{"id":2519,"date":"2010-06-18T17:26:55","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T22:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=2519"},"modified":"2019-12-15T16:45:56","modified_gmt":"2019-12-15T21:45:56","slug":"no-more-gritty-reboots-part-1-the-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=2519","title":{"rendered":"No More Gritty Reboots! Part 1 — the Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Alex Jacobs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today I have the pleasure of hosting the first part of an insightful rant by pen-friend Alex Jacobs. Alex graduated from Beloit College in 2005 with a degree in creative writing, literary studies, and rhetoric and discourse. In addition to amateur literary criticism, he currently teaches ballroom in Philadelphia, PA. Alex’s personal writings reside at Suburbaknght<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I’m sick of gritty reboots.<\/p>\n

I was going to make a joke here about gritty reboots being the new black, but that doesn’t work. A gritty reboot just takes something and puts black on it. Don’t get me wrong, a gritty reboot can be fantastic (Batman Begins)<\/em> but it can also be atrocious (Daredevil)<\/em> or pointless (The Hulk, Star Trek)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I have to lay most of the problem at the feet of Batman Begins. Batman Begins<\/em> was a fantastic movie, the reasons for which Hollywood seems to have missed entirely. Batman Begins<\/em> took a superhero who’s always had a problem with camp and whose latest films had spiraled into self-parody and got rid of all the extraneous bullshit. Instead of ridiculous bat-themed gadgets we had tools that were actually useful and based on real technology. Instead of Gotham as a bright neon Blade Runner<\/em> knock-off we got a shadow-shrouded city that was as much of a character as any of the actors. Instead of Three Stooges-esque comedy fight sequences we got commando-style combat encounters that truly felt threatening due to their violence.<\/p>\n

These were great, but they weren’t what made Batman Begins<\/em> a great movie. Batman Begins<\/em> was great because it was populated by real characters. Bruce Wayne wasn’t interesting because he angsted but because his angst was a realistic and sympathetic reaction to what he’d gone through. Christopher Nolan and David Goyer wrote someone who was crazy enough that we all believed he could become Batman and but was still sympathetic enough that we wanted to observe the process. Batman Begins<\/em> was about character.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Hollywood didn’t pay attention to that. They saw sets with low illumination and characters with tragic pasts and said, “Aha! Keep everything dark! That’s what makes a great movie!”<\/p>\n

No, no, no, no, no!<\/p>\n

To paraphrase Aristotle, if characters in a drama behave in a believable manner and experience logical consequences because of that behavior, at the conclusion of the story the audience will experience \u201ca useful fear.\u201d It doesn’t matter if the circumstances aren’t realistic so long as the characters act in a believable fashion given the circumstances, because we will continue to identify with the characters and take something away from their experiences. That requires real characters.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Spiderman 3<\/em> was a fairly dark movie but the characters were morons. People don’t hate it because of the dance sequence and emo hair \u2013 they hate it because the dance sequence and emo hair are out of character, coming completely out of left field. Don\u2019t believe me? Check out Doug \u201cThat Guy With the Glasses\u201d Walker\u2019s five-second movie. The first season of Heroes<\/em> was amazing because it was filled with fascinating characters who behaved like real people despite the absurdity of dormant superhero genes, because we believed them when they reacted to such genes. The subsequent seasons fell apart because the story began to dominate the characters, and once that happens you realize how insipid the story really is.<\/p>\n

I’m truly worried about Spiderman’s<\/em> gritty reboot. I’m worried it’s going to be all grit and the producers are going to forget what made the first two movies so wonderful in the first place.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the issue of rebooting origin stories. The origin story is the easiest to portray because it’s easier to sympathize with a normal person going through changes than a superhero dealing with being a superhero, but we need stories that go beyond puberty and mid-life crisis metaphors (X-Men<\/em> and Iron Man<\/em> respectively). We need stories about what it means to live in the new life you’ve created for yourself. Batman Begins<\/em> was a great film but it was The Dark Knight<\/em> that truly had something to say, and it was a message our society needs very badly.<\/p>\n

Hollywood, don’t keep being gritty for the sake of being gritty and don’t keep rebooting because it’s easier to start over than to go forward. I want to see:<\/p>\n

– A Superman<\/em> movie that makes use of the “alien among us” concept to deal with 21st century loneliness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

– A Spiderman<\/em> movie that uses choosing between two dreams as a theme and not a cheap way to raise the stakes.<\/p>\n

– An X-Men<\/em> movie that contrasts the team’s bemoaning their outsider status with the Brotherhood’s celebration of it (though one scene in X-2<\/em> did this very well).<\/p>\n

I want stories that matter and characters I care about, not just endless dark-framed long shots followed by closeups of the heroes’ faces.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Images that linger, characters and connections that matter: Bruce brainstorms with Alfred in Batman Begins <\/em>(Christian Bale, Michael Caine); Wolverine risks his life to heal Rogue in X-Men<\/em> (Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin); Theo and Marichka risk theirs to take Kee and her newborn daughter to safety in Children of Men<\/em> (Clive Owen, Oanna Pellea, Claire-Hope Ashitey).<\/p>\n

Related posts:<\/strong>
\nThe String Cuts Deeper than the Blade<\/a>
\nSet Transporter Coordinates to… (the Star Trek reboot)<\/a>
\nLab Rat Cinema: Monetizing the Reptile Brain<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alex Jacobs Today I have the pleasure of hosting the first part of an insightful rant by pen-friend Alex Jacobs. Alex graduated from Beloit College in 2005 with a degree in creative writing, literary studies, and rhetoric and discourse. In addition to amateur literary criticism, he currently teaches ballroom in Philadelphia, PA. Alex’s personal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-biology-and-culture","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}