The Books That Made Me

If you visit Waterstone’s regularly, or even if you’ve just poked your head around the door of one of their shops recently, you may be aware of their campaign ‘The Book That Made Me’. It’s simple enough. Members of the public, Waterstone’s employees and even a few celebrities contribute a few paragraphs, or even just a couple of sentences, about the book that has most influenced their lives. As the website puts it:

“Books are powerful things. They can introduce us to new ideas. Give us the courage to do what we couldn't do before.

Even transform our lives completely.”

I’ve seen a few friends contribute, and I’ve been thinking about it myself over the last few days – the only problem being that I can’t narrow it down to just one! So I’ve cheated, and chosen three.

Book the First: SuperFudge, by Judy Blume

Peter Hatcher's little brother is four. And he's as monstrous as ever! When Fudge discovers that his new baby sister can't play with him, he tries to sell her. When that doesn't work, he tries giving her away. And on his first day at school he kicks his teacher and calls her Rat face. Can his big brother help him out again?

It’s a simple enough story. Fudge (real name Farley Drexel, which he hates for perhaps obvious reasons), is a classic mischievous kid, and when he inevitably acts up, hilarity ensues. And that’s why I loved it, because it was truly hilarious. It was one of my dad’s favourite books to read to me, and we’d both be cracking up by the time lights out came along.

Of course, I’ve read lots of hilarious books over the years, but while SuperFudge wasn’t the first funny book I’d read (or had read to me, as the case might be), and it may not have been the first book I read, it is certainly the first book I remember reading, and the first book that I remember truly loving, along with the other books in the series. Reading is an enormous part of my life. I read dozens of books a year, I studied English Literature to post-grad level, and I’m attempting to pursue a career in anything at least vaguely connected to books (although not doing terribly well!). I give SuperFudge, and Judy Blume, an awful lot of credit for fostering the love of books in me.

Book the Second: Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett

'Holy Wood is a different sort of place. People act differently here. Everywhere else the most important things are gods or money or cattle. Here, the most important thing is to be important.' Alchemists have always thought that they can change reality, shape it to their own purpose. Imagine then the damage that could be wrought on the Discworld if they get their hands on the ultimate alchemy: the invention of motion pictures, the greatest making of illusions. It may be a triumph of universe-shaking proportions. It's either that or they're about to unlock the dark secret of the Holy Wood hills - by mistake...

I probably read this when I was too young by half. Not only did most of the jokes probably go over my head – it’s a fantasy comedy about the arrival of cinema to a quasi-medieval world, and I still haven’t seen half the films referenced – but I distinctly recall my mother being unimpressed that my father had let me read a book with such bad language in (Pratchett not being above a good swear word, although nothing too foul; on the other hand, I was about nine when I read it). That’s not what makes it special though. What makes it special is that it is, as far as I can recall, the first fantasy novel I’d ever read.

The reason for that, probably, is the cover more than the writing.

You have to admit, it’s striking, and not just for the improbably physique of the leading lady (Josh Kirby never particularly bothered getting his cover art accurate, per se; he was far more interested in creating cool art, and while his successor, Paul Kidby, is a ‘better’ artist in the sense that his art actually resembles the characters on the page, he’s often nowhere near as interesting). It was striking enough to make me want to read it, despite not understanding the book at anything other than surface level – which isn’t terribly complex, it being the story of magical monsters invading the Disc before being stopped – and I credit Moving Pictures with being the first proper fantasy book I read. The rest, as they say, is history; fantasy is without doubt my favourite genre, whether we’re talking literature, television, film or videogame. Probably ninety percent of the things I read or watch today can likely be traced back to me reading this book all those years ago. So you can blame Pratchett.

Book the Third: Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling

I’m not bothering with a summary for this! And I’m cheating a little, and taking the whole series rather than any one single entry within it.

This one’s simple. Sort of. In the aftermath of Half-Blood Prince, a friend introduced me to fanfiction, which I read quite a lot of over the next couple of years. A lot of it was pretty bad, and it was during my first year at university that I first thought “I can do better than this.” So I started writing, and…well, looking back I probably didn’t do much better than those stories I’d scoffed at, but the seed was planted. Six or seven years later, and I love writing. It’s really my one ambition in life, although I’m not terribly good at actually getting beyond the planning stage. It will happen though; I have so many stories I want to tell one day.

And there we go. The book that made me love reading. The book that made me love fantasy. And the book(s) that made me love writing.

Man of Steel

Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne, Russell Crowe, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Antje Traue

Directed by: Zak Snyder

Written by: David S. Goyer

Produced by: Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer

So where do we stand on Superman?

He’s a polarising superhero, it has to be said. Pick a random stranger on the street, and there’s a decent chance they’ll dismiss him as the big blue boy scout (not to be confused with the other big blue boy scout, Captain America). Too powerful to be interesting, too nice to be entertaining. Outdated, cheesy. Personally, I fall on the side that says he’s a great character, but difficult to write well. He’s more purely heroic than certainly any other of the most popular comic book characters, and in the wrong hands that can certainly come off as dull. Get him write though, and he becomes someone truly admirable.

Whatever else they think of him, the Nolan/Goyer team, so successful with their recent trilogy of Batman films, clearly subscribe to the opinion that Supes is, if not necessarily outdated, then certainly in need of a bit of a spring clean. It worked with Batman, for the most part, but Superman is a slightly different beast. Making him more realistic in the same vein they did Batman just wasn’t going to work. Thankfully, Man of Steel sticks fairly close to established mythology in all but a few key areas, which are changed to mixed effect.

The film kicks off with a bang, which is no surprise. Snyder has a variable reputation as a director, but one quality which has never been in doubt is his ability to craft a stonking action scene. What is a surprise is how long the films spends on Krypton, establishing the backstory. It’s probably a good half hour at least before we even get to Earth, never mind getting Cavill on screen. It’s an early indication that MoS suffers from what we might call Hobbit Syndrome. While it would be unfair to say that the intro is bad – quite the opposite in fact – it is without question bloated, particularly because there’s a scene later in the film that recaps all the pertinent knowledge in an artistically interesting fashion, so aside from kicking off with an action scene, and giving Russell Crowe something to do to earn his paycheque, it’s hard to justify it. Yes, it shows an interesting interpretation of Krypton, taking inspiration from Avatar, Ancient Rome and the Halo games, but it could have been at least twenty minutes shorter. Hell, the starting point for any Superman story is a planet blowing up, so any action scene is going to be rendered a little redundant.

You can’t even make the argument that it’s a long wait for the next set-piece. Early trailers had suggested a more philosophical approach to the story, long on grey backgrounds, deep moral musing/whining, and short on Superman punching through buildings. There was much talk of Clark Kent wandering around trying to ‘find himself’. Well, once Cavill arrives on screen, it’s maybe five minutes before he’s leaping into action, albeit sporting a beard rather than a cape, and showing off his terrifyingly chiselled chest rather than the famous S symbol. It’s an impressive introduction to the character.

The following section is probably, all in all, the best section of the film. Cavill isn’t just a pretty face, bringing charm and depth to both Clark and Superman, and his journey from good-hearted drifter to god-like hero is genuinely engaging. He is matched by Amy Adams as long standing love interest Lois Lane, who is handled rather well, certainly better than female leads traditionally fare in super-hero movies. True, she’s a somewhat two dimensional character at best, but given that those two dimensions consist of her actually living up to her reputation as a crack reporter and kicking ass, it seems churlish to criticise. Adams and Cavill spark off each other nicely, too, although romance is more or less left for the inevitable sequel.

It is in this section that the more realistic tone of the film, and the more obvious changes to previous mythology are introduced. Some are smart, logical revisions; for instance, the military are far from keen on the idea that there’s an alien with super-strength and laser eyes living in America. It isn’t a totally original idea, but it’s new to the films, and it’s a nice example of the realistic vision serving the film well. Arguably less successful are the flashbacks to Clark’s childhood. In and of themselves, they aren’t bad, but Kevin Costner’s Jonathan Kent is badly fumbled, turning him from a moral compass to a scared, almost paranoid figure who, in one disastrous writing choice, seems to argue the merits of letting a bus full of kids die rather than Clark using his abilities. It’s even more infuriating because just one change in dialogue – the existing ‘Maybe’ to an ‘I don’t know’ – would still have conveyed the doubt and fear that makes the scene interesting without making Jonathan come across as the coward the scene paints him as. Clark’s backstory is the main area that would have benefited from a briefer visit to Krypton; strip out ten minutes of Russell Crowe on a dragon, and stick in another scene of Clark and Jonathan, or even a scene of Clark interacting with people his own age who aren’t treating him like dirt, and a multitude of sins would have been forgiven.

But then you get to the last hour of the film, and you’ll probably forget most if not all of the issues you might have had, because God damn this is a film that knows how to showcase superhero violence. Remember New York getting trashed in Avengers Assemble? Blown out of the water. When Superman and Zod clash, it’s like watching two different disaster movies hit the same location. The action in Man of Steel is just staggering, and it’s a good thing because most of that last hour is almost entirely people punching each other, or people shrugging off the massed might of the US military like the soldiers are armed with pea-shooters.

If you aren’t interested in such pyrotechnics, then Man of Steel probably isn’t for you. This isn’t to say there isn’t a lot else to like. Quite apart from Cavill and Adams, there are a whole host of good performances; Shannon adds subtle depth to Zod beyond rampaging psychopath, while Crowe is a Jor-El you can both respect and picture yourself having a beer with. Most memorable though is Antje Traue, as Zod’s second-in-command Faora; defiantly one-note, but brutal, terrifying, and not so much scene stealing as smashing everyone else off the screen. A lot of the direction and filming is beautiful, with a shot of Clark drifting in the sea surrounded by whales a haunting, wonderful image that is all the more memorable for being almost utterly irrelevant to the film as a whole. It’s simply there for the art of it. Somewhat shockingly, there’s even a lightness of touch that might just have you laughing at points throughout the film. Most importantly, the Nolan/Goyer/Snyder team have succeeded in their aim – a respectful, faithful, but modernised and suitably realistic depiction of Superman. He’s not the infallible god most see him as, but you can see the seeds of that future, which is all you can reasonably require of an origin story.

However, for all of that, of the two hour plus running time, roughly half of it is action of one sort or another. Action fatigue can and will set in, and it will be then that you start to think about the negatives outlined above. If you’re comfortable watching super-powered aliens beating seven kinds of hell out of each other, then you’re going to love it. If not…maybe give it a miss.

Oh, and if you’re more than passingly knowledgeable about religion, brace yourself for the least subtle Messianic imagery since…well, probably since the New Testament.

Should you see Pacific Rim?

There’s a film coming out soon: Pacific Rim. It’s directed by Guillermo del Toro, and it revolves around monsters – kaiju, specifically, those being Japanese SF monsters, the most famous of which is Godzilla – being fought by enormous mecha (big robots).  IMDB puts it at having an estimated budget of $180 million, and judging from the trailers you can see every last bit of that up on the screen.

Basically, it’s a summer blockbuster that seems to have a stupidly high level of OTT action, it seems to be  full of geeky references, and it looks beautiful. That puts it at least two points ahead of the Transformers films, if nothing else, and unlike Michael Bay, del Toro is actually a director you can respect, whether he’s crafting a haunting and nightmarish Spanish fairy tale or a film about a cigar smoking demon beating up elves.

So why, apparently, is it predicted to be a flop?

If Variety magazine is to be believed, audiences (for which you can read American audiences, I assume) are more interested in Grown Ups 2, a new Adam Sandler comedy, and certain sections of the internet have taken this as a cue to begin a crusade encouraging people to go see Pacific Rim, on the basis that it’s going to be so much better than another comedy sequel. Leaving aside the inherent snobbery in that belief, I’m forced to wonder why.

Let’s break it down, reason by reason:

Point the first: it’s directed by Guillermo del Toro. This is a definite plus. I love del Toro. Not seen all of his stuff - precious little, actually - but what I have seen is outstanding, and Pan’s Labyrinth is one of the best films I’ve ever seen. He brings enormous heart to all the films I’ve seen, and the Hellboy films prove he knows how to handle an action scene, so on the one hand I’m quite comfortable assuming he’ll make something special of Pacific Rim.

On the other hand…everyone has a bad day. Just because someone’s produced something wonderful previously doesn’t mean they’re going to achieve it all the time. Saying that a film deserves to do well because it’s got a director with a good track record is nonsense. Furthermore, there are people who seem to think that telling people del Toro is at the helm is going to make them sit up and pay attention. Well, while he is an outstanding director, he’s not exactly A-list. His most famous films are obscure comic book adaptations and a foreign-language fairy-tale that can easily be mistaken for a horror movie. All are great, at least one is an award winner, although not in the big ones, but none exactly broke into the public consciousness. More importantly, his most recent big production was in 2008.

Point the second: Pacific Rim looks awesome. Undeniably true; I was sold on that the moment I saw one of the robots clutching an oil tanker as an offensive weapon. How can you not like that? And as I said above, quite apart from the ridiculously awesome action scenes, it looks beautiful, like Avatar beautiful, and whatever I might say about the story and writing in that film, I’ll cheerfully admit to spending the first twenty minutes or so slack jawed in awe.

But what about the characters? What about the story? Don’t get me wrong, I like a mindless action film as much as the next geek, but if I’m going to fork out for a cinema ticket, I want to have a little more than cool smackdowns. If I want to see awesome action, I’ll go see Man of Steel again; proper superhero fights and a beating heart.

I’m sure there is one in Pacific Rim - I can’t imagine del Toro making a film without something more than robots and monsters beating the hell out of each other - but it hasn’t been properly indicated. This is a film marketed solely on Rule of Cool, and while that’s sure to be entertaining to watch, it isn’t necessarily going to pull in big numbers. There’s only one actor in it who’s even close to being a big name - Idris Elba, and even he’s not exactly guaranteed to be recognised in the street - and while that’s by no means a bad thing, it means there aren’t going to be many people going “Oh, it’s that guy, I like him. Maybe I’ll check this out." There’s been no hint of a particularly deep plot, as far as I can see, not even much hint of what the characters are going to be like. The Transformers films are dreadful, but at least from the trailers you get the impression that there’s going to be a little more to them than stupid-awesome action (even if the final product proves you wrong).

Point the third: it’s original, not a sequel. Well…I’d say that’s a questionable stance to take. Sure, it isn’t based on anything, but…it’s a film about giant robots beating up bigger monsters. That’s not original. That’s Power Rangers. Additionally, while the monsters themselves might have been designed for the film, as I said above they’re specifically designed to be part of a long tradition of Japanese SF, and anyone with even a cursory knowledge of anime is going to be aware of the prominence of mecha. Even leaving that aside though, why is originality so revered? Just because something is original doesn’t mean it’s good. If you want to take a stance of supporting a film simply because it isn’t a sequel, more power to you, but that doesn’t automatically make it good.

Point the fourth: the cast has lots of People of Colour and women in. Thus, the film is to be admired because it doesn’t simply conform to the inherent racism and sexism of Western society. Well, great. That’s certainly a good thing; God knows it makes a change not to have a uniformly white male cast. But actually, the colour and gender of your cast doesn’t make a scrap of difference to the quality of the film. Good thing does not necessarily equal good film; it’s like saying that because a film has a lot of money spent on it then it must be good, and I hope I don’t need to give a list of examples as to why that argument doesn’t work.

I think it’s going to do better than people might think, and I hope it does, because I’m sure there’s more to it than it appears, but equally, I think there’s an argument to be made that given its marketing campaign, it perhaps doesn’t deserve to do that well. There have been a fair few trailers and behind the scenes clips, it’s been promoted at conventions…the works. But it hasn’t exactly been blazed over television, or been particularly talked about beyond geek crowds. If you market a film almost exclusively at one section of your potential audience, then you don’t get to complain when nobody else goes to see it.

In a sense, this is about more than Pacific Rim. I’ve laid out some reasons why it might not be a smash hit, but what interests me more is the attitude fans seem to be displaying in its defence. I mentioned the determination to have it beat Grown Ups 2 earlier; those people don’t quite seem to see the irony that they’re not interested in Grown Ups 2 for exactly the same reasons others aren’t interested in Pacific Rim. Where one camp doesn’t laugh at any of the jokes, another camp looks at the giant robots and shrugs. And as I said, we’re not exactly talking generic comedy vs sophisticated drama here. We’re talking about a film where the main focus is punch ups between monsters and robots. The snobbery is bad enough, but if you’re going to be a snob at least be a snob about a film you can say something about other than “It’s going to be so awesome!” It’s even worse because so much of the support for Pacific Rim is based on ‘It seems to be’, or ‘It looks like’, and other such phrases; there’s no concrete evidence for anything other than badass smackdowns.

It’s symptomatic of both the best and the worst things about fandoms, really. Fandoms can be tremendous sources of enthusiasm, love and creativity, and even with everything I’ve said here, it is heartening to see people support something they love. But all too often, a lot of fans seem to forget that just because they like something, other people are entitled not to like it. If you want proof of that, just pop onto a website that has discussions about Doctor Who. With Pacific Rim, I can understand the desire to get people to go see it, I really can, for all that I’ve pointed out various flaws in the arguments being made. Hell, I probably will go and see it, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it, and if it turns out to be a sophisticated, heartfelt piece of cinema that happens to have lots of cool monsters and robots, I’ll cheerfully hold my hands up and admit that.

I just wish that some of the fans weren’t making me feel like a bad geek for not being enthused about it, particularly because it’s all on the basis of trailers.