The Phantom of WHAT, now?
Well, I read The Phantom of Manhattan by Frederick Forsythe. I had heard it was utter trash but I had to see for myself. Yay for the library--no money gambled on the darn thing.
It was...interesting. I read it in two sittings and it's just shy of 200 pages. Tall, skinny pages.
I enjoyed reading it, but partly because of the train-wreck factor. It was so absurdly stupid and bad, it was fun to read. I got sucked in without wanting to, and humored the author while reading it. But now that it's over, I can look back on it, nitpick like crazy, and laugh at the horror of it all.
First of all, the author gives a most curious preface. While explaining the history of the legend, he baldly insults Gaston Leroux's writing. Um...yeah, sir, you're writing a sequel to a book that you think...sucks? o_0 That makes sense... It smacks of a high schooler forced to read a great literary classic but finding the language too hard and sophisticated for their understanding, and subsequently pronouncing that it "sucks." One would expect more from a published author. Guess not.
Furthermore, Forsythe wastes way, way more pages than necessary giving us background details about his original characters, such as an amusement park employee and the de Chagny's family priest. It reminded me painfully of bad fanfiction in which the "author" waxes poetic about their OCs while the canon characters stand in the background, tapping their feet impatiently. In no possible universe would I care a whit about some random Irish priest's childhood that has no bearing whatsoever on the book's plot. In a book this short it's even more despicable to waste so much time on unimportant characters.
Darius was a one-dimensional villain if ever there was one. At least Voldemort has a backstory, motivations for being batshit insane and bent on world domination. This kid was just a generic, "mysterious-guy-with-unsettling-cold-eyes-and-pale-skin" kind of villain.
In the preface Forsythe rejects the entire backstory given in the Leroux novel through the Persian's eyes, so it's curious that he would use the name of the Persian's servant as the name of his villain. If they were intended to be the same character, it was left very unclear. And if they were the same...why? What possible point was there in doing that? Makes even less sense than people who write 50-page epics about Harry Potter's classmates who have no dialogue and are only mentioned once in a roll call. o_0
As for Erik... Poor, dear, Erik. Where are you? Not here, that's for sure. That cur Forsythe has turned you into a one-dimensional creature. No, two-dimensional. One dimension for being power-hungry/money-grubbing, and one side for obsessing over how "OMG no one will ever love me again boo waaaah."
And yet there's something so powerful about the character that even in a horrible plot like this, handled so clumsily by a subpar author, he's interesting. His character is so vibrant (in the Leroux and Lloyd Webber versions) that even when a crappy author like Forsythe knocks him out with chloroform and props him up like a ventriloquist's dummy to spew his ridiculous plot, a glimmer of his original wonder shines through. Just a glimmer, mind you. A tiny one. But enough to make me finish the book, which several Amazon reviewers said they were unable to do. (There are some amusingly scathing reviews on there, as disgruntled phans verbally disembowel Forsythe. Heh.)
Christine, as one Amazon reviewer pointed out, seems not to have matured a day in twelve years. Physically, yes, but apparently 12 years of being a mother and traveling Europe as a famed opera star has done nothing to mature her, emotionally.
We see and hear so little from Raoul that it's difficult to judge how he's portrayed. Ditto Meg Giry--although we get one chapter from her POV, she remains flat and undeveloped. The author did feel the need to afflict her with a bum leg from an old dancing injury, however. Ostensibly this was to explain why she was content traveling with Christine as her lady-in-waiting instead of pursuing her own career on the stage, but it came off as just a pointless excuse to torture a character.
Mme. Giry (Meg's mother) sets the novel's events in motion by sending a letter to Erik from her deathbed. In it she confesses that she once came upon a teenage Raoul defending a servant girl from a mugger. He was shot in the process and although he recovered fully he...um...well, he was emasculated. Apparently his wedding tackle was intact but nonfunctional. o_0 Riiiiiiiight. Mighty damn convenient that Giry happened upon the scene, and that the bullet did that precise damage. *rolls eyes*
It's laughable, because poor Raoul is often metaphoically emasculated by Erik/Christine shippers, who write the young aristocrat off as wussy and spoiled. I was somewhat guilty of that before seeing the latest movie version. He was well-meaning but foolish, naive and a bit shallow. The movie version punched up his character to more of a leading-man status, giving him a kick-ass swordfight and a chase scene on horseback. But for this author to literally sterilize him was absurdly over-the-top.
Raoul's little problem does complicate the plot, however, because Christine has a 12-year-old son. Raoul married her right after the events at the Paris Opera, so the timing is right, but the biological schemantics aren't. Thus Giry's letter to Erik reveals that *gasp* Erik is really the father of Christine's child! OMG, that's like, so NEVER been done before! *mock amazement* Fft.
Never mind that the one and only kiss she gives him at the very end of play, as Raoul is strung up at his mercy, is, like, the emotional high point of the entire play. She finally overcomes her revulsion toward his physical deformities and connects to the pitiful soul within, and that deeply moving gesture accomplishes what nothing else could--it makes Erik realize that she can never be happy in his dark, twisted world, and that if he loves her he must set her free. It's a spectacularly emotional moment.
But, apparently they'd been shagging like bunnies down there in the cellars at some time before that, according to Forsyth. While Christine was basically passed out, we're told. So Erik is a rapist, basically. Way to shatter the enduring romance, Mr. Forsyth.
Susan Kay handled the issue in a more believable, poignant manner. This guy makes it sound like a daytime soap opera on Fox. >_<
So, having learned this bombshell, Erik arranges for Christine and family to come to New York.
Wait a minute, you say...New York? How the flying hell did Erik get to New York? Well, silly, Mme. Giry helped him escape from the angry mob at the end of the play and put him on a ship to America, of course! Didn't you know that? He didn't fade away and die of a broken heart. No, sir! He started anew in the New World, starting out with a glamorous job of gutting fish on the beaches of New Jersey. Ooooh. Then he makes a fortune helping to design amusement parks on Coney Island. This actually does make some sense, when you consider the background of Leroux's phantom as a pupil of gypsies and a court magician in Persia. Except oh, wait...Forsyth said in the preface he was throwing out all of that backstory. Oopsie. But somehow Erik still has a great natural talent for making clockwork toys, halls of mirrors and other illusions. That part I can actually wrap my mind around.
But how does he avoid having everyone on Coney Island run in the other direction, tossing their peanuts and cotton candy, when they see him? Why, he uses a disguise, of course.
You know what it is?
Wait for it...
A clown mask. Yes, boys and girls, the great master of illusion and subterfuge, the strangely dignified and tragic genius, Erik, dresses up as a clown.
I weep.
I mean, okay, I guess it makes sense, given the circumstances, but...no. Just...no. It's wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. There are plenty of other disguises you could use, hanging around an amusement park. Mardi Gras-style masks would NOT be out of place there. So WHY for the love of God, Gaston Leroux, Andrew Lloyd Webber and my poor brain, did this asshat author have to subject Erik to a clown costume? Why? Why why why?
*deep breath*
Okay, continuing... Erik gets rich from his work on Coney Island and branches out in the stock market and other crap. Whatever. He becomes extremely wealthy and runs a huge corporation from his penthouse in a NYC skyscraper. His assistant, the guy who does all the face-to-face business, is Darius. The eeeeeeeeeeevil guy I mentioned above. Darius gets an entire chapter to get stoned and have detailed conversations with a pagan deity. Yeeeeeeeeeeeahokayfine. Whatever. He's in line in inherit Erik's fortune when he kicks off to the big opera house in the sky. So when it comes to light that Erik has a son, Mr. Stoned-but-Evil freaks out.
Then there's a bunch of crap with a newspaper reporter that no one cares about, and a scene where Christine is lured to Coney Island to meet Erik that promises to be cool but ends up being blah. I mean, Erik lures her into a house of mirrors and confronts her, professing that he still loves her and wants to know his son. That should be a very cool scene, charged with emotion.
Instead it's like,...
"Hey baby, still lookin' fine. Can I please see our bastard son?"
"I'd rather you didn't."
"Awwwww! You're mean!" *phantom's lower lip quivers*
*bashes head into wall*
This book had potential. It really did. Shreds of coolness that, if properly nurtured with good soil and sunlight, could have sprouted into something nice. But no.
So Erik has Christine perform in an opera he's written called Don Juan Triumphant II: The Return of the Horny Dude in the Mask...er, I mean, Angel of Shiloh, a Gone With The Wind ripoff. She sings, it's beautiful, he does the ventriloquist-frog thing on the leading man so he can take over the role again, they sing together, the audience cries, blah blah, nothing original here, blah.
Then there's this big ol' party afterwards in which Forsyth decides to throw in the names of every famous or someday-would-be-famous person in the country who could, conceivably, have been at a social event in New York in 1906. Everyone from Irving Berlin to both President T. Roosevelt and future-president F.D. Roosevelt. Yes, yes, Mr. Forsyth, you've done a wee bit of research. Very nice. Now go sit in the corner with your World Book Encyclopedia, and don't come back until you've learned how to write a decent fanfic.
By the way, Erik and Christine's son is named Pierre. Can you think of a more cliche French name? >_<
Nothing else really happens except the messy, pointlessly "OMG teh tragedeee!!" climax. Erik convinces Christine to bring their son to the park so he can meet him just once before they go back to France and leave him in New York. Except the stoned-but-evil Darius shows up and tries to shoot the kid. Yet through a really pointless spurt of deus ex machina, Christine happens to be picking up the kid and spinning him around at that moment, and she takes the bullet instead. No heroic jumping into the line of fire to protect her son. Just...oops! Arrowed Bulleted!
Erik shoots the evil guy. He dies. No one cares.
Raoul shows up with some of those minor original characters we don't care about. At all.
RAOUL: Christine! You've been shot!
CHRISTINE: No crap. By the way, Pierre is really Erik's love child. Because, you know, you have defective man-parts.
RAOUL: Not so loud!
CHRISTINE: *dies*
RAOUL/LUKE SKYWALKER: Nooooooooooooooooo!!!
ERIK: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!
RAOUL: *suddenly composes himself* Okay, kid, now that your mother is suddenly dead, you can either stay here with this strange, deformed man you've never met who shares half your genetic material, or you can come back to France with me, the only father you're ever known, who's raised you and provided for you. I really don't care which. Whatever.
PIERRE: *gloms Erik* Daddy!
RAOUL: Okey-doke. See ya.
ERIK: OMG SON!
PIERRE: OMG DADDY! *takes mask off* I'm glad I got Mom's looks... But it's okay! Even though I just met you and know virtually nothing about you except that you're hideously deformed and Mom was scared of you, I loooooooooooooooove you!
ERIK: I love you too, son but you're not getting my Bud Light!
ERIK AND PIERRE: *live happily ever after as corporate bigshots in New York*
RAOUL: *goes back to France without a fight like the wussy eunuch he is'nt and fades into obscurity*
CHRISTINE: *still dead*
READERS: WTF?
*bows*
The end.
It was...interesting. I read it in two sittings and it's just shy of 200 pages. Tall, skinny pages.
I enjoyed reading it, but partly because of the train-wreck factor. It was so absurdly stupid and bad, it was fun to read. I got sucked in without wanting to, and humored the author while reading it. But now that it's over, I can look back on it, nitpick like crazy, and laugh at the horror of it all.
First of all, the author gives a most curious preface. While explaining the history of the legend, he baldly insults Gaston Leroux's writing. Um...yeah, sir, you're writing a sequel to a book that you think...sucks? o_0 That makes sense... It smacks of a high schooler forced to read a great literary classic but finding the language too hard and sophisticated for their understanding, and subsequently pronouncing that it "sucks." One would expect more from a published author. Guess not.
Furthermore, Forsythe wastes way, way more pages than necessary giving us background details about his original characters, such as an amusement park employee and the de Chagny's family priest. It reminded me painfully of bad fanfiction in which the "author" waxes poetic about their OCs while the canon characters stand in the background, tapping their feet impatiently. In no possible universe would I care a whit about some random Irish priest's childhood that has no bearing whatsoever on the book's plot. In a book this short it's even more despicable to waste so much time on unimportant characters.
Darius was a one-dimensional villain if ever there was one. At least Voldemort has a backstory, motivations for being batshit insane and bent on world domination. This kid was just a generic, "mysterious-guy-with-unsettling-cold-eyes-and-pale-skin" kind of villain.
In the preface Forsythe rejects the entire backstory given in the Leroux novel through the Persian's eyes, so it's curious that he would use the name of the Persian's servant as the name of his villain. If they were intended to be the same character, it was left very unclear. And if they were the same...why? What possible point was there in doing that? Makes even less sense than people who write 50-page epics about Harry Potter's classmates who have no dialogue and are only mentioned once in a roll call. o_0
As for Erik... Poor, dear, Erik. Where are you? Not here, that's for sure. That cur Forsythe has turned you into a one-dimensional creature. No, two-dimensional. One dimension for being power-hungry/money-grubbing, and one side for obsessing over how "OMG no one will ever love me again boo waaaah."
And yet there's something so powerful about the character that even in a horrible plot like this, handled so clumsily by a subpar author, he's interesting. His character is so vibrant (in the Leroux and Lloyd Webber versions) that even when a crappy author like Forsythe knocks him out with chloroform and props him up like a ventriloquist's dummy to spew his ridiculous plot, a glimmer of his original wonder shines through. Just a glimmer, mind you. A tiny one. But enough to make me finish the book, which several Amazon reviewers said they were unable to do. (There are some amusingly scathing reviews on there, as disgruntled phans verbally disembowel Forsythe. Heh.)
Christine, as one Amazon reviewer pointed out, seems not to have matured a day in twelve years. Physically, yes, but apparently 12 years of being a mother and traveling Europe as a famed opera star has done nothing to mature her, emotionally.
We see and hear so little from Raoul that it's difficult to judge how he's portrayed. Ditto Meg Giry--although we get one chapter from her POV, she remains flat and undeveloped. The author did feel the need to afflict her with a bum leg from an old dancing injury, however. Ostensibly this was to explain why she was content traveling with Christine as her lady-in-waiting instead of pursuing her own career on the stage, but it came off as just a pointless excuse to torture a character.
Mme. Giry (Meg's mother) sets the novel's events in motion by sending a letter to Erik from her deathbed. In it she confesses that she once came upon a teenage Raoul defending a servant girl from a mugger. He was shot in the process and although he recovered fully he...um...well, he was emasculated. Apparently his wedding tackle was intact but nonfunctional. o_0 Riiiiiiiight. Mighty damn convenient that Giry happened upon the scene, and that the bullet did that precise damage. *rolls eyes*
It's laughable, because poor Raoul is often metaphoically emasculated by Erik/Christine shippers, who write the young aristocrat off as wussy and spoiled. I was somewhat guilty of that before seeing the latest movie version. He was well-meaning but foolish, naive and a bit shallow. The movie version punched up his character to more of a leading-man status, giving him a kick-ass swordfight and a chase scene on horseback. But for this author to literally sterilize him was absurdly over-the-top.
Raoul's little problem does complicate the plot, however, because Christine has a 12-year-old son. Raoul married her right after the events at the Paris Opera, so the timing is right, but the biological schemantics aren't. Thus Giry's letter to Erik reveals that *gasp* Erik is really the father of Christine's child! OMG, that's like, so NEVER been done before! *mock amazement* Fft.
Never mind that the one and only kiss she gives him at the very end of play, as Raoul is strung up at his mercy, is, like, the emotional high point of the entire play. She finally overcomes her revulsion toward his physical deformities and connects to the pitiful soul within, and that deeply moving gesture accomplishes what nothing else could--it makes Erik realize that she can never be happy in his dark, twisted world, and that if he loves her he must set her free. It's a spectacularly emotional moment.
But, apparently they'd been shagging like bunnies down there in the cellars at some time before that, according to Forsyth. While Christine was basically passed out, we're told. So Erik is a rapist, basically. Way to shatter the enduring romance, Mr. Forsyth.
Susan Kay handled the issue in a more believable, poignant manner. This guy makes it sound like a daytime soap opera on Fox. >_<
So, having learned this bombshell, Erik arranges for Christine and family to come to New York.
Wait a minute, you say...New York? How the flying hell did Erik get to New York? Well, silly, Mme. Giry helped him escape from the angry mob at the end of the play and put him on a ship to America, of course! Didn't you know that? He didn't fade away and die of a broken heart. No, sir! He started anew in the New World, starting out with a glamorous job of gutting fish on the beaches of New Jersey. Ooooh. Then he makes a fortune helping to design amusement parks on Coney Island. This actually does make some sense, when you consider the background of Leroux's phantom as a pupil of gypsies and a court magician in Persia. Except oh, wait...Forsyth said in the preface he was throwing out all of that backstory. Oopsie. But somehow Erik still has a great natural talent for making clockwork toys, halls of mirrors and other illusions. That part I can actually wrap my mind around.
But how does he avoid having everyone on Coney Island run in the other direction, tossing their peanuts and cotton candy, when they see him? Why, he uses a disguise, of course.
You know what it is?
Wait for it...
A clown mask. Yes, boys and girls, the great master of illusion and subterfuge, the strangely dignified and tragic genius, Erik, dresses up as a clown.
I weep.
I mean, okay, I guess it makes sense, given the circumstances, but...no. Just...no. It's wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. There are plenty of other disguises you could use, hanging around an amusement park. Mardi Gras-style masks would NOT be out of place there. So WHY for the love of God, Gaston Leroux, Andrew Lloyd Webber and my poor brain, did this asshat author have to subject Erik to a clown costume? Why? Why why why?
*deep breath*
Okay, continuing... Erik gets rich from his work on Coney Island and branches out in the stock market and other crap. Whatever. He becomes extremely wealthy and runs a huge corporation from his penthouse in a NYC skyscraper. His assistant, the guy who does all the face-to-face business, is Darius. The eeeeeeeeeeevil guy I mentioned above. Darius gets an entire chapter to get stoned and have detailed conversations with a pagan deity. Yeeeeeeeeeeeahokayfine. Whatever. He's in line in inherit Erik's fortune when he kicks off to the big opera house in the sky. So when it comes to light that Erik has a son, Mr. Stoned-but-Evil freaks out.
Then there's a bunch of crap with a newspaper reporter that no one cares about, and a scene where Christine is lured to Coney Island to meet Erik that promises to be cool but ends up being blah. I mean, Erik lures her into a house of mirrors and confronts her, professing that he still loves her and wants to know his son. That should be a very cool scene, charged with emotion.
Instead it's like,...
"Hey baby, still lookin' fine. Can I please see our bastard son?"
"I'd rather you didn't."
"Awwwww! You're mean!" *phantom's lower lip quivers*
*bashes head into wall*
This book had potential. It really did. Shreds of coolness that, if properly nurtured with good soil and sunlight, could have sprouted into something nice. But no.
So Erik has Christine perform in an opera he's written called Don Juan Triumphant II: The Return of the Horny Dude in the Mask...er, I mean, Angel of Shiloh, a Gone With The Wind ripoff. She sings, it's beautiful, he does the ventriloquist-frog thing on the leading man so he can take over the role again, they sing together, the audience cries, blah blah, nothing original here, blah.
Then there's this big ol' party afterwards in which Forsyth decides to throw in the names of every famous or someday-would-be-famous person in the country who could, conceivably, have been at a social event in New York in 1906. Everyone from Irving Berlin to both President T. Roosevelt and future-president F.D. Roosevelt. Yes, yes, Mr. Forsyth, you've done a wee bit of research. Very nice. Now go sit in the corner with your World Book Encyclopedia, and don't come back until you've learned how to write a decent fanfic.
By the way, Erik and Christine's son is named Pierre. Can you think of a more cliche French name? >_<
Nothing else really happens except the messy, pointlessly "OMG teh tragedeee!!" climax. Erik convinces Christine to bring their son to the park so he can meet him just once before they go back to France and leave him in New York. Except the stoned-but-evil Darius shows up and tries to shoot the kid. Yet through a really pointless spurt of deus ex machina, Christine happens to be picking up the kid and spinning him around at that moment, and she takes the bullet instead. No heroic jumping into the line of fire to protect her son. Just...oops! Arrowed Bulleted!
Erik shoots the evil guy. He dies. No one cares.
Raoul shows up with some of those minor original characters we don't care about. At all.
RAOUL: Christine! You've been shot!
CHRISTINE: No crap. By the way, Pierre is really Erik's love child. Because, you know, you have defective man-parts.
RAOUL: Not so loud!
CHRISTINE: *dies*
RAOUL/LUKE SKYWALKER: Nooooooooooooooooo!!!
ERIK: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!
RAOUL: *suddenly composes himself* Okay, kid, now that your mother is suddenly dead, you can either stay here with this strange, deformed man you've never met who shares half your genetic material, or you can come back to France with me, the only father you're ever known, who's raised you and provided for you. I really don't care which. Whatever.
PIERRE: *gloms Erik* Daddy!
RAOUL: Okey-doke. See ya.
ERIK: OMG SON!
PIERRE: OMG DADDY! *takes mask off* I'm glad I got Mom's looks... But it's okay! Even though I just met you and know virtually nothing about you except that you're hideously deformed and Mom was scared of you, I loooooooooooooooove you!
ERIK: I love you too, son but you're not getting my Bud Light!
ERIK AND PIERRE: *live happily ever after as corporate bigshots in New York*
RAOUL: *goes back to France without a fight like the wussy eunuch he is'nt and fades into obscurity*
CHRISTINE: *still dead*
READERS: WTF?
*bows*
The end.