Making a Better Film

For all that I'm a little tiny bit of a nerd, possibly going as far as to be mildly eccentric, I've never really been into comic books. You all know from previous posts that I enjoy a bit of Manga, but I've not spent countless hours reading Batman or becoming familiar enough with the back story behind the X-Men that I can accurately critique the films when they arrive. I suspect my delight in Manga is that there is much of it aimed squarely at the females amongst us! In fact, I think what I most love about Manga is that there is at least some aimed at SO many niche areas of society. And I'll say NO more!

So, back to the comic books. My knowledge, therefore, of many all-American comic book hero (or villain, for that matter) relies (almost) entirely on the films I have seen. THIS is why it's no good my brother saying, on hearing my criticism of Daredevil, "But it was very true to the comic!", to which my response was something on the lines of, "But I had no idea what was happening. I've never read the comic." The problem is that these films must be able to stand on their own, because by the very nature of film, it's likely to be more accessible to the average not-geek than a comic book

And so to the films. You know what I've really enjoyed about many of the recent Comic based films? Time. The film maker has taken the time to build the world in which our hero lives, he's taken the time to develop the characters. Look at Kick Ass as we move carefully through the world of a seemingly average high school nerd as we get to know our hero and his friends. We see the forces leading to his donning of the ugly green suit, and we know of the frustrations shaping his intentions. The director has seen fit to allow us this time to sink into our hero's world. I say "seemingly average" because no nerd I've ever met was that fit, and had that few spots.

Iron Man - apart from a (forgive me) kick-ass sound track, the film works well for me because time was taken to build (cough) the Iron Man. The scene in the movie where Tony Stark was trying to fly the new suit - unsuccessfully, as it happened - is genuinely funny. A reminder that not everything works first time round, maybe. The film is story-oriented, for all that the story it has to tell is somewhat fantastic.

And I'm getting used to this. I'm getting accustomed to NOT having a film which is merely a sequence of set pieces where things blow up. For me, the least memorable part of Iron Man is the final ending, where all hell has broken loose, and the two "Iron" men are fighting. Sure, there's a certain satisfaction to some of the scenes of carnage (the beginning, in the mountains, with the Jericho - that is enjoyable), but many of the scenes where you know the outcome ("Yawn! This is where the bad guy gets it...") seem to be stretched out too far. I suppose when you have a virtually indestructible entity in a film, you're going to need an equally indestructible opponent. And then it just comes down to a basic, and usually rather unimaginative, slugging match.

And then we arrive at the inevitable sequel. You can just hear the marketing men at the studios:
"We have to do a sequel - it'll make millions!"
"And we'll put in more action - the kids love that."

And this is where it all falls down for someone of my age. I've seen action in films. I was there when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, starting from the quietest of openings to one of the best action sequences EVER in a movie within the first few minutes. I can honestly say that I'd never seen anything like it! But just because we launched into action almost with the credits, doesn't mean that the story was neglected.

Sometimes I feel that we're being force fed vengeance. The bad guy is SO bad he has to suffer as he dies. You can't kill him quickly, that'd be too good for him. Hmmm - I'm not convinced. He's going to be dead, and usually that's quite good enough for me. Great deaths - Hans Gruber in Die Hard. Major Toht in Raiders of the lost Ark. The Terminatior in The Terminator (crushed, quickly, in a mechanical press), and Emil's death in Robocop. See - quick, but sometimes shocking deaths, which stick with you for much longer. I feel jaded by the insistence on dragging it all out. I'm bored by the way people are melted, squealing in that high-pitch, made so popular by the "dying" ED209 in Robocop. Now there was a superb film!

I'm not saying that there's no place for Revenge in a film - many great films based on some kind of vendetta (not least, V for Vendetta), I'm saying that in trying to find ever more imaginative ways for the bad guy to die, it becomes painful - for me.

And while I shouldn't, I'm going to have a bit of a go at the trend for everything to work out well. I remember my first foray into Eastern Cinema - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. What a beautiful film. What a fabulous story! What's that? The hero DIES?? In fact, for a while we had a joke that you could tell a Chinese film from a Korean film by seeing who died. In Chinese films, very often one of the main heroes will die, as well as many of the bad guys. In Korean films, EVERYBODY dies!

American films - all the bad guys die, the good guys not only don't die, everything works out well, and the guy gets the girl (which was tremendously creepy in Ghost Town with Ricky Gervais). You can tell how important a bad guy someone is by the time and method of death in the film. Offed early - you were SO not important on a scale of 1 to Badass. Offed in the middle of the film? Sorry, trusted, but you were never really going to cut it - really, it's a mercy killing. Offed at the end - Don Corleone was probably your brother.

I suspect my thoughts on this would be considered, by the big studios, the ramblings of a senile old woman, who should clearly be given a box-set of films with that Nice James Stewart, patted on the hand and sent to the mad-aunt chair in the corner. After all - the first film did well, how can the sequel be anything other than truly mind-blowing when we've stuffed SO MUCH more into it?

While I've rambled (no, really?) from the point of Comic Book adaptations, you can see that I have my concerns about the planned Kick-Ass sequel (sadly, not to be titled "Kick-Ass: Revenge of Red Mist"). For me, that film is as close to perfect as I've seen since The Shawshank Redemption - and so I have my fingers firmly crossed in anticipation. In fact with a few exceptions ( Daredevil, Catwoman and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are notably awful), it all falls down on the sequel. Sometimes you get a couple of good films from a franchise (X-Men 1 and 2 were fun, but the third was horrible) before it all veers horribly off the rails (Batman 4? Anyone? Hell, even Batman 3 was ghastly, despite the adorable Nicole Kidman and the not-ugly Val Kilmer). I am hard pressed to think of a series of ANY films which don't get worse as they go along. Oh, hang on - Harry Potter. Patchy, granted, but film 4 was an improvement over film 3, and film 5 (the worst book, IMHO) is the best so far.