I said back in my Catching Fire review that they should have done the trilogy as a pentalogy (that goes for the books as well), and Mockingjay, Pt. 1, confirms my opinion on it. It splits the narrative very neatly, at exactly the point where the second story in the novel begins. The rhythm is exactly right.
Not everything is exactly right. Or wrong. I'm left with some concerns about the set-up for Mockingjay, pt. 2, but on the whole, this is a strong entry in the series. Of course it doesn't stand alone -- it ends on a cliffhanger -- but if you go to something where "Part One" is in the title, you don't really have much ground to stand on if you complain about that. ;p
Before I start going through the elements, I'll mention the change of having Effie in District Thirteen. For all their talk about how they had to have Elizabeth Banks, they didn't end up using her all that much. They used her reasonably well (taking the place of both the prep team and, oddly, Fulvia Cardew), but really, she could as easily have been in her cell in the Capitol, ramping up the worry with the others.
As always, SPOILERS. If you don't want spoilers for the books or movie, this would be a good stopping point.
Theme
Of all the books, Mockingjay is the one most clearly centered on the power of the media, one of Collins' best themes. The movie is able to amplify it by actually showing the direct effects of Katniss's propos, going to the district and seeing the way they're used by the rebels, both as a recruitment tool and as a signal. (I'm on the fence with them actually singing "The Hanging Tree" in District Five while storming the power plant, because, well... kind of bad tactics. Wouldn't it have made more sense for a small group to infiltrate and plant the explosives than to have a huge crowd singing and chanting as they storm the place? But I see what the script was going for.) The scene where the District Seven lumberjacks use the mockingjay call to signal their attack on the Peacekeepers is excellent, and the attack on the dam in Five, using "The Hanging Tree," was thematically and cinematically terrific (despite my questioning of the tactics). Making them run directly after we see the propos gives a sense of how powerful Katniss's voice has become. This is a real strength of the movies, being able to move outside of Katniss's head and see all of this. We also get to see the rescue of the captured victors, at least in part.
There's some play with how absurd the actual concept is -- Katniss dressed up in a costume, and the director Cressida seeing every event in terms of how to film it. Most hilarious is the failed first propo, where Katniss is supposed to act, and the whole scene plays like actors making fun of directors giving them bizarre orders, with Jennifer Lawrence getting increasingly frustrated alone in front of a bluescreen while she's told to imagine that she's storming the Capitol with her brothers and sisters at her side, while she waves an invisible flag and says a melodramatic line. Of course, the propo turns out hilariously bad, and Haymitch takes over, to get her to be herself for the cameras, leading to the main thrust of this part of the story: The conflicting narratives being driven by the rebellion and the Capitol, using their respective proxies of Katniss and Peeta. And while we spot the absurdity and laugh at Katniss's bad performance, the script (like the book) immediately contrasts it with the reality of the war they're fighting.
It also doesn't diminish what Katniss is doing -- she's providing a face and a voice to the feelings of the country. When she goes into the hospital and the wounded see that she's alive and strong, it makes a difference... well, until Snow bombs them, anyway.
Plot
Takes the story from just before the beginning of the book to the rescue of the victors and the discovery of what was really done to Peeta in captivity, which was pretty much where it had to go. We see Katniss choose to become the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion, after setting certain conditions, including the rescue of the rebel victors and the right for the family cat to stay put. She begins to rally the districts, which are now in full-scale war on the Capitol, and deals with the fact that Peeta, captured by the Capitol, is showing up on television and calling for a ceasefire, claiming that the rebels are using her. She finally breaks down, unable to deal with what's happening to him because of her, and this prompts District Thirteen to launch a rescue... after which she learns what really happened to him. Then, "To be continued."
While I like Donald Sutherland a lot as Snow, I think most of his added scenes were kind of a waste here. Screen time is precious, and some things seem to have been skipped to keep those in. I don't think it was a good trade-off. More on that in other sections.
This act of the series is mostly moving pieces into place for the final confrontation, so there's a lot of workaday plotting going on. Nothing wrong with that, but of course it's not as exciting as some of the other sections.
Character/Acting
Katniss, appropriately, gets the lion's share of character work here. It's her story, and she should. I have no gripe there. Jennifer Lawrence continues to do very well as Katniss's mental state whipsaws around under incredible amounts of pressure. She really sells the "If we burn, you burn with us!" propo. I wanted to go rebel against something. :D
The rest of the cast continues to act well, but isn't given much to do. I mentioned Elizabeth Banks's Effie, here doing the part of the prep team. Good? Yes. Sure. In a couple of scenes. Woody Harrelson's Haymitch (for some reason played throughout in what appears to be a wool cap with hair extensions stitched to it) is in several scenes, but doesn't have much to say in them after he redirects the propos. (Skipped entirely is his job as Katniss's handler, and her refusal to listen to him.) Liam Hemsworth's Gale gets a little more screen time, but his difference of opinion with Katniss seems to be limited to Peeta's actions, and how they should be received. For some reason, Sam Claflin's scenes as Finnick come off flat. It's not his acting. It's the pace or the direction, I think. It's too bad. I like him in the role, and it should have been good.
Julianne Moore's Coin is a bit of a misplay. It's not a bad performance, but the choices she and the director made seem odd in the context of the character she's playing. They're certainly deliberate choices, for both the actress and the writer, not bad acting. I'm just not sure how they're going to play out in the remainder of the story. For instance, she doesn't have to be convinced that Peeta is telling the truth about the coming bombing, and she voluntarily acknowledges that he saved the district, rather than having to grudgingly admit it under prodding.
I'm not sure why the movies have such a hard time with the Katniss/Peeta dynamic. The first movie glossed over their central shared memory (the Boy With the Bread scene), the second one rushed through everything, and this one misses the chance to finally tell that memory properly (replacing it with a scene where Katniss illogically has a long-distance conversation with Snow... aargh). They did add a dream scene where Katniss imagines him coming in to comfort her, which was nice, but only a replay of a scene in CF. It would have been really simple to start the first movie with that scene, but they chose not to. It would have been really simple to put it in here, since it's in the novel, but they chose not to. It's a really strange scene to skip, and does a disservice to the characterization. I was also sorry they skipped her direct address to Peeta, where she went to
the bakery and pointed out to him that his family was dead, and his
calls for a ceasefire had no one left to listen to him.
Setting
This is the big ball-drop in this movie.
Oh, sure, the physicality of District Thirteen is well-played, but District Thirteen itself is missing most of what made it ominous. By the time Peeta asks Katniss whether or not she trusts the people she's working with, in the book she has very good reason to consider the question.
The biggest problem for me (which seems tied to the odd choices with Coin) is that Thirteen is not shown as anything other than a bunker. Sure, light references are made to strict rules, and Haymitch complains about it being dry, but one of the primary establishing moments is turned on its head. In the book, when Katniss's prep team is introduced, they're in a prison cell, and have been kept there, in chains, because one of them stole bread. (There's that bread again... jeez, they skipped District Eleven's gift of bread to Katniss, too. It's like someone's trying to avoid a certain theme and certain allegorical connections.) In the movie, Effie, who has taken the place of the prep team, is explicitly not in a cell, told she's free to come and go as she pleases from her room, and is asked, not told, to be Katniss's escort. Katniss is not forced to go in and free her, and there's no conflict with Gale, wanting to know how she could care about someone who prettied her up for slaughter, which shows the first serious schism between Gale's worldview and Katniss's. She barely understands the question. She doesn't need to here, because it's not asked. The whole questionable side of Coin's leadership (of Gale as well as D13) is more or less skipped.
We don't see the tattooed-on daily schedules, or hear about the strictly rationed food, or even get a sense that Katniss has left one dictatorship for another. Granted, in the books, it takes her some time to understand this -- she's seventeen and wants to believe -- but the reader certainly sees it immediately. In the movie, there's no real sense of it at all.
This is a fairly major breaking point in the remainder of the story, which ends with meet the new boss, same as the old boss -- a situation Katniss is forced to resolve in a very nasty way at the climax. If District Thirteen's real nature hasn't been revealed, then will that choice even work? Oh, book readers will get it, but the movie-only people? I'm just not all that sure.
(They did, to some extent, show some callousness -- people gathered and cheering for a propo when there are hundreds of people dead, and then doing it again while Peeta screamed and screamed in the hospital, bound in his restraints -- but I don't think it showed it to the extent really necessary to understand just how bad it is.)
Style/Technical
There's an unrelenting grayness about District Thirteen that's very well put together. The horrible jumpsuits -- Effie's opening scene shows her holding on to the bright Capitol dress she presumably was wearing when they took her, and the contrast is lovely -- and the bleak rooms, and the claustrophobia is really caught well. The contrast with the outdoor scenes, when Katniss is truly herself, makes an interesting study in itself. Thirteen could be shot in black and white without much notable difference, but the scenes on the surface, both at the lake and while Katniss and Gale are hunting, are breathtaking.
I do wish the first person to design the sets hadn't made the districts all look so urban and uniform, but it's silly to keep complaining about that. The set design on the return to District Twelve was suitably distressing (especially when Katniss accidentally steps on a skull). I think it had a very different feel from the book, where everything was quite literally ashes and silence, but I'm not sure how that would have come out on film.
In all, a decent entry in the series, with a weakness that I'm concerned about in regard to the remainder of the story.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Sunday, October 12, 2014
In praise of memorization
Memorization isn't hot with the cool kids.
It never has been -- it's been the bogeyman of education reform movements pretty much since education reform movements existed. Now, it gets the added boost of, "Oh, if you don't know that stuff, you can always look it up on the internet! So who needs it? You should be free and only learn facts that matter to your constructed education and appeal to your interests!"
(Dear readers from other countries: Welcome to why we don't know where you live, what your capital city is, what language you speak, or what your major exports are. And let's not even start on the foreign language issue.)
The problem with this is that, while you do learn based on what you're interested in, you also develop interests based on what you've learned, and quite a lot of that stems from random facts that may be rolling around in your memory -- facts that get there because you, well... memorize them. By not learning facts (even if you're not immediately fascinated), you're severely limiting your horizons.
Is it ever going to matter to me that the capital of Andorra is Andorra la Vella? Well, it might show up on a Sporcle quiz, but probably not. (If it does, though, I am prepared, man. ;p) But that fact starts to get a lot of other things glommed onto it. Andorra has two princes (though it's a constitutional republic). Do I have a great deal of interest? Not at the moment, but because that's in my head, it's in what Tolkien called "the Soup pot" -- I have it at my disposal. I am curious about the arrangement, how it works within a power struggle, how it's historically operated. Maybe not wildly curious, but a little curious. And maybe someday it will combine with some other oddball fact kicking around in my skull (the crown prince of Japan is the first crown prince not to go to the traditional royal family school in Tokyo?), and those two things will make something new in my head. Who knows? The point is, they will never have a random collision if I don't know them.
Another point, of course, is that it's embarrassing not have the slightest idea where your new neighbor comes from after he tells you, and have to run off to Wikipedia to do a quick check. And it's flatly dangerous to not have a basic understanding of biology or chemistry. Math... oh, math. The ancestral home of memorization, so traumatizing to the reformers. But really, if you don't know the formula for area of a circle, and you need to, say, find a tablecloth... you're not going to be able to work it on your calculator, because you don't know what numbers you're pulling in. And grammar... sigh. Just, sigh. Who really needs to know how to make communication clear and readable, anyway, right?
(Note: Knowing grammar does not mean never letting your hair down. You don't have to speak like a textbook, or write like one, to know how the parts of speech work, or where to put an apostrophe.)
Then, there's the question of fun.
There's a lot of hyperventilating about how learning should be fun, and not be about memorization... but have you ever heard a kid rattle off his favorite memorized facts about dinosaurs? Or a fantasy footballer go on about his team's stats? Heck, I think geography is useful, but to be honest, I did learn to name 197 countries in fourteen minutes for a Sporcle quiz, and I'm now in the process of learning their capitals because it's fun to know this stuff. Not everything that goes into your head has to become the subject of a soul-searching personal essay about spiritual and creative growth. Sometimes, it's just cool to know that when Krakatau blew, they heard it in Perth (much cooler when you know where Krakatau and Perth are). This is as true for little kids as it is for adults. I do geography in preschool storytime, and that particular fact is amazing to them -- it's like something blowing up here and being heard in Chicago. And, by the way, it's okay to introduce geography the same way you introduce math. You learn that 2+2=4 before you get to non-Euclidean geometry. It's okay to also learn that there are horses in Mongolia before you start debating the historical legacy of Genghis Khan.
Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a real downside to the ability to memorize facts. I've never understood the rush to denigrate it.
It never has been -- it's been the bogeyman of education reform movements pretty much since education reform movements existed. Now, it gets the added boost of, "Oh, if you don't know that stuff, you can always look it up on the internet! So who needs it? You should be free and only learn facts that matter to your constructed education and appeal to your interests!"
(Dear readers from other countries: Welcome to why we don't know where you live, what your capital city is, what language you speak, or what your major exports are. And let's not even start on the foreign language issue.)
The problem with this is that, while you do learn based on what you're interested in, you also develop interests based on what you've learned, and quite a lot of that stems from random facts that may be rolling around in your memory -- facts that get there because you, well... memorize them. By not learning facts (even if you're not immediately fascinated), you're severely limiting your horizons.
Is it ever going to matter to me that the capital of Andorra is Andorra la Vella? Well, it might show up on a Sporcle quiz, but probably not. (If it does, though, I am prepared, man. ;p) But that fact starts to get a lot of other things glommed onto it. Andorra has two princes (though it's a constitutional republic). Do I have a great deal of interest? Not at the moment, but because that's in my head, it's in what Tolkien called "the Soup pot" -- I have it at my disposal. I am curious about the arrangement, how it works within a power struggle, how it's historically operated. Maybe not wildly curious, but a little curious. And maybe someday it will combine with some other oddball fact kicking around in my skull (the crown prince of Japan is the first crown prince not to go to the traditional royal family school in Tokyo?), and those two things will make something new in my head. Who knows? The point is, they will never have a random collision if I don't know them.
Another point, of course, is that it's embarrassing not have the slightest idea where your new neighbor comes from after he tells you, and have to run off to Wikipedia to do a quick check. And it's flatly dangerous to not have a basic understanding of biology or chemistry. Math... oh, math. The ancestral home of memorization, so traumatizing to the reformers. But really, if you don't know the formula for area of a circle, and you need to, say, find a tablecloth... you're not going to be able to work it on your calculator, because you don't know what numbers you're pulling in. And grammar... sigh. Just, sigh. Who really needs to know how to make communication clear and readable, anyway, right?
(Note: Knowing grammar does not mean never letting your hair down. You don't have to speak like a textbook, or write like one, to know how the parts of speech work, or where to put an apostrophe.)
Then, there's the question of fun.
There's a lot of hyperventilating about how learning should be fun, and not be about memorization... but have you ever heard a kid rattle off his favorite memorized facts about dinosaurs? Or a fantasy footballer go on about his team's stats? Heck, I think geography is useful, but to be honest, I did learn to name 197 countries in fourteen minutes for a Sporcle quiz, and I'm now in the process of learning their capitals because it's fun to know this stuff. Not everything that goes into your head has to become the subject of a soul-searching personal essay about spiritual and creative growth. Sometimes, it's just cool to know that when Krakatau blew, they heard it in Perth (much cooler when you know where Krakatau and Perth are). This is as true for little kids as it is for adults. I do geography in preschool storytime, and that particular fact is amazing to them -- it's like something blowing up here and being heard in Chicago. And, by the way, it's okay to introduce geography the same way you introduce math. You learn that 2+2=4 before you get to non-Euclidean geometry. It's okay to also learn that there are horses in Mongolia before you start debating the historical legacy of Genghis Khan.
Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a real downside to the ability to memorize facts. I've never understood the rush to denigrate it.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Mark Reads/Mark Watches
"This is something you... pay for?"
Okay, the person who said that probably had good reason for it. I mean, it sounds pretty weird. I've paid about ninety-eight cents a pop to download videos of a guy watching television. And I don't mind a bit. It entertains me, and the price isn't outlandish. Why wouldn't I pay for something that's most likely a good part of a guy's livelihood at this point? It seems fair to me, even if it's a little silly. A lot of things I enjoy are a little silly.
The guy in question is Mark Oshiro, and the site is "Mark Watches." Its companion site, Mark Reads, doesn't have paid downloads that I know of.
The basic premise is that there are certain things that Mark is unspoiled on. He watches or reads, and he reacts to it. It's a kind of strange, meta entertainment, but it is entertaining. He's recently started to work his way through Star Trek, from the beginning up to the current run of films. I've been keeping up, and honestly, I'd forgotten so much of the original series that much of it is like watching for the first time.
Why is it entertaining?
For one thing, Mark is a delightful viewing companion. He's always excited to sit down to a new episode, and he always wants to like it. This is ironic, since the whole thing started with "Mark Reads Twilight," which he hated unequivocally. But he moved on to things like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games ("I LOVE IT. Katniss, LOOK AT YOU. LOOK AT YOUR LIFE. LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES. They are wonderful and I love you forever for them."), and Lord of the Rings ("THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED IN MY LIFE. HOW HAVE I SURVIVED A SINGLE MOMENT WITHOUT KNOWING TREEBIRD WAS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER THAT EXISTED? HOW HAVE I LIVED A FRUITFUL, SATISFYING EXISTENCE WITHOUT ENTS OR ENTWIVES OR ENTMAIDENS IN MY BRAIN? I HAVE NOT. MY LIFE UP UNTIL THIS MOMENT HAS BEEN POINTLESS. I HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT SWIM IN NIHILISTIC FUTILITY UNTIL TREEBEARD."). He also went through complete runs on Buffy, Angel, and Sherlock, among other things.) Personally, I enjoy this sort of thing for properties I know pretty well, because suddenly, you get a whole new perspective. This thing that was totally central for me... is it something Mark even notices? Or vice versa... has he caught on something that I never noticed at all? His motto is "I am not prepared." I rarely am, either.
Another point is the community. Other people meet in the comments, talk about what they've seen. One commenter for Star Trek posts "This Week In History," to discuss whatever was happening around the time the episode airs. Using proper spoiler code (so Mark remains unspoiled), they talk about how the current storylines will play out, and whether or not it's good. It's a fun, bright community.
Anyway, I'm now off to watch Mark meet Spock's parents. (I wonder if he'll notice that Sarek is the same actor from "Balance of Terror," for whose introduction he sputtered, delighted, "It's a Spock!")
Okay, the person who said that probably had good reason for it. I mean, it sounds pretty weird. I've paid about ninety-eight cents a pop to download videos of a guy watching television. And I don't mind a bit. It entertains me, and the price isn't outlandish. Why wouldn't I pay for something that's most likely a good part of a guy's livelihood at this point? It seems fair to me, even if it's a little silly. A lot of things I enjoy are a little silly.
The guy in question is Mark Oshiro, and the site is "Mark Watches." Its companion site, Mark Reads, doesn't have paid downloads that I know of.
The basic premise is that there are certain things that Mark is unspoiled on. He watches or reads, and he reacts to it. It's a kind of strange, meta entertainment, but it is entertaining. He's recently started to work his way through Star Trek, from the beginning up to the current run of films. I've been keeping up, and honestly, I'd forgotten so much of the original series that much of it is like watching for the first time.
Why is it entertaining?
For one thing, Mark is a delightful viewing companion. He's always excited to sit down to a new episode, and he always wants to like it. This is ironic, since the whole thing started with "Mark Reads Twilight," which he hated unequivocally. But he moved on to things like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games ("I LOVE IT. Katniss, LOOK AT YOU. LOOK AT YOUR LIFE. LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES. They are wonderful and I love you forever for them."), and Lord of the Rings ("THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED IN MY LIFE. HOW HAVE I SURVIVED A SINGLE MOMENT WITHOUT KNOWING TREEBIRD WAS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER THAT EXISTED? HOW HAVE I LIVED A FRUITFUL, SATISFYING EXISTENCE WITHOUT ENTS OR ENTWIVES OR ENTMAIDENS IN MY BRAIN? I HAVE NOT. MY LIFE UP UNTIL THIS MOMENT HAS BEEN POINTLESS. I HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT SWIM IN NIHILISTIC FUTILITY UNTIL TREEBEARD."). He also went through complete runs on Buffy, Angel, and Sherlock, among other things.) Personally, I enjoy this sort of thing for properties I know pretty well, because suddenly, you get a whole new perspective. This thing that was totally central for me... is it something Mark even notices? Or vice versa... has he caught on something that I never noticed at all? His motto is "I am not prepared." I rarely am, either.
Another point is the community. Other people meet in the comments, talk about what they've seen. One commenter for Star Trek posts "This Week In History," to discuss whatever was happening around the time the episode airs. Using proper spoiler code (so Mark remains unspoiled), they talk about how the current storylines will play out, and whether or not it's good. It's a fun, bright community.
Anyway, I'm now off to watch Mark meet Spock's parents. (I wonder if he'll notice that Sarek is the same actor from "Balance of Terror," for whose introduction he sputtered, delighted, "It's a Spock!")
Friday, September 12, 2014
Captain America: The Winter Soldier review
I'm just not being diligent in my reviews, am I?
Well, I haven't really been watching that much, to tell the truth. I liked the set design on the Divergent movie, but continued to be meh on the story. Didn't like the follow up to the great cliffhanger on Once Upon A Time. I've been reading some forgettable stuff, though I enjoyed a re-read of My Name Is Asher Lev.
But I totally missed Captain America this summer. I was planning to see it. Really. I liked the first one (it's actually my favorite of the origin movies), I liked The Avengers, and, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I like superhero movies. The more leaked out about it, though, the less interested I was, and the more I just shrugged off going.
Still, it's streaming on Amazon now. I figured I'd put up the five bucks and give it a go.
Verdict: Neither as bad as I feared, nor as good as I hoped.
Setting:
Not a major point here. In and around D.C., with the Smithsonian having a good sentimental role. We re-visit Cap's training camp, and even have a brief Brooklyn flashback. Honestly, it could take place on Mars without changing anything but the back story.
Even the question of the temporal setting, which by all rights should have been a major issue, is inexplicably ignored.
Theme:
Freedom is expensive, and you have to be willing to pay the price -- the real price, not the false price. Also, it's bad to want to be free of freedom. Simple stuff, but there's nothing wrong with a simple theme. Many of life's most important themes are the simplest. The problem is this is all wound up in a big conspiracy theory and "Trust no one" motif that... it just irks me. If it had been the first time I'd seen such a thing, maybe it would be interesting, but now, it seems like the first trick grabbed out of the hat by lazy storymakers who can't think of anything else. Maybe it was fresh once. It's not anymore. The first movie was much fresher.
Plot:
Captain America is trying to adjust to life in the 21st century. Nick Fury and SHIELD are his major touchstones, but CAN THEY BE TRUSTED??????? (See above for answer, though Nick ultimately comes around.) Peggy is still alive, though old, and thinks they need to start over. Lots of people bring up the idea of creative destruction. Black Widow is Cap's wingman, and she's awesome. (I want a Black Widow movie. ScarJo can handle the lead, people.) After an attempt on Fury's life, Cap and Natasha learn that HYDRA (the Nazi corollary of SHIELD) infiltrated SHIELD at the beginning and have been running history since WWII. Because reasons. (Okay, their stated reason is that they want to free people from freedom, because free people make bad choices and aren't easy to control.) The good SHIELD people now must fight the bad SHIELD people, so that they can put up military secrets on the internet. Yes, it's as anvilicious as it sounds, and no, they do not go for subtlety in their commentary on current events. Ultimately, they become a rogue group up against the...
Oh, I'm sorry. Caught me napping. Conspiracy theories do that to me, when they're not causing actual muscle strain from all the eye rolling.
Character:
Easily, the strongest part of this movie is the character work.
When this movie was first being advertised, and I saw they were dealing with the Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier arc, I figured this would be the heart of things. It's a strong heart, and when the movie does go into this plotline, it's absolutely at its best. For me, the best scene was Bucky starting to remember who he was -- sitting there, frightened and confused, tied down by the people controlling him, just saying, "I know that man." Steve understanding that he might have to fight his friend, but wanting, more than anything, to save him. This is how you do drama, and both actors nailed it. Pleasingly, Black Widow got a mirrored storyline, where she is also dealing with her past with the bad guys, and the frightening thought that she's traded one bad guy league for another. (Honey, no, you know perfectly well that you've saved the world several times. That there are evil moles in the organization doesn't mean that what you've done for it is evil.) There's also some ship-teasing with Cap, and it works surprisingly well. I don't generally ship, but I could go for Cap/Nat. (The comics version where she had a thing with Bucky is completely binned.)
Style:
The filmmakers were going for a 70s spy movie feel, and I guess they got it, but I don't know why they'd want it. Whatever.
Boy howdy, can you tell that The Avengers' Joss Whedon wasn't part of the team. Golden jokes go uncracked. Steve's personality is all over the place. And when Natasha, after having kissed him for a cover, suggests that he hasn't been kissed since 1945, he doesn't blow it off and then say, "Actually, it was 1943." Which I literally spent the whole movie waiting for, right up until the credits rolled.
Basically, stylistically, I think they blew what was interesting in the set-up in favor of something generic and kind of dull.
So, I'll see what happens in Age of Ultron, but between this and Dark World and Agents of SHIELD, I'm not convinced that I like where the 'verse is going.
Well, I haven't really been watching that much, to tell the truth. I liked the set design on the Divergent movie, but continued to be meh on the story. Didn't like the follow up to the great cliffhanger on Once Upon A Time. I've been reading some forgettable stuff, though I enjoyed a re-read of My Name Is Asher Lev.
But I totally missed Captain America this summer. I was planning to see it. Really. I liked the first one (it's actually my favorite of the origin movies), I liked The Avengers, and, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I like superhero movies. The more leaked out about it, though, the less interested I was, and the more I just shrugged off going.
Still, it's streaming on Amazon now. I figured I'd put up the five bucks and give it a go.
Verdict: Neither as bad as I feared, nor as good as I hoped.
Setting:
Not a major point here. In and around D.C., with the Smithsonian having a good sentimental role. We re-visit Cap's training camp, and even have a brief Brooklyn flashback. Honestly, it could take place on Mars without changing anything but the back story.
Even the question of the temporal setting, which by all rights should have been a major issue, is inexplicably ignored.
Theme:
Freedom is expensive, and you have to be willing to pay the price -- the real price, not the false price. Also, it's bad to want to be free of freedom. Simple stuff, but there's nothing wrong with a simple theme. Many of life's most important themes are the simplest. The problem is this is all wound up in a big conspiracy theory and "Trust no one" motif that... it just irks me. If it had been the first time I'd seen such a thing, maybe it would be interesting, but now, it seems like the first trick grabbed out of the hat by lazy storymakers who can't think of anything else. Maybe it was fresh once. It's not anymore. The first movie was much fresher.
Plot:
Captain America is trying to adjust to life in the 21st century. Nick Fury and SHIELD are his major touchstones, but CAN THEY BE TRUSTED??????? (See above for answer, though Nick ultimately comes around.) Peggy is still alive, though old, and thinks they need to start over. Lots of people bring up the idea of creative destruction. Black Widow is Cap's wingman, and she's awesome. (I want a Black Widow movie. ScarJo can handle the lead, people.) After an attempt on Fury's life, Cap and Natasha learn that HYDRA (the Nazi corollary of SHIELD) infiltrated SHIELD at the beginning and have been running history since WWII. Because reasons. (Okay, their stated reason is that they want to free people from freedom, because free people make bad choices and aren't easy to control.) The good SHIELD people now must fight the bad SHIELD people, so that they can put up military secrets on the internet. Yes, it's as anvilicious as it sounds, and no, they do not go for subtlety in their commentary on current events. Ultimately, they become a rogue group up against the...
Oh, I'm sorry. Caught me napping. Conspiracy theories do that to me, when they're not causing actual muscle strain from all the eye rolling.
Character:
Easily, the strongest part of this movie is the character work.
When this movie was first being advertised, and I saw they were dealing with the Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier arc, I figured this would be the heart of things. It's a strong heart, and when the movie does go into this plotline, it's absolutely at its best. For me, the best scene was Bucky starting to remember who he was -- sitting there, frightened and confused, tied down by the people controlling him, just saying, "I know that man." Steve understanding that he might have to fight his friend, but wanting, more than anything, to save him. This is how you do drama, and both actors nailed it. Pleasingly, Black Widow got a mirrored storyline, where she is also dealing with her past with the bad guys, and the frightening thought that she's traded one bad guy league for another. (Honey, no, you know perfectly well that you've saved the world several times. That there are evil moles in the organization doesn't mean that what you've done for it is evil.) There's also some ship-teasing with Cap, and it works surprisingly well. I don't generally ship, but I could go for Cap/Nat. (The comics version where she had a thing with Bucky is completely binned.)
Style:
The filmmakers were going for a 70s spy movie feel, and I guess they got it, but I don't know why they'd want it. Whatever.
Boy howdy, can you tell that The Avengers' Joss Whedon wasn't part of the team. Golden jokes go uncracked. Steve's personality is all over the place. And when Natasha, after having kissed him for a cover, suggests that he hasn't been kissed since 1945, he doesn't blow it off and then say, "Actually, it was 1943." Which I literally spent the whole movie waiting for, right up until the credits rolled.
Basically, stylistically, I think they blew what was interesting in the set-up in favor of something generic and kind of dull.
So, I'll see what happens in Age of Ultron, but between this and Dark World and Agents of SHIELD, I'm not convinced that I like where the 'verse is going.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Frozen review
Is there a point to reviewing Disney's Frozen?
I'm among the last people to see it, at least from the crowd of people prone to seeing Disney movies. I waited for it to come to Amazon Instant Video before I saw the whole thing (though, as a children's librarian, I assure you, I was fully spoiled and knew the songs and the characters).
But what the heck? I have this whole blog thing going on, and I haven't done that much lately.
So, Frozen.
In a nutshell, BEST DISNEY SINCE THE LION KING.
I loved The Princess and the Frog and Brave, but something wasn't clicking. I saw Tangled, and I still can't say I follow the fuss about that. But Frozen hits its marks and really just hit the spot for a fairy tale movie.
Before I start on the movie proper, I'll admit: I don't care for the new style of animation particularly. I so hoped when TPatF came out that we'd be seeing a real renaissance of normal Disney animation. I thought it was beautiful. But I realized when I saw Frozen that my problem wasn't with the style so much as with the movies that tended to be made in it. When I go to an animated film, I want a fairy tale, not a robot on a polluted planet. Maybe that's a flaw, but that's the sum of it. I associated the style with, "Animated movie that I probably won't care about all that much," and wrote it off.
Frozen's art is beautiful, and while I won't say it made me a convert, it did make me realize that this kind of animation doesn't bother me in and of itself. I don't understand why we can't have both kinds of animation out there and enjoy both, but I won't automatically do an eyeroll anymore. The story is always what matters.
Basically, Frozen is a complete return to form. It's a lavish musical with a strong emotional heart. It's a high-stakes fairy tale plot with queens and princesses and knights. It's everything I go to an animated movie for. Animation frees movie-makers to do things that simply aren't possible in live action, but are accepted in the milieu of animation because the very form makes it possible to have a dress that really looks like it's woven from ice, or to see a character slowly turning into an ice sculpture. You can actually tell this kind of story when you're using animation, which is something the Disney studios recognized a long time ago, then seem to have temporarily forgotten.
Okay, elements:
Plot
Don't go in expecting "The Snow Queen." There are very few commonalities, though it's certain that if they hadn't said they were adapting it, someone would have screamed bloody murder that they'd "stolen" the story. So, no snow bees. No mirror shards. Gerda and Kai are older servants in the palace.
The plot involves two sisters, the princesses of Arandelle. The older sister, Elsa, is born with vast powers over ice and snow. The younger, Anna, is a joyous little girl who just worships the ground her big sister walks on... until an accident with Elsa's powers almost kills Anna, at which point the girls are separated, and Anna's memories of her sister's powers are removed. They grow up isolated from each other, and on Elsa's coronation day, they have a huge fight, which ends up revealing Elsa's powers. Elsa, in fleeing, accidentally sets off an eternal winter everywhere. The remainder of the story is Anna's quest to heal the land by healing her sister.
There is a secondary plot about Anna's love life. She's been so isolated that she's ripe to be manipulated, and is. Badly. But she does find friendship and love with the Sami boy Kristoff, who is her guide up to Elsa's mountain hideout. There are also trolls, a reindeer who Kristoff speaks for, and a charming sentient snowman named Olaf, who represents Elsa's more innocent side.
Theme
Weirdly enough, the theme is stated clearly in a very odd and otherwise out of place musical number from the trolls:
We’re only saying that love's a force
That's powerful and strange.
People make bad choices if they’re mad,
Or scared, or stressed.
Throw a little love their way...
And you’ll bring out their best...
Father! Sister! Brother!
We need each other to raise
Us up and round us out.
Ultimately, the story rests on this old saw, but with one of the best twists going: It's not either of Anna's love interests who saves the day. It's Anna herself, expressing her true love for her sister. This doesn't diminish the other love story, by the way. They all become a family together and, well, round each other out. Nice theme work, Disney.
Of course, if you want to go totally symbolic, it's a nature play about the change of seasons, with Elsa in whites and blues representing winter (naturally) and Anna in greens and pinks representing the coming of spring. That's there and pretty obvious, but it's not much to chew on, in terms of story.
Style
Show tunes and very Disney-esque 3D animation. Beautiful work on the ice and snow, nice integration of the musical numbers. Here's Anna confronting Elsa at the ice palace, a scene which encapsulates the style pretty well:
Setting
Vaguely Norwegian. There are complaints, I understand, that the subtleties of the culture aren't captured -- apparently, as opposed to the deep understanding of French nobility in Beauty and the Beast, or zoological psychology in The Lion King. It's a fairy tale. It exists on the edge of a mirror reality. So, yes, it's a sketched environment, with the kind of relationship to real Norwegian culture that Middle Earth has to English culture. A few specifics to give the grounded feeling, but the rest is just meant to be evocative, a sort of Platonic ideal of a Norse-ish culture. It's a feature, not a bug.
And what's there... it's so beautiful. The way the light glints on the ice, the eldritch light of the Aurora Borealis ("The sky's awake, so I'm awake!" Anna exclaims early in the movie), the winter wonderland on the mountain... Really, if you're trying to find it on a map and worried that Google road view doesn't show it to you, you're probably at the wrong movie.
Characters
The characters are what makes the movie work as well as it does. The two core characters, Elsa and Anna, are welcome additions to the princess world, Sven the Reindeer and Olaf the Snowman are charming funny sidekicks, and Kristoff is one the best Disney "princes" (though of course, the character is actually a commoner) they've had (he actually does stuff, but isn't The Rescuer... how much better is that than the dull Prince Charmings who stood around at balls?).
Specific notes:
Elsa is so far the only princess who actually becomes queen in the course of her movie. Go, Elsa. She's also, bar none, the most powerful Disney princess, and certainly the most flawed. (Heck, in original drafts, she was the villain.) Her anxiety and depression become manifest in the endless winter she brings on when she isolates herself. Worth noting, though, is that she does not hate her powers or wish them away. She is at her happiest when she's using them of her own free will. Her problems come when she tries to run away from her power -- both the ice power that her people fear, and her power as queen. It's in embracing both of these powers and understanding them that she becomes a wise ruler.
Anna starts out a little too naive, a little too child-like. It seems at first like they're trying to force the cuteness... only it turns out that's that point. While her sister was forced into adult concerns early, she's been sheltered so severely that she is incredibly vulnerable to a con. The course of the movie is Anna first being broken, then finding her real, actual strength.
Kristoff, the ice harvester who loves his business so much that he wants to cry at the beauty of Elsa's ice palace ("Go ahead," Anna tells him, "I won't judge"). Raised by boisterous trolls, he's had a life completely opposite from Anna's, and is at least surface-cynical. I'd argue that he's more of a realist than a cynic, actually. He doesn't ever disparage love... he just questions Anna's love-at-first-sight story. And it at least occurs to him to tell a living snowman that looking forward to summer isn't really that great an idea.
Olaf is maybe a little too cute, but unlike a lot of the sidekicks, he has an actual psychological point. He began his life in the childhood scene of Elsa and Anna playing, where Elsa provides him with a voice and Anna loves him unconditionally. Elsa creates him almost as an afterthought, and it's he who leads Anna to her, and who keeps Anna alive (at serious risk to his own life) long enough to solve the problem.
The trolls are a little annoying, yes. I can't argue with that. The Fixer-Upper song comes out of nowhere, and -- theme statement aside -- does nothing for the plot. I think they were probably meant to show Anna the boisterous family she never had (and, Kristoff's embarrassment aside, she actually seems delighted throughout the scene), so they don't actively bother me, but I could do without them. I think I might have liked it better if the trolls were saved for the mystical stuff, and Kristoff just had a big, boisterous human family.
And there are my thoughts on Frozen.
I'm among the last people to see it, at least from the crowd of people prone to seeing Disney movies. I waited for it to come to Amazon Instant Video before I saw the whole thing (though, as a children's librarian, I assure you, I was fully spoiled and knew the songs and the characters).
But what the heck? I have this whole blog thing going on, and I haven't done that much lately.
So, Frozen.
In a nutshell, BEST DISNEY SINCE THE LION KING.
I loved The Princess and the Frog and Brave, but something wasn't clicking. I saw Tangled, and I still can't say I follow the fuss about that. But Frozen hits its marks and really just hit the spot for a fairy tale movie.
Before I start on the movie proper, I'll admit: I don't care for the new style of animation particularly. I so hoped when TPatF came out that we'd be seeing a real renaissance of normal Disney animation. I thought it was beautiful. But I realized when I saw Frozen that my problem wasn't with the style so much as with the movies that tended to be made in it. When I go to an animated film, I want a fairy tale, not a robot on a polluted planet. Maybe that's a flaw, but that's the sum of it. I associated the style with, "Animated movie that I probably won't care about all that much," and wrote it off.
Frozen's art is beautiful, and while I won't say it made me a convert, it did make me realize that this kind of animation doesn't bother me in and of itself. I don't understand why we can't have both kinds of animation out there and enjoy both, but I won't automatically do an eyeroll anymore. The story is always what matters.
Basically, Frozen is a complete return to form. It's a lavish musical with a strong emotional heart. It's a high-stakes fairy tale plot with queens and princesses and knights. It's everything I go to an animated movie for. Animation frees movie-makers to do things that simply aren't possible in live action, but are accepted in the milieu of animation because the very form makes it possible to have a dress that really looks like it's woven from ice, or to see a character slowly turning into an ice sculpture. You can actually tell this kind of story when you're using animation, which is something the Disney studios recognized a long time ago, then seem to have temporarily forgotten.
Okay, elements:
Plot
Don't go in expecting "The Snow Queen." There are very few commonalities, though it's certain that if they hadn't said they were adapting it, someone would have screamed bloody murder that they'd "stolen" the story. So, no snow bees. No mirror shards. Gerda and Kai are older servants in the palace.
The plot involves two sisters, the princesses of Arandelle. The older sister, Elsa, is born with vast powers over ice and snow. The younger, Anna, is a joyous little girl who just worships the ground her big sister walks on... until an accident with Elsa's powers almost kills Anna, at which point the girls are separated, and Anna's memories of her sister's powers are removed. They grow up isolated from each other, and on Elsa's coronation day, they have a huge fight, which ends up revealing Elsa's powers. Elsa, in fleeing, accidentally sets off an eternal winter everywhere. The remainder of the story is Anna's quest to heal the land by healing her sister.
There is a secondary plot about Anna's love life. She's been so isolated that she's ripe to be manipulated, and is. Badly. But she does find friendship and love with the Sami boy Kristoff, who is her guide up to Elsa's mountain hideout. There are also trolls, a reindeer who Kristoff speaks for, and a charming sentient snowman named Olaf, who represents Elsa's more innocent side.
Theme
Weirdly enough, the theme is stated clearly in a very odd and otherwise out of place musical number from the trolls:
We’re only saying that love's a force
That's powerful and strange.
People make bad choices if they’re mad,
Or scared, or stressed.
Throw a little love their way...
And you’ll bring out their best...
Father! Sister! Brother!
We need each other to raise
Us up and round us out.
Ultimately, the story rests on this old saw, but with one of the best twists going: It's not either of Anna's love interests who saves the day. It's Anna herself, expressing her true love for her sister. This doesn't diminish the other love story, by the way. They all become a family together and, well, round each other out. Nice theme work, Disney.
Of course, if you want to go totally symbolic, it's a nature play about the change of seasons, with Elsa in whites and blues representing winter (naturally) and Anna in greens and pinks representing the coming of spring. That's there and pretty obvious, but it's not much to chew on, in terms of story.
Style
Show tunes and very Disney-esque 3D animation. Beautiful work on the ice and snow, nice integration of the musical numbers. Here's Anna confronting Elsa at the ice palace, a scene which encapsulates the style pretty well:
Setting
Vaguely Norwegian. There are complaints, I understand, that the subtleties of the culture aren't captured -- apparently, as opposed to the deep understanding of French nobility in Beauty and the Beast, or zoological psychology in The Lion King. It's a fairy tale. It exists on the edge of a mirror reality. So, yes, it's a sketched environment, with the kind of relationship to real Norwegian culture that Middle Earth has to English culture. A few specifics to give the grounded feeling, but the rest is just meant to be evocative, a sort of Platonic ideal of a Norse-ish culture. It's a feature, not a bug.
And what's there... it's so beautiful. The way the light glints on the ice, the eldritch light of the Aurora Borealis ("The sky's awake, so I'm awake!" Anna exclaims early in the movie), the winter wonderland on the mountain... Really, if you're trying to find it on a map and worried that Google road view doesn't show it to you, you're probably at the wrong movie.
Characters
The characters are what makes the movie work as well as it does. The two core characters, Elsa and Anna, are welcome additions to the princess world, Sven the Reindeer and Olaf the Snowman are charming funny sidekicks, and Kristoff is one the best Disney "princes" (though of course, the character is actually a commoner) they've had (he actually does stuff, but isn't The Rescuer... how much better is that than the dull Prince Charmings who stood around at balls?).
Specific notes:
Elsa is so far the only princess who actually becomes queen in the course of her movie. Go, Elsa. She's also, bar none, the most powerful Disney princess, and certainly the most flawed. (Heck, in original drafts, she was the villain.) Her anxiety and depression become manifest in the endless winter she brings on when she isolates herself. Worth noting, though, is that she does not hate her powers or wish them away. She is at her happiest when she's using them of her own free will. Her problems come when she tries to run away from her power -- both the ice power that her people fear, and her power as queen. It's in embracing both of these powers and understanding them that she becomes a wise ruler.
Anna starts out a little too naive, a little too child-like. It seems at first like they're trying to force the cuteness... only it turns out that's that point. While her sister was forced into adult concerns early, she's been sheltered so severely that she is incredibly vulnerable to a con. The course of the movie is Anna first being broken, then finding her real, actual strength.
Kristoff, the ice harvester who loves his business so much that he wants to cry at the beauty of Elsa's ice palace ("Go ahead," Anna tells him, "I won't judge"). Raised by boisterous trolls, he's had a life completely opposite from Anna's, and is at least surface-cynical. I'd argue that he's more of a realist than a cynic, actually. He doesn't ever disparage love... he just questions Anna's love-at-first-sight story. And it at least occurs to him to tell a living snowman that looking forward to summer isn't really that great an idea.
Olaf is maybe a little too cute, but unlike a lot of the sidekicks, he has an actual psychological point. He began his life in the childhood scene of Elsa and Anna playing, where Elsa provides him with a voice and Anna loves him unconditionally. Elsa creates him almost as an afterthought, and it's he who leads Anna to her, and who keeps Anna alive (at serious risk to his own life) long enough to solve the problem.
The trolls are a little annoying, yes. I can't argue with that. The Fixer-Upper song comes out of nowhere, and -- theme statement aside -- does nothing for the plot. I think they were probably meant to show Anna the boisterous family she never had (and, Kristoff's embarrassment aside, she actually seems delighted throughout the scene), so they don't actively bother me, but I could do without them. I think I might have liked it better if the trolls were saved for the mystical stuff, and Kristoff just had a big, boisterous human family.
And there are my thoughts on Frozen.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Divergent book review
I've learned a couple of lessons about popularity and books over the years.
The first is that popular doesn't always equal good. Pretty much everyone realizes this the first time they re-visit a book they just loved when all of their friends were reading it, and it turns out to be... um... not quite as good as remembered. And some books are popular, as far as I can tell, because they're so horrendously bad. It's like watching a train wreck.
The second lesson is that popular doesn't always equal bad. When Harry Potter was first coming out, I stuck my nose in the air, because I couldn't figure out why kids were reading that instead of decent fantasy, like Tolkien or Lewis. Hint: Because it's good. Really good. Now, seven years after the last one came out, it still has a solid audience. The Hunger Games books are also really good -- yes, the Games parts are as violent and soul-destroying as advertised (so is Lord of the Flies, one of my favorite books and the one I always flash on first with THG), but that's the point. What HG really is, is an indictment of soul-numbing culture, and a celebration (which isn't really the right word in context) of the power to reshape it. It's a narrative about narrative, and it's uncomfortable to read in the very best way.
I had to finally read Divergent so I could do a program on it. I was hoping that it would be more like the latter than the former -- that as soon as I started reading it, I'd say, "Oh, so that's why everyone's nuts about this book!" Not so much.
Divergent has been compared to The Hunger Games, and the movie is certainly being marketed to the HG audience (so were the books, with their round-symbol covers). Here's what they have in common: Geographically specific American dystopia. Female lead. Really, that's it. It's really much more closely related to Harry Potter, with dystopian future Chicago standing in for Hogwarts and factions standing in for the Houses (Dauntless and Abnegation=Gryffindor, Erudite=Ravenclaw, Amity=Hufflepuff). It seems to be a sort of long argument with the Sorting Hat, using the common fandom argument about whether or not sorting the Houses by personality is a good idea. Spoiler: the author doesn't think so, and in fact ratchets the argument up a lot by making the factions into the worst possible version of the Houses. The "Divergent," who don't fit into any class, seem to be the "they'll do what's needed to win" fandom version of Slytherin. I'm not sure on Candor.
This isn't to say it's a bad book. It's not. There's nothing wrong with playing with ideas you pick up from other sources and re-combining them. That's how new things get created. The serial numbers aren't as expertly removed as I'd like, but I can't say I'd do any better at it. People who've heard my fannish rants would probably recognize them right away in an original story, too.
My issue with Divergent is that it never really "woke up" for me. Presumably, it does for other people. But I don't find its argument very interesting or compelling -- I was never interested in the Sorting Hat argument in HP, either -- and I couldn't keep the characters straight right away, which tends to irritate me. As a lead character, Tris had some potential, and the conflict between her Abnegation tendencies and her Dauntless tendencies (self-sacrificial courage vs. reckless courage) was interesting, but the points she wrestled with that were the only ones that really sparked. More to the point, I can't figure out why she was attracted to Dauntless in the first place. It didn't really fit with anything other than, "Because I said so," which doesn't tend to work. Her love interest, Tobias -- whose real identity was hidden for half the book with all the subtlety an elephant on my patio -- is a thundering bore.
One of the reasons it's hard to keep track of the characters is that they all have roughly the same speech patterns. I had to check up the page several times to see who was supposed to be talking. I like dialogue best when you can leave it untagged for a page or so without confusing the reader.
The main plot, with the Erudite faction trying to get the Dauntless to kill the Abnegation because they wanted control of the government (Tris, being a Divergent, is able to resist their mind control)... it's just sort of... there. Unlike the bizarre satire of real government in HP, or the warped government of The Hunger Games, we don't get a sense of how the government operates in the first place, so a hostile takeover doesn't feel very vital, except insofar as we know, from external input, that it's most likely a bad idea. We know this mostly because we're told that the people trying to take over are the bad guys, as opposed being the noble rebels. It's not enough to really make me care about the main action. During the final battle, I took a break to check Facebook and do a little Wiki-walking on TV Tropes. Then I played with the cat, checked comments on a story, then went back and read a few more pages, got distracted again, then finally finished.
Maybe it's me. It could be.
The point is, I've certainly read worse books. (Though some of them are well-reviewed and have prizes, so again, maybe it's me.) There's nothing specifically wrong with Divergent, and I'll read the sequels (I caught up on the spoilers, so I'll have the requisite knowledge for the program). It's just the third lesson about popularity and books:
Sometimes, it means "meh."
The first is that popular doesn't always equal good. Pretty much everyone realizes this the first time they re-visit a book they just loved when all of their friends were reading it, and it turns out to be... um... not quite as good as remembered. And some books are popular, as far as I can tell, because they're so horrendously bad. It's like watching a train wreck.
The second lesson is that popular doesn't always equal bad. When Harry Potter was first coming out, I stuck my nose in the air, because I couldn't figure out why kids were reading that instead of decent fantasy, like Tolkien or Lewis. Hint: Because it's good. Really good. Now, seven years after the last one came out, it still has a solid audience. The Hunger Games books are also really good -- yes, the Games parts are as violent and soul-destroying as advertised (so is Lord of the Flies, one of my favorite books and the one I always flash on first with THG), but that's the point. What HG really is, is an indictment of soul-numbing culture, and a celebration (which isn't really the right word in context) of the power to reshape it. It's a narrative about narrative, and it's uncomfortable to read in the very best way.
I had to finally read Divergent so I could do a program on it. I was hoping that it would be more like the latter than the former -- that as soon as I started reading it, I'd say, "Oh, so that's why everyone's nuts about this book!" Not so much.
Divergent has been compared to The Hunger Games, and the movie is certainly being marketed to the HG audience (so were the books, with their round-symbol covers). Here's what they have in common: Geographically specific American dystopia. Female lead. Really, that's it. It's really much more closely related to Harry Potter, with dystopian future Chicago standing in for Hogwarts and factions standing in for the Houses (Dauntless and Abnegation=Gryffindor, Erudite=Ravenclaw, Amity=Hufflepuff). It seems to be a sort of long argument with the Sorting Hat, using the common fandom argument about whether or not sorting the Houses by personality is a good idea. Spoiler: the author doesn't think so, and in fact ratchets the argument up a lot by making the factions into the worst possible version of the Houses. The "Divergent," who don't fit into any class, seem to be the "they'll do what's needed to win" fandom version of Slytherin. I'm not sure on Candor.
This isn't to say it's a bad book. It's not. There's nothing wrong with playing with ideas you pick up from other sources and re-combining them. That's how new things get created. The serial numbers aren't as expertly removed as I'd like, but I can't say I'd do any better at it. People who've heard my fannish rants would probably recognize them right away in an original story, too.
My issue with Divergent is that it never really "woke up" for me. Presumably, it does for other people. But I don't find its argument very interesting or compelling -- I was never interested in the Sorting Hat argument in HP, either -- and I couldn't keep the characters straight right away, which tends to irritate me. As a lead character, Tris had some potential, and the conflict between her Abnegation tendencies and her Dauntless tendencies (self-sacrificial courage vs. reckless courage) was interesting, but the points she wrestled with that were the only ones that really sparked. More to the point, I can't figure out why she was attracted to Dauntless in the first place. It didn't really fit with anything other than, "Because I said so," which doesn't tend to work. Her love interest, Tobias -- whose real identity was hidden for half the book with all the subtlety an elephant on my patio -- is a thundering bore.
One of the reasons it's hard to keep track of the characters is that they all have roughly the same speech patterns. I had to check up the page several times to see who was supposed to be talking. I like dialogue best when you can leave it untagged for a page or so without confusing the reader.
The main plot, with the Erudite faction trying to get the Dauntless to kill the Abnegation because they wanted control of the government (Tris, being a Divergent, is able to resist their mind control)... it's just sort of... there. Unlike the bizarre satire of real government in HP, or the warped government of The Hunger Games, we don't get a sense of how the government operates in the first place, so a hostile takeover doesn't feel very vital, except insofar as we know, from external input, that it's most likely a bad idea. We know this mostly because we're told that the people trying to take over are the bad guys, as opposed being the noble rebels. It's not enough to really make me care about the main action. During the final battle, I took a break to check Facebook and do a little Wiki-walking on TV Tropes. Then I played with the cat, checked comments on a story, then went back and read a few more pages, got distracted again, then finally finished.
Maybe it's me. It could be.
The point is, I've certainly read worse books. (Though some of them are well-reviewed and have prizes, so again, maybe it's me.) There's nothing specifically wrong with Divergent, and I'll read the sequels (I caught up on the spoilers, so I'll have the requisite knowledge for the program). It's just the third lesson about popularity and books:
Sometimes, it means "meh."
Friday, February 28, 2014
Once Upon A Time review, with predictions
When Once Upon A Time premiered, I watched the first three episodes. I missed the fourth, and promptly forgot the thing existed. (Am I the only one who misses water cooler shows that everyone watches and talks about? I tend to forget things exist on a regular basis if no one else is talking about them with me.)
At any rate, I forgot about OUaT, but I got bored over the holidays and went looking for something to watch on Netflix streaming. They suggested OUaT, and I reached back into the mists of my memory and said, "Oh, yeah. I remember thinking that might be pretty good."
For those who don't know, the basic premise is that most fairy tales exist in the same continuum -- a realm called The Enchanted Forest -- and Snow White's stepmother, the Evil Queen, decides to get her happy ending by exiling everyone, sans memories, to our world, where there's no magic. This curse is designed by Rumpelstiltskin, who has his own reasons for wanting to come. She creates the town of Storybrooke in Maine (really, and obviously, Vancouver... is it THAT expensive to film in Maine, people?), where she is mayor, and the other fairy tale characters are trapped in a joyless, endless loop, where time never passes.
Before this happened, Snow White and Prince Charming had a baby daughter named Emma, and they saved her from the curse by sending her ahead of it in an enchanted cabinet made by Gepetto. She is destined to save them all on her 28th birthday. The show opens on that birthday, with a little boy, adopted by the evil queen (and the only person in Storybrooke who ages), showing up on her doorstep, identifying himself as the child she gave up for adoption. As things work in a fairy tale universe, she goes back with him and eventually breaks the curse (the kiss of true love -- of a mother for her child -- does the trick). The show keep going after this, and gets much more interesting, in my opinion.
Whew. That's just the premise. It's a little dense.
But really, despite the complicated mechanisms of the plot, the story is pretty simple: It's about repairing shattered families. In this version, Snow White once did love her stepmother, but a terrible event broke that relationship up. Rumpelstiltskin is cursed with evil immortality because he tried to save his son (who -- spoiler -- is the father of Emma's child), and then lost the same son because of a magical separation. Snow and Charming never got to raise their infant daughter, who grew up feeling abandoned, no matter how altruistic the reasoning. Everything in the show that matters comes back to that refrain, and it's handled really well.
The performances are first rate, and have to be to sell the material. (Jennifer Morrison should get an award for being able to deliver the following line like it's a serious, melodramatic soap opera event: "You left me! You left me and let me go to prison... because Pinnochio told you to?" Seriously, how many takes did she need not to crack the hell up every time she tried to say it?) The standout is Robert Carlyle's Rumpelstiltskin, but no one slacks off.
Things I really like:
Emma's son, Henry, may go through phases where he's angry at his adoptive mother -- not for nothing is she called the Evil Queen -- but he doesn't stop loving her or considering her his mom, even when he gets his birth parents back.
When Henry finds out that Emma lied to him about who his father was, he is ROYALLY PISSED OFF. She doesn't get off the hook for it, and shouldn't. The father is also less than pleased that this minor detail of his life had been withheld from him. (This is followed by the spectacle of Emma and Rumpelstiltskin bonding over being shut out. It's kind of nice.) I was seriously expecting the show to blow this off and treat the lie as unimportant, or worse, perfectly in bounds of reasonable behavior. Instead, Emma gets seriously called out by everyone. They forgive her, but no one treats it as anything but a really bad call.
Evil Peter Pan. Who is part of the extended family, FWIW. Robbie Kay is fantastically creepy in the part. Colin O'Donoghue as Hook is also very good, though I have issues with the way the character is used.
The Evil Queen (Regina, by name) is given a sympathetic back story, but it doesn't negate the evil things she does. In the fabulous mid-season closer, she finally understands exactly what she's done, and instead of trying to explain it away, she takes responsibility and makes the sacrifice she needs to make to save everyone. It's a nice character arc. (You can see the season ending cliffhanger here, for a few more weeks, anyway.)
Rumpelstiltskin is just a great villain -- his evil deeds aren't whitewashed, either, but you can also completely buy his decent actions as of a piece with everything that's been shown. He's wonderfully written as well as wonderfully acted. I love the use of the spinning wheel as a literal thread of continuity in his life, from his childhood all the way to the present. It's also a nice nod to the Fates, which he, in essence, operates as.
Things I don't care much about:
Belle. She's okay, but I think they went a step to far in making Rumpelstiltskin the beast and having the whole love story. I guess it makes sense enough in context, and the actors sell it, but I could certainly live without it.
Love triangle with Emma, Baelfire (Rumpelstiltskin's son and Henry's father), and Hook. That's almost in "I really don't like it" territory, but if I wasted energy actively disliking every unnecessary love triangle I run across, I'd be very tired. As it is, I just want them to hurry up and get it over with. (Not one way or another. I'm strongly in the Baelfire camp.) All the people are appealing, and Colin O'Donoghue is really REALLY easy on the eyes, but... really? In a show this focused on repairing a broken family, I'm supposed to be consumed with conflict about this silly thing?
Side characters like Ruby (Red Riding Hood) or Cinderella or Hansel and Gretel. They're fine, but their focus episodes don't seem to bring much to the table.
The Disney versions used. Eh, whatever. I could deal with any version, and the Disney version allows commentary without extra explanation.
Mulan is in love with Aurora. They should have done it the other way.
Things I really don't like:
Frankenstein... you just don't fit. Bad fit altogether.
There were several times I felt like I must have missed a major episode, because characters were now acting on important motivations that seemed like they'd gotten new information... but when I go back and watch the episodes, there's not so much explanation given.
Umm... that's pretty much it.
Anyway, the mid-season break ends on March 9.
My theories:
Bae will have gotten in trouble with magic.
Regina's story arc will come to an end (she doesn't have much else left to do)
Snow and Charming will have another child, and enough time will have passed for the child to participate in the plots.
Henry will have a plot to himself that doesn't involve being saved from someone.
There will be more Robin Hood?
The producers have said that one of the characters will die. Plotwise, my money is on Regina (like I said, not much further to take her arc), but I think O'Donoghue lives in Ireland and has a family there, and might well not want to be roped in as a permanent part of the show, so Hook is also a major possibility.
We know they're bringing in Oz's wicked witch as the new Big Bad. She's somehow summoned by Rumpelstiltskin's sacrifice? Don't know.
At any rate, I forgot about OUaT, but I got bored over the holidays and went looking for something to watch on Netflix streaming. They suggested OUaT, and I reached back into the mists of my memory and said, "Oh, yeah. I remember thinking that might be pretty good."
For those who don't know, the basic premise is that most fairy tales exist in the same continuum -- a realm called The Enchanted Forest -- and Snow White's stepmother, the Evil Queen, decides to get her happy ending by exiling everyone, sans memories, to our world, where there's no magic. This curse is designed by Rumpelstiltskin, who has his own reasons for wanting to come. She creates the town of Storybrooke in Maine (really, and obviously, Vancouver... is it THAT expensive to film in Maine, people?), where she is mayor, and the other fairy tale characters are trapped in a joyless, endless loop, where time never passes.
Before this happened, Snow White and Prince Charming had a baby daughter named Emma, and they saved her from the curse by sending her ahead of it in an enchanted cabinet made by Gepetto. She is destined to save them all on her 28th birthday. The show opens on that birthday, with a little boy, adopted by the evil queen (and the only person in Storybrooke who ages), showing up on her doorstep, identifying himself as the child she gave up for adoption. As things work in a fairy tale universe, she goes back with him and eventually breaks the curse (the kiss of true love -- of a mother for her child -- does the trick). The show keep going after this, and gets much more interesting, in my opinion.
Whew. That's just the premise. It's a little dense.
But really, despite the complicated mechanisms of the plot, the story is pretty simple: It's about repairing shattered families. In this version, Snow White once did love her stepmother, but a terrible event broke that relationship up. Rumpelstiltskin is cursed with evil immortality because he tried to save his son (who -- spoiler -- is the father of Emma's child), and then lost the same son because of a magical separation. Snow and Charming never got to raise their infant daughter, who grew up feeling abandoned, no matter how altruistic the reasoning. Everything in the show that matters comes back to that refrain, and it's handled really well.
The performances are first rate, and have to be to sell the material. (Jennifer Morrison should get an award for being able to deliver the following line like it's a serious, melodramatic soap opera event: "You left me! You left me and let me go to prison... because Pinnochio told you to?" Seriously, how many takes did she need not to crack the hell up every time she tried to say it?) The standout is Robert Carlyle's Rumpelstiltskin, but no one slacks off.
Things I really like:
Emma's son, Henry, may go through phases where he's angry at his adoptive mother -- not for nothing is she called the Evil Queen -- but he doesn't stop loving her or considering her his mom, even when he gets his birth parents back.
When Henry finds out that Emma lied to him about who his father was, he is ROYALLY PISSED OFF. She doesn't get off the hook for it, and shouldn't. The father is also less than pleased that this minor detail of his life had been withheld from him. (This is followed by the spectacle of Emma and Rumpelstiltskin bonding over being shut out. It's kind of nice.) I was seriously expecting the show to blow this off and treat the lie as unimportant, or worse, perfectly in bounds of reasonable behavior. Instead, Emma gets seriously called out by everyone. They forgive her, but no one treats it as anything but a really bad call.
Evil Peter Pan. Who is part of the extended family, FWIW. Robbie Kay is fantastically creepy in the part. Colin O'Donoghue as Hook is also very good, though I have issues with the way the character is used.
The Evil Queen (Regina, by name) is given a sympathetic back story, but it doesn't negate the evil things she does. In the fabulous mid-season closer, she finally understands exactly what she's done, and instead of trying to explain it away, she takes responsibility and makes the sacrifice she needs to make to save everyone. It's a nice character arc. (You can see the season ending cliffhanger here, for a few more weeks, anyway.)
Rumpelstiltskin is just a great villain -- his evil deeds aren't whitewashed, either, but you can also completely buy his decent actions as of a piece with everything that's been shown. He's wonderfully written as well as wonderfully acted. I love the use of the spinning wheel as a literal thread of continuity in his life, from his childhood all the way to the present. It's also a nice nod to the Fates, which he, in essence, operates as.
Things I don't care much about:
Belle. She's okay, but I think they went a step to far in making Rumpelstiltskin the beast and having the whole love story. I guess it makes sense enough in context, and the actors sell it, but I could certainly live without it.
Love triangle with Emma, Baelfire (Rumpelstiltskin's son and Henry's father), and Hook. That's almost in "I really don't like it" territory, but if I wasted energy actively disliking every unnecessary love triangle I run across, I'd be very tired. As it is, I just want them to hurry up and get it over with. (Not one way or another. I'm strongly in the Baelfire camp.) All the people are appealing, and Colin O'Donoghue is really REALLY easy on the eyes, but... really? In a show this focused on repairing a broken family, I'm supposed to be consumed with conflict about this silly thing?
Side characters like Ruby (Red Riding Hood) or Cinderella or Hansel and Gretel. They're fine, but their focus episodes don't seem to bring much to the table.
The Disney versions used. Eh, whatever. I could deal with any version, and the Disney version allows commentary without extra explanation.
Mulan is in love with Aurora. They should have done it the other way.
Things I really don't like:
Frankenstein... you just don't fit. Bad fit altogether.
There were several times I felt like I must have missed a major episode, because characters were now acting on important motivations that seemed like they'd gotten new information... but when I go back and watch the episodes, there's not so much explanation given.
Umm... that's pretty much it.
Anyway, the mid-season break ends on March 9.
My theories:
Bae will have gotten in trouble with magic.
Regina's story arc will come to an end (she doesn't have much else left to do)
Snow and Charming will have another child, and enough time will have passed for the child to participate in the plots.
Henry will have a plot to himself that doesn't involve being saved from someone.
There will be more Robin Hood?
The producers have said that one of the characters will die. Plotwise, my money is on Regina (like I said, not much further to take her arc), but I think O'Donoghue lives in Ireland and has a family there, and might well not want to be roped in as a permanent part of the show, so Hook is also a major possibility.
We know they're bringing in Oz's wicked witch as the new Big Bad. She's somehow summoned by Rumpelstiltskin's sacrifice? Don't know.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Man of Steel review
I like superhero movies. Maybe it's a flaw; I don't know. But I like them. I like their fairly clear-cut battles, and I like their inevitable -- required -- exploration of what it means to be a hero. Sure, the heroes are outsized, but that's because the issues are put under a huge magnifying glass. Also, because it's more fun that way. I like a movie with lots of action, lots of heart, and the bad guys getting pounded in the end, after a challenging struggle. It's old fashioned, and, to paraphrase my favorite line in The Avengers, sometimes you need a little old-fashioned. Or low-brow, if you you'd rather. I'm fine with being low-brow.
I'm not big on the comics they come from, honestly -- too many years, and too much grasping at plot straws to keep the story going. I think the films tend to distill it more and make it more powerful.
I was late to the party with Man of Steel. I'm not even sure how it did at the box office -- I know I didn't hear a soul talking about it, but it seems like people don't talk about movies as much as they used to. I've seen the Nolan Dark Knight movies, and thought they were an interestingly somber take on the subject, but I don't love them. They were smart, but a little cold. I was curious as to what they'd do with the narmiest of all superheroes, Superman. Answer? Smart, but more than a little cold, and not just because a lot of it was set in the Arctic. It was like trying to have a conversation with a well-designed computer that doesn't exactly grok what it's talking about.
So, breaking it down:
Setting
Unlike most Superman movies I've seen, there isn't much focus on setting. We open on Krypton (now mined to oblivion), then there's the middle of ocean, then flashbacks to Smallville, then the Arctic, then a little bit of Metropolis, then a dirt road somewhere, then a spaceship, then... and so on. All of the places had a certain generic flavor to them... including the spaceship, for heaven's sake. There's a neat metal-based technology for visual broadcast, but that's just a special effect. It's hard to feel bad when the Kent house is smashed up, because, well... we haven't been there, not really.
Theme
The savior as outcast, same as the Dark Knight theme. It works, to some extent, but seems an odd choice of conflict, given the decision for the focus of the plot (the quest for the genetic legacy of all Krypton, encoded in Kal-El's cells). With Superman, there's an automatic foundling plot in any version, and this one does in fact call upon him to choose between Krypton and Earth... only he hasn't really bonded with either, at least not on screen, so the only way to get the inner conflict is to sit there and add up the elements, create the inner conflict for yourself (because of course, that's what it would feel like), then try to match it to what's going on. (In other words, of course we know that it would have to be a huge decision between your extinct homeworld and your adoptive world -- how could it not be? -- but the movie takes no time to actually establish it before the choice is on Kal-El.)
Plot
It's the General Zod plot (Kryptonian war criminal seeks out escapee Kal-El). It's added to some genetic engineering, species superiority, and an attempt at forced terraforming, or Kryptoforming, as the case happens to be. It was a decent plot, and it provided Superman with a reasonable foe (Lex Luthor is almost always laughable). It just seemed more like the plot of a second movie -- not because it was the second of the Reeves movies, but for the reason it was the second of the Reeves movies: It's a dense plot that suffers when it's trying to co-exist with an origin story.
There's one dropped plot point that's under my skin, even though I guess it shouldn't be. And it's not so much a plot point as... well. Just before the death of Jonathan Kent, the family is on the road and arguing about Clark's future. Clark demeans the farming the family has been doing... right before a tragedy. That's set up to be significant. During the battle with Zod, Zod taunts Clark with his farm upbringing, which seems set up to somehow reference that. But if there's some pay off to it, I completely missed it. Nothing Clark does in that battle really showcases what he might have learned on the farm. (This is partly because WE DON'T SEE HIM LIVING ON THE FARM. You put the gun over the damned mantel, people. FIRE IT. Ahem.)
Character
I think Nolan's strength is doing intellectually interesting things with the characters, even if they never quite emotionally connect. Clark trying not to hit a bully, Jonathan Kent's kind of fanatic attempt to keep Clark's abilities secret, that sort of thing. Dropping the whole "triangle" with Clark-Lois-Superman was refreshing; it's usually pretty frustrating when she has no clue. And whoa! They showed her being a reporter and tracking him down. Lois was my hands-down favorite improvement here. She's smart, level-headed, and quick to adjust to upsetting circumstances. Three cheers for updating a character who always had a tendency to be a little annoying.
Also, a very strong point was Clark's grief at having to kill his enemy. That's a very real character moment.
Style
Where do you go with style on these? I think I can safely say that stylistically, I am just not a fan of this filmmaker, but a lot of people are. There's not much to be said on the subject of differing tastes and expectations. I don't like weird lighting and grimy colors.
The one thing I will say about the movie in terms of style that I think genuinely didn't work -- as opposed to me just not being crazy about it -- was the non-linear storytelling. Non-lin can be made to work, but it didn't here. The Smallville part of the Superman story is important in establishing the character, and here, it's dropped in with such random dribs and drabs, often interrupting the action, that the character never gets established. Sure, you can say that everyone knows the Superman mythos and it doesn't need to be re-hashed. Except that we don't know that they plan on keeping the character intact. We have to see it. Every time you're making a fresh version, the audience assumes that the rules might well change.
Shrug.
It was okay. I'm not in a rush to go see the sequel (as opposed to my anticipation of The Winter Soldier), but I'll probably remember that it's been out, once it's been out, and check it out on Netflix or Amazon Instant.
I'm not big on the comics they come from, honestly -- too many years, and too much grasping at plot straws to keep the story going. I think the films tend to distill it more and make it more powerful.
I was late to the party with Man of Steel. I'm not even sure how it did at the box office -- I know I didn't hear a soul talking about it, but it seems like people don't talk about movies as much as they used to. I've seen the Nolan Dark Knight movies, and thought they were an interestingly somber take on the subject, but I don't love them. They were smart, but a little cold. I was curious as to what they'd do with the narmiest of all superheroes, Superman. Answer? Smart, but more than a little cold, and not just because a lot of it was set in the Arctic. It was like trying to have a conversation with a well-designed computer that doesn't exactly grok what it's talking about.
So, breaking it down:
Setting
Unlike most Superman movies I've seen, there isn't much focus on setting. We open on Krypton (now mined to oblivion), then there's the middle of ocean, then flashbacks to Smallville, then the Arctic, then a little bit of Metropolis, then a dirt road somewhere, then a spaceship, then... and so on. All of the places had a certain generic flavor to them... including the spaceship, for heaven's sake. There's a neat metal-based technology for visual broadcast, but that's just a special effect. It's hard to feel bad when the Kent house is smashed up, because, well... we haven't been there, not really.
Theme
The savior as outcast, same as the Dark Knight theme. It works, to some extent, but seems an odd choice of conflict, given the decision for the focus of the plot (the quest for the genetic legacy of all Krypton, encoded in Kal-El's cells). With Superman, there's an automatic foundling plot in any version, and this one does in fact call upon him to choose between Krypton and Earth... only he hasn't really bonded with either, at least not on screen, so the only way to get the inner conflict is to sit there and add up the elements, create the inner conflict for yourself (because of course, that's what it would feel like), then try to match it to what's going on. (In other words, of course we know that it would have to be a huge decision between your extinct homeworld and your adoptive world -- how could it not be? -- but the movie takes no time to actually establish it before the choice is on Kal-El.)
Plot
It's the General Zod plot (Kryptonian war criminal seeks out escapee Kal-El). It's added to some genetic engineering, species superiority, and an attempt at forced terraforming, or Kryptoforming, as the case happens to be. It was a decent plot, and it provided Superman with a reasonable foe (Lex Luthor is almost always laughable). It just seemed more like the plot of a second movie -- not because it was the second of the Reeves movies, but for the reason it was the second of the Reeves movies: It's a dense plot that suffers when it's trying to co-exist with an origin story.
There's one dropped plot point that's under my skin, even though I guess it shouldn't be. And it's not so much a plot point as... well. Just before the death of Jonathan Kent, the family is on the road and arguing about Clark's future. Clark demeans the farming the family has been doing... right before a tragedy. That's set up to be significant. During the battle with Zod, Zod taunts Clark with his farm upbringing, which seems set up to somehow reference that. But if there's some pay off to it, I completely missed it. Nothing Clark does in that battle really showcases what he might have learned on the farm. (This is partly because WE DON'T SEE HIM LIVING ON THE FARM. You put the gun over the damned mantel, people. FIRE IT. Ahem.)
Character
I think Nolan's strength is doing intellectually interesting things with the characters, even if they never quite emotionally connect. Clark trying not to hit a bully, Jonathan Kent's kind of fanatic attempt to keep Clark's abilities secret, that sort of thing. Dropping the whole "triangle" with Clark-Lois-Superman was refreshing; it's usually pretty frustrating when she has no clue. And whoa! They showed her being a reporter and tracking him down. Lois was my hands-down favorite improvement here. She's smart, level-headed, and quick to adjust to upsetting circumstances. Three cheers for updating a character who always had a tendency to be a little annoying.
Also, a very strong point was Clark's grief at having to kill his enemy. That's a very real character moment.
Style
Where do you go with style on these? I think I can safely say that stylistically, I am just not a fan of this filmmaker, but a lot of people are. There's not much to be said on the subject of differing tastes and expectations. I don't like weird lighting and grimy colors.
The one thing I will say about the movie in terms of style that I think genuinely didn't work -- as opposed to me just not being crazy about it -- was the non-linear storytelling. Non-lin can be made to work, but it didn't here. The Smallville part of the Superman story is important in establishing the character, and here, it's dropped in with such random dribs and drabs, often interrupting the action, that the character never gets established. Sure, you can say that everyone knows the Superman mythos and it doesn't need to be re-hashed. Except that we don't know that they plan on keeping the character intact. We have to see it. Every time you're making a fresh version, the audience assumes that the rules might well change.
Shrug.
It was okay. I'm not in a rush to go see the sequel (as opposed to my anticipation of The Winter Soldier), but I'll probably remember that it's been out, once it's been out, and check it out on Netflix or Amazon Instant.
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