17902--Is A Sequel Worth Destroying the World?

Spoiler alert: the "groundbreaking" Watchmen limited comic series (1986-1987) was already beyond relevance when finally adapted to film (2009).

Now, that's not to say the grim, gritty superhero intrigue isn't fun to watch and re-watch, man (sorry), but deconstructing comic book icons is even less striking in a post-antihero age than positing the notions of revised geopolitics and a multi-term Nixon administration.  Hell, in 2007, a fairly bright college student was asking me to explain the significance of "this Ayatollah Khomeni" she had never heard of outside her history class.

Beyond all that, including even Alan Moore's disowning of Zack Snyder's product, I guess I still have a lingering problem with the implications of the rewritten ending.  In the original, Adrian Veidt's machinations culminated in the psychic death scream of a genetically engineered octopus mutation fooling humanity into believing Earth was at risk from interdimensional invaders when the one-off creature exploded onto Times Square (a result of being on the business end of Veidt's technological approximation of Dr. Manhattan's powers).  The result of the mastermind's brilliant hoax, as he expected, was the world uniting to survive, albeit at the price of paranoia-fueled PTSD and a few deaths.  He didn't consider it a perfect solution, but one preferable to watching billions die in thermonuclear immolation.

In the movie, Adrian Veidt's altered plan completely sidesteps the genetic engineering aspects of the original and instead of using the research into Manhattan's powers to craft an unstable teleporter weaponizes the tech to create discrete intrinsic field subtraction effects in eighteen cities.  The destructive energy attacks kill millions and do tremendous damage around the world, rallying Earth against what they believe is a Dr. Manhattan who has turned against them.  When the immortal chooses to leave Earth behind, he also leaves the powerful technology with Veidt and the weight of what he has done to save the world from its political madness.

What doesn't appear to have been considered, though, is that it originally took Dr. Manhattan about a year to learn to control his energetic form and recreate a cohesive body for himself after being disintegrated.  Now, Veidt has recreated that original disintegration with millions of subjects.  Should even one or two of those torn apart as collateral damage find the focus to re-embody their consciousness, a real clash of superhumans could result.  What about dozens or hundreds or thousands of Manhattan-like superbeings bumping shoulders?  Even if they learned only a fraction of his mastery in their youth (remember, we saw Manhattan develop over decades from a man who started as a physicist to one who could reform his disintegrated body almost instantly), the potential impact theses newly empowered beings would easily have tremendous impact on a very tense world.

As of this month, there's been an announcement that a potential TV series set in the Watchmen world is being considered.  I guess we'll have to wait and see how they'll choose to burn it down.

17837--You Paid How Much?

I try to avoid going to movies at the theater.

It's not that I don't enjoy watching movies or spending time with friends.  My issue is that I don't like to encourage a system that seems designed to take increasing amounts of money out of my pocket for products of increasingly uncertain quality.  When I do go, I count myself fortunate that I'm stubborn enough about eating healthy that I don't pay for the overpriced snacks they consider edible.

As far as the movie goes, though, my rising ticket price is going to pay back the money that a studio has invested in the production of whatever latest cinematic escapism they've chosen to throw a bigger budget at than any of the 99% will see in a lifetime.  Sadly, when you put a bunch of studio decision makers in a room with supposedly creative people, what comes out is seldom new or innovative.  What they tend to gravitate toward in the great piecemeal of ideas will be things that look familiar.  Those ideas will look like the sort that have made money before, to which will be attached a twist or two that seems clever at the moment and the names of some acting-types that seem like they can help sell the product.  (This happens in TV, too, but it usually isn't something the masses have to pay to see.)

When this process works, you end up with another successful rom-com or espionage thriller or whatever puts asses into padded theater seats for a few months.  When it doesn't, another Fantastic Four or The Lone Ranger gets dumped into our laps like the hot mess the dog left steaming on the kitchen floor before skulking off in shame.  Those particular missed shots still baffle me.  Did Hollywood not invent westerns?  The studios have years of experience making them yet they can't seem to pull off a proper "Who was that masked man?" no matter how much cash they sacrifice at the altar.  Hell, the character was even based on a real-life western hero.  If Clayton Moore didn't seem like such a darn nice guy, I might think he had commissioned a curse against Klinton Spillsbury and any other Lone Ranger films.

The Fantastic Four films are another mystery.  They're a modern, scientific superhero family with fifty years of comic history under their stretchable onesies.  Still, while the other super-misfits are lining up to swim with Scrooge McDuck, the ol' FF continue to have as much fun at the theater as Abe Lincoln.  They don't seem to be tapping the right vein to strike the gold that other world-savers are hitting.  It'd be easy enough to snipe from the sidelines and say it's because they aren't interpreting the source material properly or reading it at all (more than a few film productions of comic adaptations have had key personnel crow about how they would proudly ignore the comic books that inspired the movie deal they were supposed to be fulfilling), but there's no simple formula for putting a winner onto the big screen.  Just ask the Wachowskis.  Of course, there are also a lot of simple things that shouldn't be done if experienced filmmakers don't want to shoot holes in their own boat.  Just ask the Wachowskis.

It'd be nice if they could get a system perfected before asking us to pay for their fiascos.  That's incredibly unlikely, though, which is why a movie pitch won't get any nibbles in the Shark Tank.  All too often, a good movie idea and a bad movie idea can look an awful lot alike until after the money's been spent.

17830--I Know What I Did This Summer

I hate going so long between making fresh blog entries.

And yet, here we are.  The writing goes well; targeting September to release the next THEOBROMA book.  The following installments should come along faster, but it's turning out to be much longer than I'd thought it would be.  Still, I enjoy the work.

Not that the work cares, but we're in it together all the same.

That reminds me of my other working partner: weights.
This summer, I've shifted some of my considerable inertia toward exercising more.  That has involved elevating my moderate maintenance level activities to workouts geared toward increasing strength and stamina while simultaneously burning fat.  It's weights one day, body weight exercises the next, plus martial arts and walking every day.  Like writing, I workout without other people.  I think that's probably for the best.  I keep odd hours and I don't stroke egos.

Weights don't care about your ego.

Stopwatches don't care about your ego.

I don't care about your ego.

Performance is what matters to me, whether that's producing quality writing or lifting more weight.  Energy and will united to make changes happen.  Better, stronger, faster are the goals.  That's a strategy that intentionally lacks an endgame.  It's using that inertia to keep on moving, continuing that personal journey of self-improvement.

On the downside, I'm having to push to eat a lot more and, as I stubbornly refuse to join another gym, I'm going to have to invest in more weights.  C'est la vie.  Onward and upward, keeping the fires burning hot.