Two Observations on Storytelling: Stephen King and “Unforgotten”

Two things struck me this week about the power of storytelling and the ability to weave a good tale. The first is not spoilerific—I haven’t finished the novel yet—while the second is very spoiler-heavy. Be warned.

Stephen King’s Billy Summers

I started King’s new novel this week. I’m listening to the audiobook from my local library via the awesome Libby app (y’all’ve got that app, right?). I was an avid reader of King’s novels from about 1987 (when I graduated from high school and entered college) all the way through the late 1990s and into the early 2000s. If he wrote a book, I read it or listened to it.

Somewhen over the 2010s, however, I started slowing. He didn’t, but I did. Don’t really have a reason. It just happened. In fact, the last King book I can remember listening to was Joyland. 

When Billy Summers was published, I decided to give it a try. In the story, Billy Summers is a former sniper now hired killer. He poses as a writer and, knowing those folks who hired him are monitoring his activity on the MacBook they supplied him, Billy begins to write his memoirs.

As soon as I heard that, I rolled my eyes. “Yet another story within a story thing from Stephen King? Really?”

Really.

It’s a thing King has done more than once. It’s particularly effective in Misery, but there are other examples. In that book, the font changed to indicate the story-within-the-story. In the audio of Billy Summers, narrator Paul Sparks slightly changes his voice so you can tell what part of the novel you are listening to.

Being an audiobook, yes, I can fast-forward but I would have no way of knowing when the ‘autobiography’ part stopped and the ‘Billy Summers’ part began. So, I did what the author wanted me to do: I listened.

And dang if the story-within-the-story part became almost as compelling as the main novel. There are whole sections of the story-within-the-story and I found myself really getting into that part. Then it would stop and I’d be reminded about the main story.

As if anyone ever needed any more examples of how good a storyteller Stephen King is, I’ll go ahead and submit this one into evidence. Like his stories or not, think they might be too long or not, you cannot dispute Stephen King is a modern master of the writing craft. I have known that ever since I read my first King novel—Pet Semetary—but I just needed a reminder. I got one this week.

The Ending of Unforgotten, Season 4

[Spoilers, folks]

Here in American, Masterpiece aired episode 6, the finale of Unforgotten, season 4, last Sunday. I’ve written about this BBC series before (how season 4’s opening episode instantly grabbed me) but season 4 did a couple of remarkable things for me.

One involved actor Andy Nyman. Before Unforgotten, I only knew Nyman as the comedic actor he is in Death at a Funeral. He is hilarious in that 2007 Frank Oz film and it took a little bit of time in episode 1 not to think of that funny character every time he appeared on screen. 

But by the finale, I earned a whole new respect for his acting prowess. He was wonderful, nuanced, and my favorite actor outside of the core group.

Speaking of the core group, Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaska play partner who solve cold cases. I’ve written about how much they are a breath of fresh air in detective shows. They’re not raging alcoholics or any of the usual tropes we see in TV cop shows. They are just normal people doing a dirty job the best that they can. They respect each other, but there’s not a hint of “will they or won’t they?’ in their relationship. They are friends and partners who deeply care for a love one another.

So it came as quite a shock to my wife and I as we watched the final moments of episode 5 when Walker’s character, Cassie Stuart, was driving and someone broadsided her car. In the previews of episode 6, we saw her in a hospital bed and all the other characters reacting to the news. We looked at each other and, other than wondering which of the suspects did the deed, wondered how Cassie was going to recover.

Spoiler alert: she didn’t. The character died. 

For older shows (Unforgotten aired on the BBC earlier this year), I do not do any research while I’m watching for the first time. News items can ruin big things that way. So I had no way of knowing what was coming.

It’s not every day when a main character is killed off on a popular TV show. I don’t know the ins and outs of Walker’s contract or any behind-the-scenes stuff so I don’t know why she left. But her leaving enabled a show that features normal people doing a troubling job the opportunity to show how those same normal character deal with the death of a friend and partner and commanding officer. It was stellar. 

The director also made a nice storytelling technique as well: for almost the entire last episode, Walker only appeared in the hospital bed. Only toward the end did we get to see Cassie leave the voice mail her father listens to over and over again, giving us viewers one last look at a beloved character.

And we also got a moving soliloquy from Bhaska’s Sunny. Just as the shock of Cassie’s passing took my breath away, Sunny’s little speech opened the waterworks.

Great storytelling.

The Freedom to Change: The Haunting of Bly Manor

Two years ago, Mike Flanagan delivered The Haunting of Hill House, a horror show with a great emotional center I never saw coming. Now, in 2020, we get a spiritual sequel in Bly Manor, and Flanagan has pulled off a wonderful feat: daring to be different.

Unlike Hill House, I kind of predicted Bly Manor would have a nice emotional core. In that, I wasn’t disappointed. It was exactly that and more. But where Hill House was a horror show—complete with mystery and jump scares—Bly Manor dares to be less a horror show but more like an eerie tale of menace.

Loosely based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw—a book I’ve never read—Bly Manor is narrated in the present day by Carla Gugino to a small group of people. She tells the story of Danielle Clayton, a young woman who, in 1987, takes a job as the live-in nanny/teacher for a pair of children—Miles and Flora—at Bly Manor, tucked away in the English countryside. Rounding out the small group is the housekeeper (Hannah), the chef (Owen), and the gardener (Jamie).

Oh, and the ghosts.

That’s not a spoiler. It’s what you’d expect from a story taking place in a giant manor house. But who the ghosts are and why they’re there, that’s the mystery.

I’ll admit I haven’t watched Hill House since it debut in 2018 so I cannot remember all the intricacies. But I do remember some of the jump scares and genuinely terrifying moments. I expected that here as well.

Flanagan, however, had a different idea. Instead of manufacturing simple scares just to make viewers jump, he crafted a well-told story over nine episodes (one less than Hill House). The story’s leaner and swifter, pulling you along nicely.

We get a good dose of flashbacks and present-day action doled out in just big enough scoops to make the mystery tantalizing. My wife had recently see a filmed version of The Turn of the Screw so she knew a few plot points going in, but I didn’t. All I did was let the story wash over me.

The actors were stellar. A few of them—Henry Thomas, Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and Kate Siegel—also starred in Hill House. It was good to see them again. But the newcomers were just as good. Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, who plays Miles, can turn from innocent child into something else on a dime. That was unnerving. Another standout T'Nia Miller who played Hannah the housekeeper. There was always something buried just underneath her skin, and Miller was outstanding at her portrayal, especially episode five. And the scenes where she and Rahul Kohli (who played Owen the chef) interacted were very good.

It was probably around episode three or four that I realized Flanagan was doing something different with this new show. It wasn’t as scary. True, there was a palpable sense of foreboding, but not scary. Initially, I wanted the scares, but then I was content to watch the show he made. The longer the show went on and I finally noted what Flanagan had done, the more impressed by it I was.

Sure, Bly Manor could easily have just been Hill House 2 with even more jump scares and more lurid stuff, but that’s not what he did. He told a different kind of story, and I’m really glad he did. It let us viewers know that for however long he creates stories like this, they won’t just be cookie-cutter shows. They will be distinct stories with a similar, but unique style.

And it makes me even more excited to see what he comes up with next.

The Game of Thrones Finale

First off, I have enjoyed being a geek who has seen very little of this series. It just didn't do it for me. My wife enjoys it and, up until this month, always watched the shows via binging when HBO offered a week's worth of free programming. But for Mother's Day, I bought her HBO so she could watch the end live.

I actually sat in for most of the penultimate episode. I also watched most of the finale. I think by now, I've watched something like six or seven full episodes. With my wife's running commentary, I get caught up.

So, as an outsider and a storyteller, I've got a couple of thoughts about the finale.

Spoilers of course.

Peter Dinklage is Incredible

You know that. I already knew that. From what I've seen in the GOT episodes I've watched and his other non-GOT material, I've known the man could act. But his acting abilities and the role of Tyrion were paired perfectly. His anguish at locating his siblings' bodies in the rubble and, despite all that's occurred, still weeping for them. He can convey more emotion by the movement of his eyes than many actors can with a long soliloquy. I very much enjoyed him last night, especially in his speech in which he puts forth the idea of an elected king. And I love the idea that they made Bran the Broken the king even though he didn't want to. A little like America's own George Washington, a man who accepted responsibility because it was his duty. Tyrion, in his own way, was the one who kind of was the leader of that little group, and gave the power to Bran. And then accepted the role of The Hand because it was his duty. Powerful stuff.

I'm not sure how many Emmys he's won for this role, but he needs another.

The Iron Throne

Even from the outside looking in I've known about the Iron Throne for eight years. It's jumped out of the show and become its own thing. Heck, there was even a replica here in Houston for Comicpalooza.

But to have the dragon melt it? Boy, was that a brave choice. I expected to have the last scene of this show be whomever sitting down on the throne. Nope. A brave choice that led to something better.

The Actual Ending

Over the years, all my favorite shows end. Some, like Friends, have the characters break up and leave the confines of the familiar apartment or neighborhood bar. An actual ending.

But I've become more of a fan of how GOT ended last night. Just like with The Big Bang Theory, you know life will go on, but we viewers won't be around to see them. Tyrion at the head of the table, discussing the business of the kingdom. His tone was simultaneously hopeful, bored, and light. Jon Snow going off with those people (I've forgot the names but my wife tells me they are the people of his dead wife) to make a new life. The  one young lady [daughter of someone...hang on: let me look her up. Arya!] sailing off on the ship to see what's west of Westeros. That's adventure! That's hope.

As a storyteller, I really enjoyed that kind of ending.

You Can Find Great Story Structure Anywhere: Scooby Doo, Mystery Incorporated

One of my favorite modern cartoons was Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated. The show, which ran for two sporadic seasons, came at the perfect time for my boy, who had just discovered the original series and enjoyed it. But Mystery Inc. was something different. Not only did it issue meta commentary on the original series, it offered an excellent example of ongoing storytelling amid ‘monster of the week’ episodes.

If you breakdown just the first episode, you can see how the scenes were actually structured. Yeah, it’s the curse of a writer always to be mindful of how stories are constructed.

Effortlessly, scenes relayed not only the backstory and current situation of our five heroes—Fred, Velma, Daphne, Shaggy, and Scooby—but also subplots and main plots. Sure, it’s a cartoon, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be built like a movie.

And this episode was. The precise moment I realized it was when Velma was about to tell Scooby about her relationship with Shaggy—still not one of my favorite aspects of the show, but I understand why the writers inserted this aspect into the modern version—when the monster attacks the Mystery Machine. Thus, subplot averted for main plot. This subplot re-emerges one more time and then is tabled until the next episode. Ditto for the Daphne/Fred subplot.

The coolest thing is one of the clues. Daphne finds a key that is also a locket. Inside, there is a photo of a couple. She can’t figure out what it means to *this* episode until the end when the Bad Guy reveals he’s never seen it before.

But Fred’s dad, the mayor, has. The last scene is the gang at a local radio station and they get a call. A spooky voice says “You don’t know what you’ve uncovered: the truth of the curse of Crystal Cove.” When asked who the caller is, he identifies himself as Mister E. “And the real mystery is about to begin.” And the episode ends.

Boom! Now you’ve got an entire season’s worth of storytelling.

I really loved this show. Season 1 was pretty consistent in terms of airing, but Season 2 was sporadic. The casting was great. Patrick Warburton is the sheriff.  Each set of parents were an older reflection of the each gang member. Shaggy’s dad was voiced by Casey Kasum, the original Shaggy. The look, the feel, the vibe of the entire series is excellent. And the series finale is mindblowingly good.

Anyway, just thought I’d share some writerly thoughts about the first episode, “Beware the Beast from Below” of Scooby Doo and remind you that you can find inspiration about writing everywhere.

Subverting Expectations aka A Writer's Defense of The Last Jedi

While Star Wars: The Last Jedi might not be a mystery or crime film, there is something we storytellers can learn from the kerfuffle that has arisen since the film’s release last week.

No matter the medium—books, TV, movies, comics—we consumers enjoy stories. And if the stories are serial in nature, many of us enjoy dissecting every detail to discern some greater meaning. One of my favorite things about watching the TV show “Lost” in real time was the water cooler chats the day after each episode aired. Me and my office pals discussed in great length every shred of evidence from the episode, crafting in our minds what a shot of a book might mean. Then, the following week or later in the series, we might get answers. Sometimes those answers matched our expectations; other times the answer were not what we had crafted in our minds.

But we were not the storytellers. We were the consumers. We read or watch what the creators create.

When it comes to genre, certain tropes come along for the ride. If you’re reading an Agatha Christie mystery, you know you’ll get interesting characters, all the clues, all the evidence, and a chance to solve the mystery before or alongside her detective, be it Poirot or Marple. If you are reading an Elmore Leonard novel, you know you’ll get snappy dialogue and criminals who are self-aware. If you’re reading a western, you’re going to get a gunslinger, a corrupt cattle baron, a beautiful woman, and a horse with some character. If you’re watching a rom-com, you know you’ll get the charming leads, their funny fiends, and a situation that’ll put them together.

Creators of these kinds of stories know this and plan accordingly. As a beginning writer, we are all instructed to know the genre in which we’re writing and put in the tropes readers expect. We call them obligatory scenes. Take romance. Here are the must-have scenes in any romance: the leads are introduced separately, the leads meet, the leads solve a problem together, a situation arises in which one lead questions the relationship, the break-up scene, the realization scene, and the getting-back-together scene. It’s a roadmap readers and viewers come to expect, but it’s a gifted creator who can play with those tropes and present them in a fresh way, maybe even subverting audience expectations along the way.

Star Wars is not only a science fiction series (with all of those tropes) but it brings in its own set of tropes unique to the franchise. All those tropes were in the first movie, now forty years old. You know them because you’ve absorbed them for four decades. Farm boy with dreams of adventure has adventure land in his lap. Evil galactic empire after a small band of rebels personified in a princess. Lovable rogues who help the farm boy. Wise mentor who sacrifices himself so farm boy can escape. The plucky band of rebels attacks the “small moon” of the Empire’s base and destroys it. And, taking a cue from the second film, a big revelation that the bad guy is actually the farm boy’s dad.

What?!

Back in the early 80s, we spent three years wondering if Vader spoke the truth. Some of my friends didn’t think it was possible; others thought it was the truth. Either way, when Return of the Jedi debuted, we got our answers directly from George Lucas’s movie. I suspect there was some grousing from a certain sector of fandom, but there it was, out in the open.

Up until 2017, we had seven numbered Star Wars movies and one off-shoot. All but one (Empire) arguably played from the exact same playbook. Every movie showed a big thing to destroy, a lightsaber battle, lovable rogues, earnest heroes, bad villains, and robots that made us laugh. Like almost every Perry Mason TV show episode, the Star Wars movies all but lulled us into a routine. As good as Erle Stanley Gardner was as a writer, when you picked up a Perry Mason novel or tuned in to the TV show, you knew exactly what was going to happen. There is a certain comfort in that knowledge. I understand it, but every now and then, isn’t it more interesting to have a creator take a left turn when you were convinced, through repetition and constant reinforcement, the creator was going to take a right turn?

Now comes Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Viewers have had two years to ruminate over all the details of The Force Awakens. I think most of us did exactly the same thing when we saw that 2015 film: put the new characters into the positions of the legacy characters. Rey was the new Luke, Poe was the new Han, Finn was the new Leia (more or less), Snoke was the new Emperor, and Ren was the new Vader. After watching that movie, we were convinced we knew exactly how The Last Jedi was going to play out because we had seen it all before.

But writer/director Rian Johnson did something we writer/creators should have the guts to do every now and then: show us something different.

(Spoilers start here, by the way.)

If Johnson had simply remade The Empire Strikes Back with The Last Jedi, complete with a bunch of shots we fans had been conditioned to expect, most of us might have been happy, or at least comforted. Oh, there’s Luke’s X-Wing under water? Well, then, we expect to see Luke lift the craft out of the water just like he couldn’t do in Empire. Johnson likely considered it and then made a different choice and likely for a specific reason: Luke’s a Jedi Master. Of course he can lift an X-Wing. Why do we need to see it? Much speculation was made about Rey’s parentage. Based on the past movies and the internal Star Wars tropes, she just had to be Luke’s daughter or Kenobi’s granddaughter or something like that. Johnson likely thought long and hard and realized there was a better choice to be made. He made it.

And, lest we forget, Disney signed off on it. Disney: one of the biggest trope machines on the planet, but a company who is willing to change things up every now and then (Wall-E, Up, Inside Out, Ratatouille).

So Star Wars fans are up in arms that the latest movie didn’t go along with the established Star Wars pattern. What did they get instead?

Well, they got a story that did not conform to established patterns. Isn’t that a good thing? Wouldn’t you have liked to have seen Perry Mason lose, at least once? We got a movie from a gifted writer who made the conscious choice to go against expectations and not service every whim of the fans. We got a refreshing film from a director with a certain point of view. Arguably, we got the most unique Star Wars film since Empire.

In short, Rian Johnson subverted viewers’ expectations.

And I loved it.

I have always contended that the best time to be a Star Wars fan was from 1977-1980. You see, up until Vader revealed himself to be Luke’s father, the Star Wars galaxy was wide open with thousands of stories to tell. Afterwards, it’s merely a family saga. The galaxy got very, very small.

Luke Skywalker goes to great lengths to liken the Force as not belonging to just the Jedi but to everyone in the galaxy. I think the negative reactions to the film are largely from a cadre of fans who think Star Wars is theirs and theirs alone. Every movie since the original trilogy has been made for the die-hard Star Wars fan, complete with callbacks that only we’d know.

The Last Jedi, with writer/director Rian Johnson, has gone to great lengths to shed the franchise from many of the shackles it has carried through the decades. It was a brave choice he made to write a movie that went against almost all the audience expectations, but how neat is it to leave the theater not really knowing how Episode IX will play out.

It’s refreshing.

The galaxy is, once again, wide open.

In Defense of "John Carter"

“John Carter” is a very good film, not as bad as many critics have said, provided you know one thing: How To Have Fun.

To understand this essay, you have to understand where I come from and the type of viewer and reader I am. “A Princess of Mars,” Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first Mars book—first book period (!)—and the basis for the new movie, is one of the very few things that can literally transport me back to that glorious time in my life in the late 70s halo of those immediate post-Star Wars years where I learned about science fiction. While I cannot say with certainty that the John Carter books were my first literary SF, they were among the first. I re-read “Princess” a couple of years ago and found that the tale still held sway over my imagination despite my more adult observations on the technical proficiency of ERB’s writing style. In preparation for the new movie, my SF book club agreed to read the first two novels of the series (the second being The Gods of Mars), watch the movie, and then retire to a nearby restaurant and discuss.

As to the type of reader and viewer I am, let’s just say that I thoroughly enjoy being entertained. When it comes to TV cop shows, I can enjoy “The Wire” and “CSI: Miami” for what each of them are. CSI: Miami will never win over critics the way The Wire has, but I often have more fun with Horatio Caine and company versus McNulty and his pals. I was completely engrossed by “The Dark Knight” back in 2008 but also really dug the animated “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” released the same year. For another example, I am a proud member of the Star Wars Generation, a kid when it was released. As an adult, I was jazzed to see the new movies, yet left the theater after Episode I and Episode II having to justify many aspects of those movies. Of the six Star Wars movies made, only one is great, one is very good, and the rest are all muddled together. All this is to say that, while I don’t often wear my critical hat every time a watch or read something, I am no drone for properties and characters and universes I enjoy.

Which brings me to John Carter. I read no spoilers ahead of time. The older I’ve gotten, the more I prefer to be surprised in the movie theater rather than a grainy YouTube video or geekboy script breakdown published somewhere on the web. I knew those in control of the subject matter, namely Andrew Stanton, Michael Chabon, and Disney, among others. Stanton’s work with Pixar is magnificent, Chabon’s novels and mastery of the English language are often sublime, and I love Disney stuff. That Chabon and Stanton grew up loving the Barsoom (i.e., Mars) books and were in charge of the story left me no worries that they would shepherd the film with loving detail. I trusted in them, and, frankly, they did not let me down.

But I am a different type of viewer than your average viewer. I knew the material. In fulfilling my obligation to my book club (read the first two novels), I became so engrossed in the characters and landscape of Burroughs’s imagination that I have, to date, completed the first four novels and am reading the fifth. I pulled my old issues of the 1970s-era John Carter comics published by Marvel and am re-reading them. I’ve even bought the new anthology edited by John Joseph Adams, Under the Moons of Mars, new stories inspired by Barsoom. Sure, the books are laced with wild coincidences, pulpy writing, and outlandish plot details. So? You could say the same about The Da Vinci Code and not a few of the Sherlock Holmes stories, too, and I liked them. A simple story told simply isn’t bad. What I wanted most to see was Burroughs’s imagination come alive on screen. And, in that, Stanton delivered more than I could ever have hoped for.

Burroughs populated his adventures with giant four-arms green fighting men (Tharks), giant ten-legged Martian “lions” (banths), giant flying crafts that “sail” the air (Barsoomian war ships), and giant, four-armed white apes. See a trend here? Burroughs’s world is over-sized, filled with wondrous creatures, fierce and noble races, vile villains, and amazing technology. The oft-used phrase “sensawonder,” an amalgamation of “sense of wonder,” permeates the very text of Burroughs’s books and comes alive in readers’ imaginations.

And they come truly to life in the new movie. The Tharks I had always pictured to be muscle-bound hulks, but in Stanton’s hands, they are aggressive yet elegant, beautiful almost. Gollem, in The Lord of the Rings, is my standard by which I measure how computer animated characters interact with human characters. The Tharks have joined him. I love the Tharks in this film! I always pictured the white apes to be vicious brutes, and in Stanton’s interpretation, they are larger and far worse than I’d thought possible. Woola, the calot, or Martian dog, was a ten-legged beast in the books with little personality other than loyalty. On screen, Woola is a joy to watch as he is both loyal and laugh-out-loud comic relief. The flying ships are large and graceful, but can pack enough firepower to destroy whole towns. Yes, they sound like ships from Star Wars: Episode I, but who cares. There are only so many ways you can make spaceships sound. I caught the reference, and then quickly moved it aside in my mind. I was having too much dang fun.

I’m very glad that Stanton and company kept the framing device. In both the book and the movie, a fictional version of Burroughs is entrusted with a manuscript written by Carter that tells of his exploits on Mars. From there, the epic of John Carter is revealed. One of my fellows thought the film should have begun with Carter waking up on Mars. I liked the back story (and the additions Stanton made, especially the ending) and considered it to give Carter a bit more emotional resonance. Where the literary Carter is a military man nearly incapable of *not* joining a fight, the film version of Carter is a qualified fighting man, buy one for whom violence has taken a toll. That still doesn’t mean it can’t be the butt of a joke. I was laughing out loud when I watched the scenes of Carter, on Earth, being captured by the Union cavalry.

For a century, certain images from the books have been stuck in the imaginations of readers. One of the dangers that a faces a film like “John Carter” boils down to this: will the filmmakers “see” the scene like the readers have seen it. From my point of view, they nailed it. More than once in the novels, Carter fights hoards of beasts, the carcasses piling up around him. Stanton got this pitch perfect. The flying ships are exotic yet real, steampunk-inspired, yet futuristic. Helium as a city is magnificent, regal, yet lived in, as befitting a dying planet. Sure, George Lucas made his Star Wars universe “lived in,”—a quality the newer films kind of lacked—but he was probably inspired by Barsoom.

The Acting

You don’t watch Star Wars for acting lessons. Ditto the Harry Potter films, the Twilight films, or any random superhero movie. True, great acting emerges, either in certain characters (Heath Ledger’s Joker), certain scenes (the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when Cedric dies), over the course of a movie/series (Sean Astin’s Sam in The Lord of the Rings), and, occasionally, in a computer-generated character (Gollem, Wall E, or Anton Ego from Ratatouille). But, like a Michael Crichton novel, you often only need to let an actor say the lines that needs saying and propel the plot forward.

That doesn’t mean that the actors cannot embody their lines with life and verve. Here, however, is the tale of a man lost, a stranger in a strange world. How would *you* feel if you woke up on another planet? For me, I never saw Taylor Kitsch in anything until I saw him as John Carter. That’s a benefit for me, for I didn’t have his Friday Nights Lights character to influence how I perceived his portrayal of Carter. Ditto for Lynn Collins, the actress who plays Dejah Thoris, the princess of Mars. They were tasked—burdened?—with bringing to life and personifying a century’s worth of reader imaginations, to say nothing of the scores of young men who dreamed that *they* welded Carter’s sword and rescued Dejah themselves. And they did a good job. Neither rose above the text and overpowered the film, but they were not subsumed by it either.

Of the two characters, Dejah got an update. When you read the original novels, you will note that, while Dejah did find herself in numerous instances of peril, she wasn’t some limp-wristed damsel who did nothing but scream. She helps Carter in more than one spot, paving the way for future heroines like Princess Leia and Ripley from “Alien.” In the new movie, Dejah is still a princess, but she’s also a scientist who is researching the ninth ray, the mystical ray that, could it only be harnessed, it could even the battlefield against Helium’s enemies. Oh, and she’s a great fighter, too. Oh, and she’s beautiful. The other members of my book club rolled their eyes over the fact that all three traits were rolled into one. I, frankly, had no problem with it. I like strong women. It leveled the playing field between Carter’s supernatural strength and Dejah’s brain.

The love story worked for me. As innumerable love stories on film have done, you have two opposing personalities discovering their love for each other but go to great pains to hide it. We knew, going in, that Carter would fall for Dejah. The fun in the movie, however, was how Dejah fell for Carter. Remember the movie version of The Bridges of Madison County (stay with me, here) and how Meryl Streep’s character kept stealing glances at Clint Eastwood? Same stuff here, but, for example, through the reflection of a Martian sword. Collins had her work cut out for her seeing that generations of young boys probably got quite excited when their imaginations filled in the figure of the mostly naked princess of Mars. She had to embody this famous heroine, give her brains and brawn, but also be beautiful at the same time. Pretty as she was, she won me over with her sly smiles at Carter’s fighting prowess and her growing respect, admiration, and the fact that she saw in Carter a kindred spirit. It is through her eyes that the loves manifests itself first, and it is in her heartbroken eyes we see Carter’s initial refusal to help. She did a great job. One reviewer commented that he’d like to see a movie featuring Dejah alone. While I would not go that far, I was thoroughly impressed by Collins and thought she carried more than her share of the film.

The Changes

Readers and critics could debate all day on the merits of filming all the events from A Princess of Mars. One critic who panned the film talked of Stanton’s slavish devotion to the source material. I think there is a fine line between slavishly creating something on the screen from printed material (Watchmen) or taking inspiration from a book and creating something that is, in effect, a hybrid. Readers in 1912 traveled with Carter throughout this basic travelogue of a book, having adventures along the way. In that year, the spectacle of Mars was pretty much enough to maintain interest. In 2012, we’ve sent spaceship to Mars itself, so we know the truth. We have a more sophisticated appreciation for storytelling and, frankly, expect more and different things from a movie. Stanton and Chabon, knowing this fact, reached the only logical conclusion: incorporate the best elements of the main book, throw in a few elements from the second, and make up some new stuff to satisfy the demands of the viewing public.

All in all, they succeeded. SPOILERS start here. The villains from The Gods of Mars—the Therns—are brought into this story. These immortal beings, lead by Matai Shang (Mark Strong) control the lives and events of mortal souls. They know the secret of the ninth ray on Mars—a source of great power—and give it to the human bad guy of the film (Dominic West’s Sab Than, Prince of Zodanga, the great rival of Dejah’s Helium) to help him rule. The Therns are shape-shifters, able to, in the blink of an eye, change form. Cool! This is not in the books, but it works here, and it enables Carter to do exactly what the first movie in a (potential) series needs to do: defeat the smaller bad guy but not the larger bad guy. Think about the end of the first Star Wars film: Vader lives, but the Death Star is destroyed. You know he’s going to bring back the big guns, but that’s in the next movie.

Teleportation. In the books, Carter uses astral projection to get to Mars. Here, in the movie, it’s a combination of that plus a technological component. His body remains here on Earth while a living, breathing copy of him emerges on Mars. This concept sets up the great epilogue, a point I’m not spoiling here. I really liked that it was a scientific means of getting Carter to Mars, and, by having to possess an actual artifact, gave Carter a nice MacGuffin to chase.

The Criticisms

Yes, I have some. Earlier I mentioned how Stanton and Chabon picked the best parts of the first two books and put them in this movie. It must have been a tremendously fun exercise, much like the fun Anthony Horowitz must have experienced when he penned the new Sherlock Holmes novel, The House of Silk (2011). Think about it: you get to assemble what amounts to a mix tape of your favorite scenes. The one problem I have is that they may have picked too many.

Take, for example, a hallmark of Burroughs’s tales: the arena fight. I’ve forgotten how many exist in the novels, but it’s a lot. Likely the writers knew that they wanted to include one in the film and chose a rather awkward time for it. Sure, it set up the Braveheart-like visuals of Carter splattered with blue blood, but even I kind of shifted in my seat when I realized that Carter was captured yet again. But, I quickly reminded myself of the books, where Carter and his friends always get captured. Then, of course, in the film, you get the arena scene and the giant apes. Yes, I thought of Star Wars: Episode II at the start of the scene (and Spartacus and Ben Hur and Gladiator)…and quickly put it out of my mind. Arena battles are numerous in films and mythology. There are only a few ways to do them. And the way Carter did it was thrilling. Dude, he swung a giant bolder and smashed the head of a giant white ape! Yeah!

The Voice of Barsoom. In the books, Carter learns the one language of Mars the old fashioned way: by hearing it and, bit by bit, understanding it. In the movie, there is a magical liquid that the Tharks give their young and that one of the Tharkian women in charge of Carter gives the Earthman. Lo and behold, he now speaks their language. It’s a simple and straightforward way to get all the characters speaking the same language in the blink of a scene, but it’s a little eye rolling.

There are other minor criticisms, but I’d be throwing pebbles at a boulder. Who cares, really? I had a blast with the film.

Summary

If I had to sum up my thoughts into one word, it might be “thankfulness.” I’m thankful that Stanton, Chabon, and everyone involved were devoted to making a fun, entertaining, fun, faithful, fun, and exciting movie experience. I’m thankful that they played it straight with their film, not like the cheesy Flash Gordon movie of 1980. I’m thankful that they reminded us that jaded, post-modern takes on historical or old ideas need not be the only way to update old material. I’m thankful that Stanton hired Michael Giacchino who composed a superb soundtrack that evoked not only the thrilling soundtracks of Hollywood’s days gone by with the bombast of fight scenes, but also the ethereal, otherworldly music that shines and yet lovingly caresses the actors on screen during the quieter moments. (I’m thinking of that final episode of “Lost” and the openings of “Star Trek” and “Up” where his music nearly single-handedly brought tears to my eyes. That gravitas is present here, too.) I’m thankful for Disney who put up the money to make a giant pet project that millions of readers and viewers adore, no matter the final financial outcome. I’m thankful that movies like this are still being made, movies that entertain and thrill with no other ulterior motive than that. I’m thankful that there are moments in this movie where I wanted to stand up and cheer, where chills coursed over my arms, where my jaw dropped at the sheer size of the spectacle before me, and whose closing scene had me grinning like the eleven year old that I still am when it comes to this material.

I loved this movie for what it is: the best dang movie experienced I’ve seen in a long, long time. There are formidable movies that have planted their flags and laid claim to moments in my life, from childhood to adulthood: Star Wars, Superman, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Amadeus, Back to the Future, Die Hard, Batman (1989), Dead Poet’s Society, When Harry Met Sally, The Fellowship of the Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Return of the King, Ratatouille, The Dark Knight, Toy Story 3, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. John Carter of Mars has landed with this company.

I loved this movie and I want to return to this universe. If, however, a sequel is never made, I will still cherish this film, these books, and this universe. If a movie sequel is never made, I implore Chabon and Stanton to write the novel. I want to know the next chapter in this new yet familiar story. It’s a long shot in these immediate days after the premiere, but there exists hope, and hope, according to John Carter, is enough.

"Toy Story 3" and Characters

Over on today's post at Do Some Damage, I wax poetic and emotionally about "Toy Story 3" and the place characters have in storytelling. Check it out.