Logan refuses and the old man perishes forthwith he finds himself embroiled in a Yakuza abduction plot and internecine intrigue faster than you can say 'SNIKT!'.

Complications arrive, as all complications do, in the form of a woman: Mariko Yashida, willowy granddaughter of the recently departed, soon to inherit her father's billions and sprawling technology empire. As the target of the kidnappers she only has to fall into Wolverine's arms three or four times before he becomes the only man in all of Japan who can save her! What follows is any number of take-'em-or-leave-'em bodyguarding tropes, all of which swirl like so much narrative runoff toward the same predictable drain: Logan and his charge fall head over heels in love, which would have been more amusing if Hugh Jackman was really 5'3”. Betrayal and heroics follow, as well as no fewer than five scenes of people waking suddenly from sleep with a startled gasp.

Though I'm doing it now, I'd advise against playing a matching game with the Claremont-Miller book while viewing the film because it becomes distracting after a while. If you loved the comic as I did you'll catch all the deviations (there are tons – as I said, it's not a straight adaptation) but you'll lose focus wondering why they changed so much from the original, elegant story that inspired the movie. Some of the departures are done in deference to the challenge – and volume of exposition – a more faithful translation would require, while others are downright baffling.

Before the film leaves the first reel it starts having fun with Wolverine's abject cluelessness of Japanese culture, a major departure from his character who was adroit in Eastern custom (and fluent in Japanese) even back when Cyclops wore bellbottoms. The filmmakers took the easy, overly-trod route here by making Logan a fish out of water and providing another threescore excuses for him to furrow his brow at something that isn't hep to his jive. Mariko, too, is a new species here, a stranger, whereas it was the already-chequered past between her and Wolverine that was the impetus for the original story. From a scriptwriter's point-of-view these changes are understandable, even if they make a loyalist like me taste something sour going in.

Those aspects aside, however, I found myself asking 'Why?' with alarming frequency, and more often than not I was inadequate to the task of finding an answer. Why does a film that was built on the strength of Logan's character ignore or subvert so many stellar opportunities for growth and introspection provided by the source material? Why would the studio show enough confidence to greenlight an 'X' picture with no leather armor and zero familiar faces but not enough confidence to flex the more fleshed-out and pan-dimensional aspects of their hero, the very things that transformed him from a caricature into an icon? And why, oh why, does the third act have to devolve into just so much schlock comic book claptrap, making it look for all the world like every other spandex throwdown since the turn of the millennium?

Let's consider the man himself, the real-life man. Jackman seems frustrated with this one, and I can't blame him. Here at last is a chance to truly explore a character he's been playing since Clinton was in office and to mine one of the undisputed best stories of that character's existence, yet the script gives him shamefully little to work with. As Logan he fumes, growls, broods and mumbles his way through two monosyllabic hours, taking the verbal road less traveled even when the situation begs for a more talkative yaw. Wolverine has never been a chatterbox, but there is a fine line between the strong-silent type and the guy by himself in the corner at the neighborhood mixer. Put another way, there's stoic and then there's just plain boring. I was left wondering if maybe Hollywood's rank hatred of the inner monologue as a device didn't bite them in the ass here: the Claremont-Miller story maintains a running narrative as told by Logan throughout; it functions not only as a window to his thoughts but also as a keen tool for gleaning the more subtle and intelligent aspects of his personality. But the monologue fell out of favor with Raymond Chandler (and was famously railroaded by Ridley Scott in the director's cut of Blade Runner) and, though briefly revived for Sin City, has not been employed again in any major studio pics that I can immediately recall. Our loss, and Jackman's, because without that window into his process we can only watch as Logan reacts to everything, and those reactions are restricted to a niggardly palate of stock snarls and pithy jibes. Dream sequences in which he speaks to his true love Jean Grey are employed to shine a light on his misgivings, but they are overused and feel cheap – once would have been poignant, four times was excessive. It's tragic because in every frame of this film you can feel Jackman's desire to exorcise the script-imposed stick up his butt and really act. Alas, the chance never comes and we're left with a talented actor who seems more hamstrung than ever as his alter-ego blunders around like the gaijin he apparently is, validating instead of disproving the Japanese prejudice toward him and coming across like the quintessential Ugly Canadian.

Even the truly marquee moments of the original story from which the script plainly borrows have been cluelessly bastardized. Just one of several examples: we're treated to an early scene straight from the book in which Logan confronts a group of yahoo hunters who have shot a grizzly bear with a poisoned arrow. The poison fails to kill the bear, who instead goes mad with pain and begins killing at random. In the book Logan kills the bear, but when he tracks the weekend warriors to a bar to dispense some frontier justice he is sucker-punched by the guilty party and left sprawled on a table with a broken beer mug in his face. This prompts an implied off-screen ass-whomping and one of the very best lines in the whole story: “The bear lasted longer...but I let the man live.” In the film this scene is interrupted by Yukio, Yashida's wily female agent, turning what should have been a rough-'n-tumble pub brawl into a ludicrous wire-fu wank straight out of John Woo. That sound you're hearing is several million comics fans seething in unison.

Even worse, the confrontation with the enraged bear was changed into a tender moment in which Logan mercy-stabs an already prostrate and paralyzed grizzly, an act of man-to-beast compassion that I guess is supposed to illustrate Wolverine's magnanimous side. The problem with this is that it utterly ignores the larger symbolic purpose of the original scene: when Wolverine defeats the hulking creature he does so in unbiased claw-to-claw combat and gives his foe a clean and honorable death in the manner of a virtuous warrior. That early scene is meant to both parallel and contrast the later themes of honor, duty and sacrifice with which he will wrestle throughout. By diluting that moment into mere ham-fisted deathbed scene, more sad than ennobling, the filmmakers unwittingly altered the dynamic of the story to come and implied that death is pitiful, honor is subjective, and great things go out on a whimper. That no one who made this film ever caught that is a bad sign and a bad start.

In addition to the thematic whiffs, the geniuses at Marvel decided to remove most of the realistic and believable elements of the story that made the source material so visceral. Wonky sci-fi flim-flam is tossed into the brew like so much eye of newt, obscuring what would otherwise be a raw and grounded parable. The screenwriters long ago wrote themselves into a corner by hitching their wagon to this revisionist notion that Logan is not merely an efficient healer but is ageless and virtually un-killable. For the record I have never liked this, nor was I delighted when the idea that he is centuries-old became comic book canon. The reason is plain: an invincible protagonist is boring as shit. But Marvel made that bed in the 'Origins' film, and in this flick the limitations it created really come home to roost.

In order to give Logan some checks and balances against his human detractors an egregious amount of screen time is squandered on a subplot where his healing factor is forcibly suppressed, making him theoretically more vulnerable to the puny normals and their bullets. I say 'theoretically' because even in his weakened state Mr. Clawhands (see? There is it again!) is more than a match for an army of thugs and killers, and it's never clear if he's completely lost his powers or has simply been hobbled a bit. Moreover, this downturn doesn't last anywhere near long enough for him to really contemplate what the life of a mere mortal would be like. So really, what's the point? Is the audience supposed to genuinely fear that the hero won't triumph simply because he's temporarily exposed? In an age when we are routinely subjected to Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Channing Tatum and fill-in-the-blank-who-else slaughtering hordes of minions and laughing off grievous wounds are we to suddenly expect that this time no less of a modern Achilles than Wolverine is going to take a dive? In the original story Logan has the utter crap beaten out of him numerous times by regular folks who are good at killin' without ever having to navigate these silly calisthenics from the pages of Plot Traps 101.

Speaking of '101', that's about as far into the study of Japanese culture the filmmakers ever went. It never descends into outright stereotyping, but it comes damn close. The touchstones of honor, family, duty; the inviolable respect for your elders; the near-deification of patriarchs and reverence of the past are all given lip service here, ticked off like items on a to-do list, as are ninja, samurai, kimonos, chopsticks, bowing, hari-kari and tea-drinking. I try to imagine what it would be like if the roles were reversed and a Japanese studio made a movie that took place entirely in America, filling the screen with references to cowboys, Indians, tricorner hats, apple pie, tommy guns, Ford trucks, Bazooka Joe, football, the Bush twins and crummy health care. Would we be offended? Maybe not, but it sure would seem like they were trying too hard.

Credit where credit is due, however, to the almost all Japanese supporting cast.  As Mariko, newcomer Tao Okamoto very much resembles Jennifer Connelly and in fact seems to inhabit the same plane of vibration – quiet strength, understated grace, a clarion beauty that makes the world seem like a better place than it actually is. She works well here, plays the good granddaughter, and contrasts nicely with the more thoroughly modern Yukio, who, as in the book, is the rebel and consummate non-traditionalist, then an 80's chic with Annie Lennox hair, now a dye-jobbed teen fantasy with knee high jackboots and bangs. The sole exception is Svetlana Khodchenkova playing a slimy villainess; as an actress she would be irredeemable even if her dialogue hadn't obviously been re-dubbed in post-production (accent problems, I'm guessing) but it's made even worse given that her sole function seems to be to introduce yet another extraneous mutant baddie whose powers conveniently fit the demands of the plot like an Isotoner glove.

The action is fair, fun, and completely sanitized for your protection. I fear stunt coordinators are running out of ways to have Wolverine fight in any way that seems original: even the most inventive moves are starting to repeat themselves and it's clear when all the fighting is on the man with the claws that more and more concessions to camera-chopped fakery have to be made to accommodate the stipulation of PG-13 bloodlessness. A movie like The Wolverine really drives home how stupid and arbitrary that restriction really is: there is copious death in this film – easily as much if not more compared to the original book – and yet the film actually dances out of the way of the most exemplary fight scene, when Logan single-handedly trashes a cadre of assassins ala the book cover, leaving us to wonder if the scene wasn't jettisoned because they simply couldn't film the brawl in any way that wouldn't seem laughable for the absence of any blood.

In the end every harsh and naked catharsis our hero might experience is deferred in favor of Same Ol' Crap, in this case a loonytunes confrontation at some sort of post-modern Fortress of Asian Ick – think a medieval Japanese castle by way of the Death Star – and the final fight is a tumbleweed of bad physics and techno-dreck. Even Jackman's fan-favorite “bub” line seems rushed.

Lord, how I could go on. But this has exceeded the breadth of a standard review and journeyed far into true analysis, and I've vowed not to actually spoil the end, which is the source of the my greatest rancor. Suffice to that no Hollywood scribe has yet devised a comics climax that has satisfied my desire for a measured, rational conclusion that didn't involve cheesy ultimatums and portents of mass death. 'The Wolverine' wasn't ever going to win the marathon, but to see it trip within sight of the finish line was truly heartrending.

The worst of it is that we had a better chance than we're ever gonna get to see a ballsy, character-driven standalone piece that put the man above the mutant and focused on the timeless and intangible aspects of his complex persona. We didn't get it. If nothing else I feel a little sorry for Jackman, who will likely never again have such a windfall though he play Logan for another twenty years. I do not, however, feel sorry for Wolverine. He'll dust himself off and get back in the fight. He always does.

He is, after all, immortal. 

NO CONFIDENCE - Warner Bros. Won't Let Superman Go It Alone For Next Outing

Well, it's happened.

Our present has fulfilled a prophecy made in the past by a Will Smith movie that depicted the future.

If you never saw Smith's 'I Am Legend', or even if you did, chances are you missed the shot of a squalid, overrun Times Square in the zombie apocalypse time of 'fore showing a movie marquee with the iconic Superman 'S' layered over the equally iconic Bat of the Dark Knight. This background gag was good harmless fun at the time; a lark for the fanboys and fangirls who recognized the overlapping sigils for what they were and required no further explanation. The filmmakers, it seemed, were geeks like the rest of us, or at least that's what they were trying to tell us in the midst of a film that was mercilessly curb-stomping one of the most revered works of speculative horror ever penned.

SEE?! - 'I Am Legend' (2007)

NO, REALLY, SEE?! - SD Comic Con

Now that throwaway joke has been realized here and now in the form of Warner Bros.'s announcement at the San Diego Comic Con that the next 'Man of Steel' will be a buddy picture with the Batman. Now, we comic aficionados are easily as suspicious as sailors, and we might begin to wonder if it wasn't an omen of Galactus-size proportions that the first titillation of a real-life 'World's Finest' appeared in a movie about the end of the globe as we know it.

Alas, I'm too old to still be a simple reactionary, flying off the handle and portending Ragnarok simply because I know the premise of the next 'Superman', and it's tedious to go on for a few pages about a movie whose title isn't even known. Besides, if I start using my A-material now I'll run out of original gripes before I actually see this new film and have to review it in earnest. No, this piece is just a meditation on my gut reaction, and even that can't be said to be wholly unique; already I've read many sources who think exactly as I do. I don't need to restate what they have already said, but in my reverie it might happen anyway.

Who am I kidding, of COURSE it will.

Seriously, the bricks and mortar of my feelings on the SDCC announcement can actually be found in my previous posts, first about 'Man of Steel' and then about Hollywood's addiction to hash...re-hash. In a microdot: I wasn't impressed with Snyder's take on Superman, the studios have hitched their wagons to superhero flicks as if they were a flock of golden geese, and anything proven to work once can, according to the physics of their boardroom Q-universe, be rebooted again and again for future exploitation anyway, so critics be damned and pass me the moneybag.

But is it really that simple? On the surface the decree from Warner at the Comic Con seemed like a teen dream given form: a team-up picture featuring the two most recognizable superheroes of all time, soon to be emblazoned on the big screen by handlers of respectable pedigree and a nine-digit budget to burn. The announcement was made in a carnival atmosphere and blew away just about all the other news to come out of the event, bar none. But this strategy – for it is a strategy, and as shrewd as any you're likely to see this side of a RISK board – may be more telling than it seemed on the surface. Anyway it certainly gives pause to those of us with a jaundiced eye toward the studio system and not just a little pessimism about the minds of the bean counters by whose word these movies live or die.

The theory, then: 'Man of Steel' did well, but it didn't do well enough – not with the critics, not with audiences, and not with the audience's dead presidents, who failed to fill Warner's coffers as high as Warner wanted. Ol' Supes is going to need some help. And he 's gonna look...kinda like a giant bat.

Maybe after six films the studio heads have finally realized the old stories have a ring of truth to them: Superman is not a sure thing at the box office. If the Sacred Reboot failed to tickle the $1 billion mark, what hope can there be for a stand-alone sequel? Or two? For while Kal-El's newest adventure can rightly be called it a hit, it has NOT, to date, been the mega-hit so many assumed it would be. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com 'Man of Steel' had collected just over $285 million as of July 22^nd. The shooting budget for the film was $225 million. Now, in 21^st America, $60 million in pure profit isn't even enough to keep the lights on at night. Warner has to look overseas, where 'MOS' added another $350 million to the booty total, but only after experiencing a precipitous sales drop from the peak of opening weekend. North of $600 million is nothing to sneeze at, but it ain't Avatar money, or Avengers money. Hell, it ain't even Iron Man 3 money. This must be cause for confusion, as Superman could probably kick the crap out of Iron Man, the other Avengers, and the Na'vi without even losing any bars in the process.

The suits are awful people, but they know their numbers and their Marketing 101, and while they may not listen to a single good idea before or during the movie-making process, they clearly aren't deaf to the potential lessons of a subpar aftermath. At best the situation is that the Snyder/Goyer/Nolan effort was 'off' in some way, a way that made it fail to connect with audiences, generate good word-of-mouth, and encourage repeat business. At worst – and not exclusive to my last sentence – is the very real possibility that Superman just can't cut it on his own. Maybe he's too dull. Maybe his squeaky-clean view of the world no longer gels with our post-9/11 planet. Or maybe the very reckoning I predicted in my 'Reboots and Remakes' post a little bit back came true far sooner than I thought; maybe audiences balked at the idea of the Man of Tomorrow being subjected to Goyer's dial-a-script approach to capes and masks.

Does it matter? Sadly, it does not. In a fair world, a world Superman would actually like, he'd be given another chance to stand on his own red-booted feet and try for another grand slam. But that is a luxury Warner Bros. apparently can't afford. So they're turning to the closest thing they have to a sure thing: the Dark Knight Detective, a man with no superpowers who nonetheless did something Superman couldn't: make them all a little bit richer than they might have been otherwise.

This could all be bullshit, and I and the others out there who think this is a sound theory may be miles off base. I'm going to stand by it simply because we're unlikely to get full disclosure from the studio anytime soon. I'm more concerned with what this will do to my good friend, the Batman. If this 'World's Finest' flick is indeed going to serve as a springboard to a new Bat trilogy, as it certainly will, then we'll be looking at no fewer than four new features starring Gotham's winged defender inside of ten years. This, of course, is hot on the heels of the Nolan years (2004-2012), and as thorough and exhaustive an exploration of the Batman mythos as ever will likely make it to the big screen. And not to pluck the same string yet again, but it's good odds if not near-certain that David Goyer will be writing ALL of them.

This has me very worried. This kind of inbreeding and cronyism brought down the Dutch kings, after all. How many bastard children must Goyer sire before the three-act gene pool hits rock bottom? And what will become of the source material the powers-that-be are supposedly mining for 'inspiration'? 'Batman Begins' was a solid effort, but the bits and pieces culled from 'Batman: Year One' were so watered down they lost all significance – no Gordon parallel narrative, no pandemic of police corruption, no fistfight with the S.W.A.T – was what Goyer did to Miller's extraordinary work really much more than pulling ammo off a dying soldier so others could keep up the fight?

The announcement at SDCC did it one better: a dramatic 'reading' of from Book Four of no less a holy tome than 'The Dark Knight Returns', the 'I want you to remember...' speech from Batman as he finishes trouncing Superman. I found it insulting. They are NOT – by Snyder's own admission – adapting TDKR into a film, and while it is an absolute given that Wayne and Kent will exchange blows before teaming up, they most certainly will not be battling in anything even remotely close to the context in which Batman delivered those inviolable lines. For God's sake, they can't even show blood in a PG-13 movie, and yet they had the arrogance to quote Miller directly as if they were even capable of doing justice to that history-changing fight, to say nothing of the sheer narrative weight of TDKR as whole. Every fanboy and fangirl should think back to that blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in 'I Am Legend' and feel their back go up, if only a little bit.

Time will tell. Encouragingly, there have been several articles from major media sources lately about the dearth of hero flicks and the specter of audience fatigue. I'm reminded of the way animals always know to flee the area before an earthquake hits. In the meantime I refuse to feel sorry for Warner Bros. and their plight. They will be one giant among many in the box office breadline of 2015, and they will have the Return of Joss Whedon and the Galaxy Far, Far Away with which to contend, among others. But that, my friends, is a story for another time.

'Pacific Rim' - This IS Your Old Saturday Morning Cartoon

I meant to do that...

Some advice for posterity: before writing a review for a film like 'Pacific Rim', you must, I think, consider seriously just what kind of review you wish to write.

You could lay on for 2000 words and give a fair shake to character, style, and plot; delve into the themes; scour for idiosyncrasies; examine the pacing, execution, and emotional impact...or you can aim the sextant straight down the horizon until you reach true noon and concede you were there to watch a monster movie. It is to this latter school of analysis I must defer, and I would humbly suggest to anyone watching this movie they do the same; you will save yourself a great deal of time and any number of grateful brain cells.

And you'll end up having a blast, too.

It's been an old-timey gas reading other reviewers, both professional and not-so-pro, who have insisted on applying the former school – a generic 'good/bad' rubric – to 'Pacific Rim', dimly scrying through some Philosopher's Stone of cinematic aesthetics against which any movie may be righteously judged. Some of these writers seem to consider their analysis a matter of such holy import that they've forgotten just what exactly it is their writing about. 'The characters are bland,' many bloviate, 'the dialogue is cheesy and the script is a cliché!'

Yes, Virginia, it's a movie about giant fucking robots fighting exo-dimensional beasts the size of the Chrysler Building; if it spoke to my soul I'd start worrying about my oxygen supply. And then there's my personal favorite, one I've seen repeated many times: “Because of such-and-such or this-and-that 'Pacific Rim' falls short of greatness.” I'll hand out my home address and oatmeal cookies to anyone who can show me the scale by which these films are assessed for greatness(!). I'm not deaf and dumb to other's well-intentioned bitching, especially if it's articulate bitching; I'm just surpassingly ready to call a spade a spade on this one and have my fun.

So, submitted for your approval, the most unpretentious movie you will see all year, a flick no one would race to describe as 'intelligent' yet at no point insults your intelligence; a back-slapping, arm-punching labor of love from Guillermo del Toro, the south-of-the-border wackaloon who brought us Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth. Seems the Earth has been invaded by a very patient race of colossi who are content to attack one at a time, destroying everything in their path until finally repulsed, only to be succeeded by a stronger, more adept replacement that manages to inch humankind a little closer to the apocalypse with each fresh assault.

The wormhole through which the jerkface leviathans emerge is located somewhere in the Pacific, meaning every country with a coastline is fair game for a one-monster D-Day whenever the clock reaches Oh Shit time again. Humans have responded with the Jaeger Program, employing 300-foot tall humanoid war machines that can beat the creatures at their own game. The robos are too unwieldy for a lone pilot to interface with all the advanced hardware, so control is achieved tandem, each operator acting like a hemisphere of the brain. To work in sync pilots are neural linked via a mind-meld called The Drift, which, like all forms of on-screen brain activity, is depicted by a hodge-podge of choppy jump cuts shot through a blue filter. Anyway, the Jaegers work great until the creatures wise up.

Now at this point I can simply stop writing and you'll be as equipped as you're ever going to be to make an informed decision as to whether or not you actually want to see this film. If you're on the edge of your seat right now waiting for me to get to the point, then you've missed the point. Robots fighting monsters. That's it.

And that IS point. And that's the POINT of the point. The joy of a movie like 'Pacific Rim', you see, is going in with zero expectations and discovering that you're actually having a hell of a good time. The even more profound joy is in realizing you're having a good time and that the portions of the film that do NOT explicitly feature robots fighting monsters are actually not terrible. With a premise that could easily have filled two hours with nothing but special effects and claimed your cash anyway, del Toro cared enough to book some capable actors and pen a script that playfully and – I'll say it again – lovingly plums the rich and storied archetypes of monster movies. All the staples are there, right where you'd expect them: a brooding hero, a wily girl, a stern mentor, a grim prelude, a portent of doom, a do-or-die climax, a happy ending. Add some chest missiles and a dash of Ron Perlman, garnish with some choice sci-fi goobledygook and sip for two hours. There are worse ways to ride out a heat wave.

But make no mistake, there is some intelligence to be found in 'Pacific Rim', at least as it concerns the script, which is careful to address most of the logical stumbling blocks inherent in monster movies. We are told early on why, for example, the good guys can't simply destroy the dimensional rift with a nuclear depth charge. A little later we get several minutes devoted to solving another potential quick-fix when we discover (at the same time as the hero) that building giant walls to keep the beasties out won't work, either. Such details are small but they're much appreciated; just because it's Rock 'Em-Sock 'Em Robots writ large doesn't mean it has to be, you know, stupid.

But in case you're wondering, 'Pacific Rim' doesn't phone it in for passable character content, either. Admittedly, I'd hesitate to use the word 'depth', but it makes more effort than the bare minimum to shore up stock characters and their predictable arcs with some genuine formative moments and thoughtful flashbacks, adequately serving as the connective tissue for their evolving relationships. The script employs The Drift as both device to inch the plot along and as a shortcut to real (and time-consuming) emotional payoff. Family bonds, be they biological or surrogate, take numerous cracks at the thematic pinata: father/son, father/daughter, and brother/brother each have their moment to shine courtesy of The Drift and its habit of joining the pilot's thoughts and feelings into a volatile grab bag. Idris Elba, a perennial favorite of the Great Underused Non-American Actors, does well with what he gets, playing the stoic last survivor of the original Jaegers forced to improvise when the program is faced with obsolescence.

Oh, and did I mention that it's better than 'Man of Steel'? Listen well, all o' ye, and I'll tell you why.

You don't have to suffer through a marathon of Merchant and Ivory snoozefests to realize the emotions movies elicit in us fall into two broad categories: real and hollow. In any movie depicting human suffering, our emotional response is dictated by the response of the characters and how they react to their peril and the imperilment of their loved ones. Bad or non-existent reactions elicit a hollow emotional response in us; good reactions elicit a genuine response. In 'Pacific Rim' we see skyscrapers annihilated, we watch tall towers collapse and see numerous harrowing escapes. We see much the same thing in 'Man of Steel'. Yet in 'Pacific Rim' that destruction and its consequences are never presented as anything other than a genuine damn shame, a tear-tugger; the carnage is laid before us like a wounded bird, disturbing yet evocative, and thanks to some terse dialogue and careful reaction shots, the characters seem evermore burdened as a result; they respond to the horrors of their plight with real urgency. 'Man of Steel' gave us a Superman who cut a swath of violence through the heart of both Smallville and Metropolis and, frankly, looked like he could give a shit. And if he doesn't care, then why should we?

That's why it's better. The floor is open to dissenting opinions.

Cliched? God, yes, so much so you have to wonder if it isn't part of del Toro's plan to make us snort popcorn straight into our soft palates. The elite corps of Jaegers and their pilots are a smorgasbord of international stereotypes straight out of central casting: the Chinese robot is piloted by intensely disciplined triplets (because there's so many of them they use THREE instead of two, get it?!), the Russian Jaeger looks like a Transformer that had the shit beaten out of it at the Battle of Stalingrad while the pilots consist of a platinum-streaked femme fatale and a bearded goliath, and the Australian contingent is represented by two impossibly squared-jawed male models who look like they came late from a surfing contest. Caricatures one and all, but I say again, who cares?

'Rim' is far from perfect, even for a refreshingly self-aware piece of summer escapism. It can be slow at times, the appeal of Charlie Day for anything longer than five sustained minutes continues to elude me, and the finale utilizes underwater scenes as an excuse to do more gratuitous slo-mo. The end also seems anti-climactic compared to the spectacular six-giant brawl that caps the second act, but no one said this was easy. What's important is that the good far outweighs the bad, and the end dodges at least one sacred cow by going a different path with the relationship between the hero and his new, exceedingly fetching partner. Again, the respect in this flick 'twixt itself and the audience is happy to travel a two-way street.

So see 'Pacific Rim'. See it and buy the Blu-Ray and make it enough money so that they'll greenlight a sequel. Then in a few years time we can discuss how 'Pacific Rim 2' is superior to 'Man of Steel 2': The Secret of Lex Luthor's Gold.'*

*title tentative

'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' - Gaiman's Latest a Subtler Foray into Childhood Whimsy

I met Neil Gaiman, many years ago. He seemed a very decent chap. He had a firm handshake and a sonorous voice cut with that pleasant Hampshire accent, and he managed to be engaging with me even though he had just pumped paws with three hundred people in line in front of me. His grip only spasmed once for all the signing he had done that day, though behind the drawn, slightly hangdog eyes of the ethereal wordsmith I detected some very human fatigue.

Under the circumstances, I couldn't blame him for looking tired. Hell, he was the center of the adulation that day and I actually felt sorry for the guy. Mr. Gaiman is the personification of the phrase 'a victim of his own success', though he has been heard to remark it's more like being 'loved to death'. Yeah, I was Number 300 (give or take) at an event where 900 people showed up in a venue that was maxed out at 500. It was, in the words of the Buddha, 'a fucking circus' (I'll double-check the source on that quote).

Why do I mention this in what is ostensibly a book review?

It is NOT to bitch about Gaiman's legions of new and fair-weather fans, his groupies who treat him like a literary rock star and only love him for his recent stuff. Nor is it to play a hand of fanboy one-upsmanship, recite the Sandman volumes clogging my bookshelf or declare 'I read him when no one knew him.' If I could travel back in time to the very birth of pettiness in geekdom I still would arrive too late to smother the first douche who said “I saw him first, so I'm a bigger fan.” Not the route I'm going to take.

No, I mention it because when you can count on creating a fire code violation every time you show up to sign a book, you might have reached that plateau for which every author strives but so few reach; the level where you ascend from writer to Institution. Being an Institution has perks, ones that Mr. Gaiman is enjoying in abundance right now: fabulous commercial success, crossover appeal, non-stop demand, and a built-in base of doggedly loyal disciples who very likely will buy whatever you manage to put between two covers. But Apollo was the god of disease as well as the god of healing, gentle readers, and The Institution has a downside in very much the same vein. The Institution is a hungry baby, and She doesn't like too much variety in Her diet. As a writer who has achieved stunning success with a winning formula, the temptation to repeat that formula and try for another golden egg with an identical strategy must be overwhelming; the temptation and the pressure – let us not forget that – from publishers and advertisers and other interested parties all fighting for the teat. But is it fair to accuse Mr. Gaiman of submitting to the quick fix?

On one hand, 'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' is vintage Neil. It is a cozy, homespun parable of wonder and curiosity garnished with poignant life lessons as only an incorrigible 7 year-old narrator can provide. It mines a mixed bag of regional lore and obscure myth judiciously re-imagined and turned five degrees sideways by the author's boundless ability to make the everyday fantastic (and vice versa). And it is seeded with innumerable little details so carefully rendered and artfully conveyed any one of us could find a memory in our own childhood that parallels the hero's experience. It is also, I think, a more mature tale than a lot of folks seem to realize, easily as traumatic and melancholy as it is cordial and funny, and while many are quick to dismiss it as a 'kid's book', central to the narrative is the decidedly depressing theme of memory: what it is, how it works, and how what we think we remember is ultimately very, very subjective. It is a story bound to make you consider your own mortality, as, I imagine, Neil did when he set out to write it. This is 'Lane's greatest strength, and the chief argument against critics who say Gaiman is starting to repeat himself, for this book tackles weighty issues that, while present in his other works, have never appeared quite so mellow and ripe as they do here.

On the other hand, this does feel like familiar territory. 'Lane' reads like yet another entry in Gaiman's American Gods lexicon, delving heavily into the same devices found there as well as in his follow-up Anansi Boys. Again we're presented with the idea of supernatural beings who may or may not be gods (but who are certainly sprites, spirits, or similar pseudo-divine beings) anchored to our world by humans (who still believe in them in one capacity or another), and who still possess awesome power which they exercise in odd and obtuse ways, always under the radar of ordinary folk, save the protagonist who is in on the whole thing. As with many of Gaiman's works over the last decade or so, the story is told from a child's perspective, and as such the prose is straightforward and fairly simplistic, with paragraphs of lean sentences describing mundane things. It reads very much like a short story, which is no accident: Gaiman admitted it began as exactly that, and only later blossomed into a full manuscript after some massaging. The problem, if it really could be called that, is that it reads a lot like many of Gaiman's other short stories, and is shy of content most folks would consider trailblazing. Indeed, one might expect to find something like a Bizarro version of this story in any of Neil's existing collections. The hungry baby knows what She likes.

So what of this old wine in new bottles? Well, on the surface, squat. If Gaiman wants to write still another fairy-tale-with-a-twist, even one that reads like it came from his American Gods sketchbook, that's his prerogative. The laws of capitalism state that I'll only be free to criticize him on his story choices when I'm richer off my writing than he is off his. His afternotes and acknowledgements, which are as entertaining to read as anything else that spills from his winsome pen, speak of a genuine love for this book and a bone-deep impetus to write it; it was a process, no surprise, that involved a great deal of family, friends, nostalgia, and the author's own childhood memories. If we could all tell tales that come from such an honest place, what a joyous and more profound understanding for each other we might have. I'm not prepared to dismiss 'Lane', as some have, as a quick buck. If Gaiman was tumbling into the twilight of his career, popularity diminishing, debts accruing, I might change that assessment, but considering the man's schedule is booked up between now and the Rapture, I don't think cashflow is something with which he is painfully concerned.

I would love to see Neil explore some truly adult fare again and pen something else akin to American Gods or even his freshman novel, Neverwhere. This is a sentiment echoed many times by many people, and here is where I fear, in my learned distrust of Business with a capital 'B', that 'Lane' might have been quietly manipulated by the Man Behind The Curtain. For every time Gaiman writes anything longer than a grocery list it is accompanied by months of fanfare and a punishing multi-city flog that more resembles a concert tour. The carnival atmosphere of these events has grown with every major release so that now a 'simple' appearance and reading is anything but simple and the chief concern is crowd control. That nook-ish atmosphere where an individual fan might enjoy an intimate minute or two with the author is a thing of the distant past, at least where Mr. Gaiman is concerned, and anyone looking for one of those coveted handshakes (and duly witnessed John Hancocks) is committed to nothing less than an all-day excursion that may involve copious body heat, trail mix for dinner, and peeing into portable vessels.

'Heh heh', you titter nervously. 'Is he just being funny?' Go to a Gaiman signing and find out for yourself.

The point is, the scope and narrative 'weight' of Mr. Gaiman's latest offerings (I'll include Anansi Boys in this statement) have not necessarily been in proportion with these ever-burgeoning levels of hype. 'Lane' is fun and pleasant read, but it is not the next American Gods. Neil never claimed anything to the contrary, but the fanfare that follows him with every step he takes these days is making a lot of folks assume otherwise; the unfortunate consequence is backlash, a feeling of being 'duped' by the PR machine that promises gold with every $30 punch. Unscrupulous back room machinations or sheer populist momentum? Who knows.

With 'Lane' I've fielded a variety of opinions that are just so much grumbling; a bemoaning that Gaiman has 'changed' or that he's turned his unique brand of whimsy British yarns into a full-blown industry with fat dollar signs at the end of the rainbow. This is disingenuous and petty. Perhaps Gaiman has grown comfortable with his winning formula and perhaps, like an overwrought mother preoccupied with work, he has fed the Baby from the same jar once too often. That may spawn newfound caution in his gushing fan base and prompt some who would buy his material sight-unseen to hesitate come his next release. That is, I think, a good thing for all concerned. The alternative is that Gaiman goes the way of Tom Clancy or James Patterson, driven by markets instead of the Muse, pressured to pump out more and more rushed, sub-par content in the name of filling an unfillable void.

And do any of us want to see that happen? I think we know the answer to that one.

In the meantime I would encourage everyone to look a litter deeper into 'The Ocean at the End of the Lane', and to dig for its charms. Maybe it's just that I am no longer the teenager I was when I started reading Mr. Gaiman, and maybe it's also that Mr. Gaiman is no longer the thirty-something he was when he embarked on his first novel, but 'Lane' is a deeper and more subtle work than what shows in the surface, and it is the 'bookend' narration of the protagonist – as a much older man struggling to recall the 'real' events of the story – who speaks to us here. The time may come when the man in the ever-present black jacket will gift us with another tentpole tome, but until then let's enjoy his singularly wonderful ability to make us feel like that kid gazing up at the stars and wondering What Else is out there. 

War of the 'RE's: Remakes and Reboots Are Now Hollywood's Most Destructive Habit

Watch your step here in 2013. The franchise is king now. And the franchise doesn't like newcomers. In fact, the franchise is so adverse to virgin flesh that anything implying 'new' has become a hated thing; a darkling creature to be reviled, mistrusted and scorned like Judas, pure anathema.

Oh, surely you exaggerate, sir.

Do I? Did you ever think, even at our most charitable, that we would be holding up disastrous bombs like John Carter and Battleship as MARTYRS, casualties of an insidious depredation even worse than the short-sighted inanity that spawned them? Yet it is so. Those aforementioned shits-in-a-hat are the VICTIMS now, innocent bystanders in the campaign to rid the celluloid empire of anything remotely original. Make all the cracks you want about Rihanna trying to act, slapdash and spirit-robbing visuals or poor hapless Taylor Kitsch (whose name even sounds like a failed film, as in, 'Geez, that rookie director totally kitsched that movie'), but they were part of noble – yes, noble! – if ill-advised attempt to break ground on fresh Hollywood real estate and buoy up a box office weighed down with old news.

Utterly RIDICULOUS statement, right? You shan't reel me into your cantrip, sir, for I know those films were mere flummery. But bear with me. I know, it's amazing I can even get away with writing that last paragraph, considering neither Battleship nor John Carter were original works. But they are two recent parts of an otherwise unconnected triad of foolhardy attempts to make something (technically) old (sorta) new again. The third and latest (and, I suspect, last) holdout of the non-original originals, The Lone Ranger, just ate it at the ticket counter and is defying both math and physics by 'generating negative dollars', as one anonymous source put it.

'Nother words, the Delorean didn't hit 88, Doc. Consequently the suits in the studio Tower(s) of Mordor are more terrified than ever of anything that isn't compulsively clone-able; mere sequels are now reserved for dangerous progressives whose shades will not darken their ichor-splattered doors.

The film industry appears to have borrowed a page from its older, more long-winded brother in the Entertainment family, publishing. Publishing, particularly fiction publishing, has mutated – please note I pointedly avoided saying 'evolved' – into a long game, a ten-year-plus plan that eschews one-shots and stand-alones in favor of serial installments. Conservatively a 'series' might refer to a trilogy, but the surer bet now is even more – think five or six, maybe more, all spawned from the same source material. A Nebula-award winner told me not long ago that new writers especially need to think less about their debut novel and more about debut-plus-two, and to be prepared to tuck in for a long sit on one topic should a publisher express interest. Why? Because they want to find something that works and squeeze it for every red cent, that's why. That subject is another post for another time (because it's scary and sad and is worthy of discussion), but the general idea also applies to what is going on right now in the business of making pictures.

How did it come to this, as if we media-savvy journeyers didn't already know?

Movies are ludicrously expensive to make these days. As a kid I can remember Newsweek balking at the then unheard-of price tag of $92 million for Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Today that's considered a quaint sum indeed; a down payment for a decent cast and a crew of sober drivers, perhaps, or enough for three or four rom-coms starring Jennifer Garner. But these days nothing under nine figures will suffice for a flagship summer blockbuster or an effects-driven event piece. The flipside, of course, is that the last decade or so has given us some of the biggest box office RETURNS – think 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, 'Avatar', 'The Avengers', and, a surprise for me, 'Iron Man 3', all now members of the coveted One Billion Worldwide Club. On the surface it appears the Universe is in balance, right? Pricer flicks, bigger returns.

But somewhere along the line it all got out of whack. Fewer and fewer films are turning any profit at all, or, even when profitable, STILL aren't making enough to keep the studio in the black when weighed against the year's failures. Because the movies that bomb often cost as much or more to make as the ones that triumph.

Blame the rising cost of advertising (including hip, high-tech enticements like viral web campaigns), skyrocketing labor demands, travel expenses, ever-widening online and cable competition, and the asking price of Hollywood A-listers, which for many have mushroomed disproportionately with their audience draw (looking at you, Johnny Depp). Cartoons? Long regarded as free money by studios who knew when and how to release them, animated features have become almost as risky, given the massive workload the all-CGI productions now require, and the added drain of studios INSISTING on using known stars with huge rates as voice talent. Plenty of blame to go around. Bottom line: in a world where everything from a glossy period piece to a gross-out comedy is a potential leech on a studio's pocketbook, the only way the guarantee a – wait for it – 'reasonable rate of return' is to have one or two MEGA blockbusters with their seven-figure margins in the tubes for inevitable deployment.

These super-flicks are like great white sharks: huge, ravenous, requiring constant forward movement. They must be pumped out with assembly line regularity or risk being sideswiped by another over-budgeted leviathan during prime seat-filling seasons. Missing a target weekend or crucial holiday window is akin to losing your spot in the Apple Store Genius queue: it dooms the hapless slowpoke to mediocrity and slow death. It also doesn't leave much room for innovation, invention, insight, or anything that might make the film feel somehow – God forbid – different from the multitude of look-alikes invading the screen every year.

So the franchise has become the Favored Son. Find a property with proven appeal and repackage it, with minor variations, again and again ad infinitum. THE REBOOT! And to do it frequently and fast we can't wait around for the next genius screenwriter with odd-colored socks and peanut shells in his hair to give us another 'Citizen Kane'. No, we have to mine the past for all it's worth and turn new scripts out of old material on a week's notice between the animatics and the table read. THE REMAKE! And all who heard it rejoiced.

You need only take a cursory glance at the recent offerings to get a sense of how off-the-deep-end studios have become in applying this philosophy. Stuff that wasn't very good to begin with is being reconstituted into hideous offspring like Ripley in Alien 4, stuff with limited appeal that was carried by fads or the magnetic personalities of the star – Total Recall is one that leaps from the top of my head; how is Colin Farrell even a shade of Arnold Schwarzenegger for audience draw?! Campy staples from the 80s are being remade with actual gravitas (there's a new RoboCop coming down the pipe...I WON'T buy that for a dollar!) and period-relevant fare like Red Dawn are being clumsily regurgitated to play off 21st century fears...of North Korea.  Oh, but not the North Korea, but rather a North Korean splinter group. Ah, the splinter group...the silver bullet in the American political correctness arsenal. And the terrifying thing is that we're still in the beta testing phase of this New World Order. In another decade or two what we're seeing on screens now could be thought of as only the vanguard of the Age of Rehashed Shit.

Superhero movies are the new bread and butter, of course. I'm not the first writer to take note of that; I'm merely the sexiest. Everyone loves a good comic book movie now that the land has been tilled enough times. Sure it was nervous days for 20^th Century Fox when they greenlit the original X-Men, and the first Spider-Man was probably shakier ground still, considering how much it cost in the long-long ago of 2002 dollars. But now that those trailblazers have cleared the path, it's open season on spandex. Hugh Jackman, an unknown in the states at the turn of the millennium, will be appearing for the SIXTH time as Wolverine this summer in The Wolverine, a NutraSweet version of the Claremont/Miller miniseries, to be followed in short order by Number Seven when Days of Future Past arrives next year. I'm happy for him; he's found a niche and done well with it.

And Spider-Man? Oh, ho hooo, he pulled the real hat trick, didn't he? Yes, the Webbed Wonder grunted out an All-Different, Totally Fresh, Newly Relevant, Completely Updated franchise reboot a scant decade after Tobey Maguire (who's either 38 or dead by now, I can't recall) first suffered for his art by cinching his genitals into the familiar red-'n-blue unitard. For those of you who missed The Amazing Spider-Man, you can simulate the experience by watching the '02 Maguire movie on mute and substituting Andrew Garfield's stammering dialogue with a track of Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man. It wasn't bad, I just liked it a lot better ten years ago.

I'm lying. It was much, much worse than the one ten years ago and I didn't like it at all. Ha!

But this will be a trend for the foreseeable future: hero flicks on the Decade Standard: three movies in ten years, followed by a 18-24 month cool down, followed by a reboot that will simply tell the same tale again with cursory and largely cosmetic changes, helmed by some pliant film school schlub who will do what he's told and peopled entirely with Hot Young Things looking to buy their first mansion. Why? Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory.

If it comes to that. For there are already some cracks in the foundation. Some, I'll admit, are only theoretical at this point, but the writing is on the wall. Audiences are not exactly as stupid as the studios seem to think they are, and I predict that John and Jane Theatergoer are going to tire of this trend before it becomes the norm. The hope, for now, comes from behind the lens.

There is already a schism amongst filmmakers, many of whom seem perturbed by the new culture of franchise-worship, and others who are obviously torn over which side of the fight they're on. Box office gods Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have turned into oracles, predicting a future of $50 movie tickets and envisioning scenarios where a single misfire – one big-budget flop – will checkmate an entire studio and bring it to ruin. Spielberg pointed to the success of NetFlix original programming as an indicator that moviemakers and their audiences will soon be looking for more economical ways to both make and enjoy quality efforts that don't involve leaving home or laying out an Alex Hamilton for a small popcorn (perhaps even more terrifying, he suggested his stellar period piece Lincoln almost didn't get made out of fear that the multi-Oscar winning drama wouldn't be enough of a draw).

Steven Soderbergh has likewise publicly decried the new studio philosophy, noting that most suits won't touch a property that isn't guaranteed to make up its $100 million-plus budget OR cheaper fare that would not contribute to the year-end review in any meaningful way. Introspective character pieces? Experimental cinema? Can't be done. Soderbergh has sworn off making any more Hollywood pictures.

The Wachowskis went independent for last year's Cloud Atlas and undertook the most herculean effort to date to produce a super-budget picture without major studio support (though shot in English, it is technically considered a German movie). Without knowing the history of the production I can only speculate – but it's an educated speculation – that part or all of the reason they did this was because the film was 'high-concept' sci-fi that didn't spoon-feed answers to the audience. You know, the kind of movie that makes the accountants and business majors in the studio throne rooms feel dumb. Whatever your opinion of the film might be – I happened to like it – Lana and Andy did what they set out to do, and if they had to cut corners to make it work I can't see where they might have done so (with the possible exception of their labor force – if you haven't seen it, Cloud Atlas was done with an ensemble cast with each actor playing as many as six separate roles). The tragedy there is that the film barely recovered its shooting budget and is widely – if unfairly – considered a flop. Had it actually cleaned up at the box office it might have gone a long way to assuage the jittery suits who don't trust – have never trusted – intelligent sci-fi/speculative pieces. Alas, it was not to be, and the fight goes on.

Then, of course, there's cinema's current Neville Chamberlain, Peter Jackson. My gut impression of the world's Only Living Hobbit is that he rather could have done without the decree from on high that his return to Middle-Earth be elongated from two films to three. Doing so, to read some history on the subject, apparently required a great deal of scheduling callisthenics and no small amount of cajoling his cast to stick around for the many more months required to turn Tolkien's barely 300-plus page book into a trilogy. Now, as I already observed in a post back in January, Mr. Jackson clearly made the best of the situation and ended up having considerable fun, too, as these films clock in a three hours apiece and are aswim with whimsical minutiae and gooey fanboy esoterica. But in the end doesn't it just sort of feel like a cash grab? Here was New Line, after all, many times rescued from the dungheap of failed studios themselves, with a crew already in place (in New Zealand, no less, where you just can't get to from here), make-uped and costumed to a fair thee well, sitting on the closest thing to a real life dwarf horde of guaranteed ticket sales...tempting, no? I'm not inclined to point any fingers at Jackson and company and perhaps comparing him to history's greatest sniveling collaborator is too much. But considering Wing Nut Productions had to spend nearly a decade shopping around for ANY studio willing to produce the original LOTR films, it's telling that a dozen years later the powers that be couldn't wait to crank the dials to 11 on more twee men and their twee swords.

Now, will these strained and disparate points-of-view carry over to the moviegoing public? I think yes. Movies and politics have the same fundamental problem: you can't fool all the people all the time. Even casual viewers are remarking that films all seem the same these days, and art houses and foreign flicks are doing banner business even here in the heathen States. However, I think as long as the world continues to be twice as stupid and ten times as fucked as the most confounding fantasy we can throw into a projector, people will still pay money for what's put in front of them. But will it ever be enough?

The franchise will have its time in the sun and, like the Byzantines or the Hittites, will likely be remembered for the good things and its abuses glossed over. Things change, and not always for the worse. But when next you emerge from the darkened womb of your nearest IMAX with your wallet twenty dollars lighter and the horrors of the All New, All Different Highlander still reverberating through your brain, don't claim you were never warned.