Gamera is really neat, Gamera is filled with meat, we've been eating Gamera!
I’m always the first one to mock weird casting/directorial decisions, though I usually don’t care that much in the long run. Life is genuinely too short to worry about this kind of thing. But in this case, I have to make my feelings on this matter articulated, though they be as articulate as a tack hammer. They roughly follow a headline theme, which can be expressed thusly:
The master of the “you think you didn’t see it coming, but kinda did actually” plot twist, describes the story of Avatar: The Last Airbender as:
"…a place where there are four tribes of people. And these people each have people within their tribe that have mastery over one element: water, earth, fire or air. They all live in a balance and harmony and once every generation there is born an individual who can bend - that is manipulate - all four of those elements and thereby keep a balance between all. They are kind of a Buddha figure to some extent. The story is about how, in this particular time, this avatar is born into the airbenders and disappears. Then all hell breaks loose and the fire nation basically commits genocide and eradicates the air tribe in the hopes of killing the avatar and taking over control of everything. This child then re-emerges, which is the beginning of our story. He reappears having been frozen in the ice - there is a whole story about how that happens - a hundred years later and this world is all fucked up and he is the last airbender, but he doesn’t want this job. He’s forced into the position of putting the world back together again. It actually has a lot of Shakespearean overtones to it. There’s lots of family angst, and fathers denying sons in different storylines."
Which is fair enough, I suppose. That at least suggests he’s watched Episode 1. But beyond that, Shyamalan will either take out all the philosophical element and film a picture that involves one group of people hitting another with burning sticks, or (more likely) he’ll pile on the philosophy and make a film so incomprehensible that nobody wants to watch it.
At this point, there’s a vole on my desk who’s willing the question: “Well, who would you want to make it?” at me. My response to that would pretty much follow the configuration of: “Nobody, you incorrigible villain”. These really aren’t the kind of thing you can compress into a three-hour film-or even three three-hour films-and expect to come away with the same experience. There’s a reason why Shakespeare adaptations are either five hours long or so abridged that you start to wonder if you’re missing something:
Hamlet: “…the play's the thing, Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.”
Act III
Fortinbras: “Unfortunately, Hamlet died in a tragic yet strangely comical helicopter accident. Also, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Go, bid the soldiers shoot Claudius. Mwaaa.”
END
Whereas you can read a book for ten minutes and put it down to do something else, movies are a vectored shot of adrenaline, designed to hold your attention for, on average, 6000 seconds. A TV series falls somewhere between these, but even if you think of them as short movies, for they still aim to hold your interest through a single sitting, they also form part of a wider narrative. Movies normally require everything to be resolved at the end, although you can leave the ending as open as you want, in much the same way as a book can be left with a cliffhanger.
Any adaptation of a TV series will therefore eschew a progressive narrative so something that can be compacted into a two hour slot. Why anyone would want to take that over something you can dive into every week and feel yourself grow along with the story is beyond me.
I’ll probably still watch it though. Which makes me a hypocrite, I know, but what can I say: I like the taste of popcorn.
Meanwhile, apparently JK Rowling’s creativity has been brutally bludgeoned to death by some weirdo who’s done nothing but obsess about Harry Potter for the last nine years. She claims she’s had to stop work on her latest novel because of this guy who tried to sell an encyclopaedia to pay off his student loans, or something.
I feel for the fragile little billionaire author, and I understand it may be difficult to think of new ideas now she’s no longer hanging out with Neil Gaiman, but what kind of attitude is that? When Gilbert and Sullivan found out the American music halls had put on shows of HMS Pinafore without paying them any royalties, they wrote the Pirates of Penzance, an early satirical example on plagiarism.
All JK needs to do is to turn this around. The guy looks fairly creepy; there’s your new villain. He’s a former librarian; there’s your plot. She’s used to putting avatars of herself in her books, so now you’re three-quarters of your way to a finished story.
In a shabby, rundown hamlet in Scotland, Keith Turner discovers strange goings on at the local library. Some of the books-gasp-are magical, and reading them transports him into immersive worlds that allow him to forget the grind of daily life in milk school. However, no sooner has he discovered this when he has to contend with the head librarian, Nostradamus Brahms, whose diabolical scheme involves copying the books and selling to the rich and famous so they can escape from the daily grind of selling expensive Western drugs to Africans.
See, easy. The entire thing can end up being a setup to summon some long-deceased Dark Lord back to the world to give everything a hint that it belongs to the same universe as Harry Potter, to appease the fans...why am I still writing? This isn’t even my issue. Don’t let me be your creative wok, JK!
NB. This is, of course, assuming good faith on her part, lest I accuse her of using this as an excuse for sitting around and doing nothing. Oh, how could I think of things like this?
The master of the “you think you didn’t see it coming, but kinda did actually” plot twist, describes the story of Avatar: The Last Airbender as:
"…a place where there are four tribes of people. And these people each have people within their tribe that have mastery over one element: water, earth, fire or air. They all live in a balance and harmony and once every generation there is born an individual who can bend - that is manipulate - all four of those elements and thereby keep a balance between all. They are kind of a Buddha figure to some extent. The story is about how, in this particular time, this avatar is born into the airbenders and disappears. Then all hell breaks loose and the fire nation basically commits genocide and eradicates the air tribe in the hopes of killing the avatar and taking over control of everything. This child then re-emerges, which is the beginning of our story. He reappears having been frozen in the ice - there is a whole story about how that happens - a hundred years later and this world is all fucked up and he is the last airbender, but he doesn’t want this job. He’s forced into the position of putting the world back together again. It actually has a lot of Shakespearean overtones to it. There’s lots of family angst, and fathers denying sons in different storylines."
Which is fair enough, I suppose. That at least suggests he’s watched Episode 1. But beyond that, Shyamalan will either take out all the philosophical element and film a picture that involves one group of people hitting another with burning sticks, or (more likely) he’ll pile on the philosophy and make a film so incomprehensible that nobody wants to watch it.
At this point, there’s a vole on my desk who’s willing the question: “Well, who would you want to make it?” at me. My response to that would pretty much follow the configuration of: “Nobody, you incorrigible villain”. These really aren’t the kind of thing you can compress into a three-hour film-or even three three-hour films-and expect to come away with the same experience. There’s a reason why Shakespeare adaptations are either five hours long or so abridged that you start to wonder if you’re missing something:
Hamlet: “…the play's the thing, Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.”
Act III
Fortinbras: “Unfortunately, Hamlet died in a tragic yet strangely comical helicopter accident. Also, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Go, bid the soldiers shoot Claudius. Mwaaa.”
END
Whereas you can read a book for ten minutes and put it down to do something else, movies are a vectored shot of adrenaline, designed to hold your attention for, on average, 6000 seconds. A TV series falls somewhere between these, but even if you think of them as short movies, for they still aim to hold your interest through a single sitting, they also form part of a wider narrative. Movies normally require everything to be resolved at the end, although you can leave the ending as open as you want, in much the same way as a book can be left with a cliffhanger.
Any adaptation of a TV series will therefore eschew a progressive narrative so something that can be compacted into a two hour slot. Why anyone would want to take that over something you can dive into every week and feel yourself grow along with the story is beyond me.
I’ll probably still watch it though. Which makes me a hypocrite, I know, but what can I say: I like the taste of popcorn.
Meanwhile, apparently JK Rowling’s creativity has been brutally bludgeoned to death by some weirdo who’s done nothing but obsess about Harry Potter for the last nine years. She claims she’s had to stop work on her latest novel because of this guy who tried to sell an encyclopaedia to pay off his student loans, or something.
I feel for the fragile little billionaire author, and I understand it may be difficult to think of new ideas now she’s no longer hanging out with Neil Gaiman, but what kind of attitude is that? When Gilbert and Sullivan found out the American music halls had put on shows of HMS Pinafore without paying them any royalties, they wrote the Pirates of Penzance, an early satirical example on plagiarism.
All JK needs to do is to turn this around. The guy looks fairly creepy; there’s your new villain. He’s a former librarian; there’s your plot. She’s used to putting avatars of herself in her books, so now you’re three-quarters of your way to a finished story.
In a shabby, rundown hamlet in Scotland, Keith Turner discovers strange goings on at the local library. Some of the books-gasp-are magical, and reading them transports him into immersive worlds that allow him to forget the grind of daily life in milk school. However, no sooner has he discovered this when he has to contend with the head librarian, Nostradamus Brahms, whose diabolical scheme involves copying the books and selling to the rich and famous so they can escape from the daily grind of selling expensive Western drugs to Africans.
See, easy. The entire thing can end up being a setup to summon some long-deceased Dark Lord back to the world to give everything a hint that it belongs to the same universe as Harry Potter, to appease the fans...why am I still writing? This isn’t even my issue. Don’t let me be your creative wok, JK!
NB. This is, of course, assuming good faith on her part, lest I accuse her of using this as an excuse for sitting around and doing nothing. Oh, how could I think of things like this?