Popping the Culture's Cherry: 3 New Reviews
V: The Second Generation: I had really been looking forward to this one for a long time, ever since Sci-Fi reran the two V miniseries and the shortlived weekly TV series ad nauseam in the mid 90s. (I just missed the original runs in the mid 80s.) There was a scene in the original miniseries in which the Visitor Fifth Columnist Martin intimated to series hero Mike Donovan (played by Marc Singer of Beastmaster infamy) that the alien invaders had an enemy somewhere out there among the stars. The dialogue was very cryptic, but reading between the lines, it seemed that the Vistor's enemy was no better than they, if not worse. The identity of this mysterious alien race is one of the great (albeit forgotten) of fandom. So when I heard that creator Kenneth Johnson was scrapping all the followup stuff and writing his own sequel to the original, which would finally resolve this plotline, I was hopeful. I should have known better.
First the book was beset by constant delays, but upon its release, it took several trips to various Borders and Barnes & Nobles before I finally found a copy. Now, it's an entertaining read, but also a great disappointment, for a fan of the original miniseries. Most of the original heroes and villains, including Julie, Mike, Willy, Harmony, Martin, Robert, and Diana are present and play at least prominent roles; we find out what happened to the old lady Resistance fighter Ruby (which oddly enough closely mirrors what happened to her in the sequel V: The Final Battle), and there's a subtle reference as to the ultimate fate of the Visitor Commander John (played by George Costanza's boss in the original!). There's even a quick explanation as to whatever became of Julie's fiancee from the original. The story does not, however, include appearances by, or at least explanations of what happened to, major characters such as Elias and Robin, or even more minor figures like Caleb and Barbara. There's some quick thing about a "purge of the Resistance in the late 90s" which seems to be an all-purpose answer to the age-old "Whatever happened to. . .?" To not include Elias is a real insult to the fans. Characters who met their fate in V: The Final Battle, such as Daniel, Eleanor and Brian, who would still be alive in this "new continuity" (Ever notice of much of that there seems to be these days?) are presumably dead. There are a whole bunch of new characters in this, mostly teenagers, who were born after the beginning of the Visitor occupation (hence the title), and some, such as Blue and Nathan, are obvious replacements for vanished fan favorites. Perhaps the worst casualty is Ham Tyler, one of the most popular V characters (played by Michael Ironside, America's No. 1 crap movie tough guy), who was not introduced until the sequel, and as such, does not exist in Kenneth Johnson's new vision.
Now, a rational person could overlook this if the story was well-written. It isn't. Between the pacing of the story and the constant "quick-cuts," it seems that Johnson just took a screenplay he had written and did a quick prose rewrite. He could have at least done a good job with that, but no; instead, he had to waste his time endlessly describing how hot the new character Emma is (she's a half-black, half-white pop singer with an awesome cocoa body whom everyone, male and female, wants to bang). We get it, Ken - you want to fuck Beyonce. He makes sure to include at least one lesbian scene with Diana and the Leader (yes, the Leader is revealed to be another hot chick) in between those endless descriptions of how hot Emma is. By the time the Zedti are finally introduced, we're hoping for something intelligent. Instead, we get half-assed communists. See, the Visitors were always intended to be allegorical Nazis. (with a hefty side helping of the Hammer of Symbolism) Thus it would be reasonable to assume that their mysterious enemy would be allegorical Soviets, thus making them "bad" without being as "BAD" as the Vistors. Well, they're an insectoid-humanoid race who have sent three scouts to ally with the Resistance (and yes, the two female scouts are insanely hot), and their race has a hive mentality, so yes, someone compares them to communists. Johnson does one clever thing with the Zedti; he doesn't write them as genocidal monsters like the Visitors, but instead a utiltarian species looking out for its own survival above all. So they have no problem destroying the Earth to save themselves, but they feel bad about it, so they're willing to wait to see if the Resistance can stop the Visitor's secret weapon. Hey, I've got to look for the positive in this kindling where I can.
I was also at least hoping for a clever update for the "post 9/11 world." There are a few clever touches; the novel begins 20 years after the original, so one of the first images the reader is presented with is an empty San Francisco Bay, since the Visitors are stealing all the water. Johnson takes a few swings at political correctness, by having the Visitors, their true reptilian natures now publically known, continue to wear their human disguises so as not to "offend humans," and by having the Visitor Youth (sound familiar?) called Teammates. A plotline begun in the original, when a human girl and Visitor man got freaky and she got knocked up with God knows what, was horribly resolved in the sequel miniseries and the weekly series; here Johnson doesn't revisit those characters, but invents a new caste of halfbreeds who are the lowest on the totem pole in this alternate world. I didn't get why all the characters had cell phones and pocket video players. Wouldn't those devices not exist in a world where science is completely suppressed? However, it's when Johnson actually tries to comment on the 9/11 world, rather than simply making a WWII allegory relevant to a modern audience, where the novel falls short. In the novel, there are Visitor signs everywhere bearing slogans like "If you see something, report it!) (sound familiar?), and when the Leader finally appears, she makes a grand speech encouraging a preemptive military strike against another alien race because they have weapons of mass destruction (sound familiar?) Then this other alien race shows up and helps to defeat the evil alien dictators and promises to wait around to help with the transition (sound familiar?) There's one Teammate character, a nasty, foul-tempered chunky girl, who bullies humans and halfbreeds alike and is completely gung-ho about the military; she was such an obvious "allegory" for the female solider involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal that Johnson shouldn't have even bothered making up a name. So the novel ends with the water returning to Earth, and the Resistance heroes watching a Zedti ship land with a mix of trepidation, uneasiness, and possible hope. If you're a fan, let me save you: the Visitor's enemy, the Zedti, are insectoid humanoids and in the end help the Resistance defeat the Visitors, calling off their own attack, and don't seem to have any ulterior motives, although one never knows. There, now you don't have to read it.
Vantage Point: This movie is very simple:
1. Dennis Quaid is indestructible. So is Dennis Quaid's car.
2. You can keep up with Secret Service agents in a miles-long foot chase, despite being overweight and out of shape, as long as you're Forrest Whitaker.
3. Movies that prominently feature Sigourney Weaver in the trailer are not neccessarily telling the truth.
4. It is possible for a Secret Service agent to secretly be a terrorist, as long as it's Matthew Fox, aka Jack from Lost.
5. When Secret Service agents save the President, they take his hand, look deeply into his eyes, and say "Mr. President, I've got you."
6. When William Hurt as the President is taken hostage by terrorists, he grabs a pipe and attacks the female terrorist rather than the male driver, causing the van to crash and is knocked out again. If Harrison Ford had played the President, he would have simply said "Get off my plane!" and kicked them all the way back to the desert.
7. Presenting different character's points of view is clever when it's called Rashomon. Stopping a movie every 15 minutes and rewinding it to show the same 15 minutes over again from a different perspective with some new footage is not Rashomon.
Justice League: The New Frontier: I was actually looking forward to this one. I feel about this movie the way W.B. Yeats felt about fighting for the British against the Germans in WWI: "Those that I fight I do not hate/Those that I guard I do not love." It wasn't terrible or awful, merely disappointing. The problem is not so much the subtractions that the film makes from the original comics (although they don't help) as it is the lack of anything resembling story flow. The stills here follow the panels of the comic so closely and rigidly that the result is less Sin City and more 1960s Marvel superhero cartoon. The opening scene with the Losers on Monster Island is scrapped in favor of an expository soliloquy from The Centre (although the scene where a hero jumps into the mouth of a T-rex, grenades in hand, does appear). The Challengers of the Unknown, Task Force X, and John Henry (as well as Green Arrow and Adam Strange) are reduced to background cameos. Most of the story itself is intact, except for the beginning; that's presented as a poorly-done still motion sequence during the credits. I guess someone had a hangover during Exposition 101. Once the movie gets past that, it's not so bad. All the key scenes and plot points are there - and that's the problem. There's no proper flow to it, and at no time does the movie ever feel organic, something at which the comic actually excelled. As far as the casting goes, Lucy Lawless and Neil Patrick Harris are great choices for respectively Wonder Woman and the Flash, while Kyle McLachlan, David Boreanaz, and Miguel Ferrer are decent as Superman, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter. I really didn't care for Jeremy Sisto's Batman, however. It makes me wonder why they would go to the length of casting film and TV stars when it would probably be cheaper, and definitely more fitting for the movie, to use the voice actors from the Batman, Superman and Justice League cartoons. I did, however, like that Batman was shown fighting the Centre at the end; his absence in the final battle is probably the one thing I don't like about the comic. By the time it's all over, clocking in at only 75 minutes, I feel like I should just watched The New Frontier's Greatest Hits, rather than a well-done adaptation of the comic. Even the closing sequence, a montage of the beginnings of the Silver Age set to JFK's New Frontier speech, fails to resonate; it packed more punch when the text of the speech was timed to the images rather than a haphazard montage set to audio of the actual speech.
First the book was beset by constant delays, but upon its release, it took several trips to various Borders and Barnes & Nobles before I finally found a copy. Now, it's an entertaining read, but also a great disappointment, for a fan of the original miniseries. Most of the original heroes and villains, including Julie, Mike, Willy, Harmony, Martin, Robert, and Diana are present and play at least prominent roles; we find out what happened to the old lady Resistance fighter Ruby (which oddly enough closely mirrors what happened to her in the sequel V: The Final Battle), and there's a subtle reference as to the ultimate fate of the Visitor Commander John (played by George Costanza's boss in the original!). There's even a quick explanation as to whatever became of Julie's fiancee from the original. The story does not, however, include appearances by, or at least explanations of what happened to, major characters such as Elias and Robin, or even more minor figures like Caleb and Barbara. There's some quick thing about a "purge of the Resistance in the late 90s" which seems to be an all-purpose answer to the age-old "Whatever happened to. . .?" To not include Elias is a real insult to the fans. Characters who met their fate in V: The Final Battle, such as Daniel, Eleanor and Brian, who would still be alive in this "new continuity" (Ever notice of much of that there seems to be these days?) are presumably dead. There are a whole bunch of new characters in this, mostly teenagers, who were born after the beginning of the Visitor occupation (hence the title), and some, such as Blue and Nathan, are obvious replacements for vanished fan favorites. Perhaps the worst casualty is Ham Tyler, one of the most popular V characters (played by Michael Ironside, America's No. 1 crap movie tough guy), who was not introduced until the sequel, and as such, does not exist in Kenneth Johnson's new vision.
Now, a rational person could overlook this if the story was well-written. It isn't. Between the pacing of the story and the constant "quick-cuts," it seems that Johnson just took a screenplay he had written and did a quick prose rewrite. He could have at least done a good job with that, but no; instead, he had to waste his time endlessly describing how hot the new character Emma is (she's a half-black, half-white pop singer with an awesome cocoa body whom everyone, male and female, wants to bang). We get it, Ken - you want to fuck Beyonce. He makes sure to include at least one lesbian scene with Diana and the Leader (yes, the Leader is revealed to be another hot chick) in between those endless descriptions of how hot Emma is. By the time the Zedti are finally introduced, we're hoping for something intelligent. Instead, we get half-assed communists. See, the Visitors were always intended to be allegorical Nazis. (with a hefty side helping of the Hammer of Symbolism) Thus it would be reasonable to assume that their mysterious enemy would be allegorical Soviets, thus making them "bad" without being as "BAD" as the Vistors. Well, they're an insectoid-humanoid race who have sent three scouts to ally with the Resistance (and yes, the two female scouts are insanely hot), and their race has a hive mentality, so yes, someone compares them to communists. Johnson does one clever thing with the Zedti; he doesn't write them as genocidal monsters like the Visitors, but instead a utiltarian species looking out for its own survival above all. So they have no problem destroying the Earth to save themselves, but they feel bad about it, so they're willing to wait to see if the Resistance can stop the Visitor's secret weapon. Hey, I've got to look for the positive in this kindling where I can.
I was also at least hoping for a clever update for the "post 9/11 world." There are a few clever touches; the novel begins 20 years after the original, so one of the first images the reader is presented with is an empty San Francisco Bay, since the Visitors are stealing all the water. Johnson takes a few swings at political correctness, by having the Visitors, their true reptilian natures now publically known, continue to wear their human disguises so as not to "offend humans," and by having the Visitor Youth (sound familiar?) called Teammates. A plotline begun in the original, when a human girl and Visitor man got freaky and she got knocked up with God knows what, was horribly resolved in the sequel miniseries and the weekly series; here Johnson doesn't revisit those characters, but invents a new caste of halfbreeds who are the lowest on the totem pole in this alternate world. I didn't get why all the characters had cell phones and pocket video players. Wouldn't those devices not exist in a world where science is completely suppressed? However, it's when Johnson actually tries to comment on the 9/11 world, rather than simply making a WWII allegory relevant to a modern audience, where the novel falls short. In the novel, there are Visitor signs everywhere bearing slogans like "If you see something, report it!) (sound familiar?), and when the Leader finally appears, she makes a grand speech encouraging a preemptive military strike against another alien race because they have weapons of mass destruction (sound familiar?) Then this other alien race shows up and helps to defeat the evil alien dictators and promises to wait around to help with the transition (sound familiar?) There's one Teammate character, a nasty, foul-tempered chunky girl, who bullies humans and halfbreeds alike and is completely gung-ho about the military; she was such an obvious "allegory" for the female solider involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal that Johnson shouldn't have even bothered making up a name. So the novel ends with the water returning to Earth, and the Resistance heroes watching a Zedti ship land with a mix of trepidation, uneasiness, and possible hope. If you're a fan, let me save you: the Visitor's enemy, the Zedti, are insectoid humanoids and in the end help the Resistance defeat the Visitors, calling off their own attack, and don't seem to have any ulterior motives, although one never knows. There, now you don't have to read it.
Vantage Point: This movie is very simple:
1. Dennis Quaid is indestructible. So is Dennis Quaid's car.
2. You can keep up with Secret Service agents in a miles-long foot chase, despite being overweight and out of shape, as long as you're Forrest Whitaker.
3. Movies that prominently feature Sigourney Weaver in the trailer are not neccessarily telling the truth.
4. It is possible for a Secret Service agent to secretly be a terrorist, as long as it's Matthew Fox, aka Jack from Lost.
5. When Secret Service agents save the President, they take his hand, look deeply into his eyes, and say "Mr. President, I've got you."
6. When William Hurt as the President is taken hostage by terrorists, he grabs a pipe and attacks the female terrorist rather than the male driver, causing the van to crash and is knocked out again. If Harrison Ford had played the President, he would have simply said "Get off my plane!" and kicked them all the way back to the desert.
7. Presenting different character's points of view is clever when it's called Rashomon. Stopping a movie every 15 minutes and rewinding it to show the same 15 minutes over again from a different perspective with some new footage is not Rashomon.
Justice League: The New Frontier: I was actually looking forward to this one. I feel about this movie the way W.B. Yeats felt about fighting for the British against the Germans in WWI: "Those that I fight I do not hate/Those that I guard I do not love." It wasn't terrible or awful, merely disappointing. The problem is not so much the subtractions that the film makes from the original comics (although they don't help) as it is the lack of anything resembling story flow. The stills here follow the panels of the comic so closely and rigidly that the result is less Sin City and more 1960s Marvel superhero cartoon. The opening scene with the Losers on Monster Island is scrapped in favor of an expository soliloquy from The Centre (although the scene where a hero jumps into the mouth of a T-rex, grenades in hand, does appear). The Challengers of the Unknown, Task Force X, and John Henry (as well as Green Arrow and Adam Strange) are reduced to background cameos. Most of the story itself is intact, except for the beginning; that's presented as a poorly-done still motion sequence during the credits. I guess someone had a hangover during Exposition 101. Once the movie gets past that, it's not so bad. All the key scenes and plot points are there - and that's the problem. There's no proper flow to it, and at no time does the movie ever feel organic, something at which the comic actually excelled. As far as the casting goes, Lucy Lawless and Neil Patrick Harris are great choices for respectively Wonder Woman and the Flash, while Kyle McLachlan, David Boreanaz, and Miguel Ferrer are decent as Superman, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter. I really didn't care for Jeremy Sisto's Batman, however. It makes me wonder why they would go to the length of casting film and TV stars when it would probably be cheaper, and definitely more fitting for the movie, to use the voice actors from the Batman, Superman and Justice League cartoons. I did, however, like that Batman was shown fighting the Centre at the end; his absence in the final battle is probably the one thing I don't like about the comic. By the time it's all over, clocking in at only 75 minutes, I feel like I should just watched The New Frontier's Greatest Hits, rather than a well-done adaptation of the comic. Even the closing sequence, a montage of the beginnings of the Silver Age set to JFK's New Frontier speech, fails to resonate; it packed more punch when the text of the speech was timed to the images rather than a haphazard montage set to audio of the actual speech.