Ntuple Indemnity

Acknowledgements in literary adaptations on film are getting funnier all the time. I thought I had seen it all when the credits rolled in Troy and it proclaimed itself “Inspired by Homer’s Iliad.” Then I, Robot comes along, and get this: it’s “Suggested by Isaac Asimov.” This is not to say it is wholly uninspired, as the movie has its fair share of qualities, but the adaptation is certainly as loose as it, er, suggests.

A little bit of background: Asimov’s I, Robot is not a single cohesive novel, but rather a collection of nine short stories that take place in the same universe governed by the same laws and sometimes feature the same recurring characters. Together, these stories span the author’s envisioned history of robotics from infancy to near-human natural sophistication. On the other hand, the Alex Proyas film I, Robot can be traced back to a story by screenwriter Jeff Vintar that never came to be, entitled Hardwired. It was later in the stages leading up to the production of the film that the story was integrated into Asimov’s world with all of the conventions that come with it – Alfred Lanning (here played by James Cromwell), Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), the Nestor models, and of course, the Three Laws of Robotics. Curiously, instead of maintaining the name of the IBM-esque industrial behemoth U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, it was changed to “U.S. Robotics”. The real-life U.S. Robotics, which ruled the age of 14.4kbps modems, was a good sport about this and took it with pride – which is more than you can say for the Cyrix lawsuit when Eraser had Arnold Schwarzenegger take on the evil Cyrex Corporation.

If I may say so myself, I am normally lenient when it comes to liberal adaptations from book to film, as long as the film is philosophically consistent as a self-contained entity. For example, the “Scouring of the Shire” chapter in The Lord of the Rings is critical to what J.R.R. Tolkien is trying to say and the cyclical hero’s journey for which he was aiming, but its omission from the final third of the Peter Jackson epic is excusable, since the movie adheres to the guidelines it carved for itself regarding what ideas it wanted to emphasize. The intentions of the source material’s creator are important, but secondary to self-contained consistency. So I don’t mind so much that Proyas’ film plays with the possibility of robots inevitably breaking free of the constraints with which they were created and turning on humanity, when one of the reasons Asimov wrote robot stories at all was to counteract the then-ubiquitous Frankenstein’s Monster stereotype of technology conquering technologist. I don’t even take issue with characters successfully solving problems with gratuitous explosions and gunfire instead of cool-headed logic because it’s not Asimov; I just take issue with them because they are gratuitous.

But if you are going out of your way to quote the Three Laws onscreen at the beginning of your movie, I expect you to follow them. You cannot quote Asimov willy-nilly and lay him down as the source of the behavioural rules that govern robots, only to let those robots violate the rules.

This is where I, Robot runs into a bit of trouble. The movie opens with the apparent suicide of Dr. Lanning, which our hero Spooner (Will Smith) begins to investigate. He rejects the suicide theory and instantly convinces himself that a robot in Lanning’s office of murder, because the extent of his character throughout the entire movie is, “I hate robots.” The robot escapes, and Spooner follows in hot pursuit – only to discover it hidden in the midst of a thousand other robots of the same model. One of the nine stories in Asimov’s anthology, “Little Lost Robot”, presents the same scenario: out of a thousand and one robots, one is a rogue unit not bound by the Three Laws; how might one ferret it out? As with Asimov’s logic puzzles in all of the I, Robot stories, the solution is to subject the robots to a controlled equilibrium where the conflicting Laws each exert a certain gravitation, then identify the one with the anomalous response.

In the movie, Susan Calvin cites the process she used in “Little Lost Robot”, explaining that it was a three-week solution. Spooner, who finds his investigation to be just a tad more deadline-sensitive, pulls out his gun and starts shooting robots – because after all, he hates robots. Somewhere in the mix, a robot peeks to see what is going on, and he identifies it as the culprit. Imagine if they made a movie about Oedipus where he draws a dagger and kills the Sphinx without answering the riddle. Not quite the same, is it? At best, I think they were going for a Gordian Knot of a lateral solution here; and in that case, why frame everything in the Three Laws to begin with? On the surface, I, Robot is an engaging piece, but the Asimov connections never come off as anything more than a superficial bid to capitalize on an established brand identity – and one that was not thought through sufficiently.

I, Robot is essentially a murder mystery that unfolds into something far more sinister, as good murder mysteries should. In literary theory, an entry in the mystery genre is described not as one story, but two: the surface story, which takes the audience through a voyage of deduction and discovery; and the hidden story, which is the sequence of events comprising an underlying truth waiting to be revealed. Here, the hidden story is by far the stronger of the two. The trickling trail of evidence that guides Spooner along a thread from Lanning’s death to the bigger picture is intriguing once revealed in full. The promotional materials like to make this flick look like an action movie, but it most excels as an antecedent action movie. A lot of care went into the construction of a twisting, turning thinker-thriller underneath what the audience sees.

The surface story is worse off, because in several cases it lacks the logical deduction required to draw a line between one major turning point and the next, and instead feels like checking off a to-do list of clues and explanations. Most of the time it consists of Spooner making a wild robot-hating assumption, which either turns out to be either a) right or b) wrong. Not much of a detective, if you ask me. Mysteries are like higher-level mathematics exams: the elegance of the solution lies not in its correctness, but in the process through which a correct solution is found. My advice to I, Robot: for full marks, show your work.

In the current reigning champion of sci-fi whodunits, Minority Report, John Anderton has an unswerving faith in the Precrime system, but knows something is fishy because when he is himself a suspect, he knows the system could not possibly be correct. In I, Robot, Spooner knows something is fishy about the Lanning case because he hates robots. Well, that’s not entirely fair – in that scene, there is a revealing clue that rules out an unassisted suicide – but next thing you know, he’s pointing fingers at USR boss Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood) because his company makes robots, and we all know about Spooner’s attitude towards the dratted things. One of the two is a better movie.

Will Smith is a problem. Spooner is not really a character so much as he is a two-hour walk-on part for Will Smith, only he hates robots. The cheeky Fresh Prince attitude issues really have no place in this movie and serve only as a distraction, and almost everything he says is written to pander to those who might show up at the cinema “to see Will Smith,” an entrenchment of an already bad trend in suiting a film to an actor rather than fitting the actor to the film. As it turns out, Akiva Goldsman, one of the true volatile enigmas of screenwriting whose CV ranges from Batman and Robin to A Beautiful Mind, was hired to do exactly that to the script; the results come out negative. Why pay an A-list actor millions if you are not going to challenge him and make him work? Oh, right – marketing.

One thing for which I, Robot cannot be faulted, though, is its visual look and feel. Alex Proyas knows how to stage an atmospheric genre flick, and the art department deserves a hand for creating a near-future Chicago that, while nothing revolutionary in the face of Spielberg’s recent pseudo-contemporary future aesthetic in both A.I. and Minority Report, at least does us the service of stomping on the bland vision of Asimov’s world we saw in the wholly mediocre Bicentennial Man. The world of I, Robot is full of life and movement, and is filmed with a matching breathless dynamism. Vast images like that of a drained Lake Michigan converted into a robot scrapyard linger in the audience’s memory long after the credits have rolled.

The movie is most faithful to Isaac Asimov in a way you would not expect. Like the author’s works, it stars a cast of uninteresting humans who are closer to being story props than characters, and upstages their humanity with a truly interesting personality in the form of the robot on which the story is focused. In this case it is Sonny (voiced by Alan Tudyk), who is the most flavourful personage among our players. I applaud the nuance of expression in the way he is animated and the artificial, yet inquisitive demeanour he displays when speaking his lines, often some of the better dialogue in the script.

I, Robot tries earnestly and hard to be a thinkpiece above the common crop of summer blockbusters, but give it the intellectual respect it so desires, and its cracks begin to show. It is nonetheless fairly painless to sit through, and mostly entertaining; Will Smith aside, the annoyances come upon reflection. It may have been a far more fruitful endeavour on the part of the producers to stick with Vintar’s Hardwired and never explicitly bring Asimov into it at all, but as with technological progress for good or ill, what’s done is done.

Regular readers can expect my reviews, or more precisely, recommendations of Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Terminal later this week – but first, to some urgent business.

It may be the month of June, but with Christmas less than half a year away, the wishlist compilation has already begun. This year, the item on the top of the list is, one might say, a rather modest request. I will admit, whenever I emphasize the magnitude of importance embodied by this very simple favour, I sound like a mother asking a little boy to clean up his room – but it’s necessary.

Joel Schumacher: please, for the love of all that is good and holy, don’t screw up The Phantom of the Opera.

In the fifties you had your fun, vibrant musicals with the Freddies and Gingers that defined a genre, colourful displays of movie magic with extended surrealist sequences like Gene Kelly’s all-dancing finales to An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain. That is not The Phantom of the Opera. The epic stage adaptations of the sixties that knocked one Best Picture after another out of the park – rival gangs on the mean streets of New York in West Side Story, the loverly Covent Garden by firelit night in My Fair Lady, the whole gamut from Andrews to Anschluss in The Sound of Music, the Artful Dodger’s whirlwind pickpocketing tour of London in the “Consider Yourself” number in Oliver! – that’s what I want from The Phantom of the Opera: grand, romanticist portraiture with a sense of humanity, a new association between memorable songs and memorable scenes, not to mention top-notch symphonic orchestration like John Williams’ Oscar-winning work on Fiddler on the Roof.

We already know about one somewhat major plot change and the addition of a new song. Fine – that’s excusable, and every movie musical pulls off that kind of thing; “Something Good” in The Sound of Music comes immediately to mind. However, here is a sample of things that are not quite so acceptable, many of which are unresolved ambiguities, some of which are hopefully going in the commonsensical direction. Of the latter is “trying to be Chicago and confining musical elements to the stage rather than using the songs as the primary storytelling device.” I liked Chicago, but this is The Phantom of the Opera. Of the former: if the orchestration is not consistent with the music of the period depicted, it is nothing to me. I adore Moulin Rouge! like family, but this is The Phantom of the Opera.

The first public footage was released this weekend in the form of a teaser trailer that shows a fleeting montage of images in rapid succession. Initial impressions are as such: the sets, the costumes, the piece’s appropriateness to the period – that looks fine. The trailer linked above is fairly low-quality, but already it is possible to discern some key shots that pertain to memorable scenes – Meg Giry at the mirror in “Angel of Music”, the chandelier, the cemetary in “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”, the Phantom punting his way down the sewers, “Masquerade” – and they look fairly good. The snow in the cemetary is an especially nice touch.

When adapting a stage production to the screen, especially a musical and more to the point, one of this calibre, one of the foremost criteria for judgment is whether or not it does something with the screen that cannot be done on stage. Primarily this deals with setting and atmosphere. In this respect, things are looking up.

The photography looks dynamic and the colours are gorgeous, but the darkness could be darker – or maybe it’s the fault of the low-quality video in the current trailer. As far as dynamism in cinematography goes, having the odd shot with a twenty-degree rotation is perhaps too modern a styling, but time will tell if this works in context of the finished work.

I sincerely hope the rapid cutting in the trailer is due to the post-production audio work being incomplete and an inability to show off any of the singing in sync with the pictures at this stage, and is no reflection of how the movie will actually be edited. Quick cuts from shot to shot that masked the flourish of the dancing worked for Baz Luhrmann (however debatably), but for the umpteenth time, this is The Phantom of the Opera. I want sustained imagery. The stage production already had sustained imagery, and between media, that’s what films are supposed to be best at creating.

Red flags: none. Uncertainties: many.

Let me make this as clear as possible – and the fact that I am writing in the first person should clue one in as to the degree of seriousness and gravity with which I speak: with The Lord of the Rings out of the way, there is no adaptation in the motion picture industry I care about more than this one. That includes you, Goblet of Fire.

So don’t mess with it. As was the case with The Lord of the Rings, anything less than a serious run for Best Picture is abject disrespect to the source material.

Seriously, Joel: do me this one favour for Christmas, and all is forgiven for Batman and Robin; and let me assure you, I take my Batman seriously.

The Philosopher’s Stone was a screen test: the characters were cast, the sets were built, and we saw the definition of some design conventions that would guide how J.K. Rowling’s imagination would look on film. The Chamber of Secrets was a exercise in refining the execution, with more attention to visual effects and cinematography, and served as a vehicle for Chris Columbus to develop as a director. But now, at long last, we have Alfonso Cuaron’s The Prisoner of Azkaban: the first real Harry Potter movie.

For the first time, we have a Harry Potter film that not only feels complete, but achieves what made the books the phenomenon they are – a balance of gleeful entertainment and meticulous artistry. Steve Kloves’ adaptation of Rowling’s third novel cuts its losses and accepts that some things only work on paper – something that he did to a lesser extent with the first two films – but the big difference is what Cuaron did and Columbus did not, which is recognize there is a lot of unfulfilled cinematic potential lying in the fact that conversely, some things only work on film. Azkaban actively takes advantage of cinema as a medium of expression, and adds a whole new dimension of what the magic of Potter is all about: imagination.

Take, for example, the way the cutting room tackles the passage of time. Because the Potter novels each last a full academic year in what can be perceived as a rather serial fashion, jumping from summer vacation to the first day of school to Halloween to Christmas, there are some inherent pacing issues to resolve. While the first two films negotiate this with jump-cuts that drop requisite visual clues like holiday decorations and the presence or absence of snow, the seasonal transitions in Azkaban are demarcated by a recurring visual gag involving the Whomping Willow, The effect is not only charming, but also serves the literary function of reminding the audience that the Willow is there, and acting as a framework for structural coherence.

This is not the only indication of how the editing work has matured tremendously. The Prisoner of Azkaban is a textbook example of when and how to execute fade-to-blacks for dramatic effect, as whenever Harry is approached by Dementors and falls unconscious to the sound of a woman screaming. On a more general level, the Dementors are everything that the encounter with Voldemort in the Forbidden Forest in The Philosopher’s Stone was supposed to be. Whereas that scene in the first film amounts to all of a cloak floating around a dead unicorn while Harry clutches the lightning scar on his forehead, Cuaron’s vision of the Dementors stops and asks: how is it that one visualizes fear – or soul-sucking, for that matter? Rowling describes the approach of a Dementor as akin to a sinkhole for warmth and happiness; the film conveys this by having these foul creatures freeze everything around them as they pass, with a creeping frost effect very similar to the one in The Day After Tomorrow, only here, it makes sense.

That is what sets The Prisoner of Azkaban apart: its embrace of the medium of cinema defines a magical tone and atmosphere that its predecessors did not possess. Because of this, it stands out as an independent work of art in its own right, instead of relying entirely on Rowling’s contributions alone. The Marauder’s Map is far more than just a leaf of parchment with moving labeled dots on it; it unfolds in all manner of directions like Hogwarts itself, movements are traced with tiny pattering footprints, and the labels themselves are stylized to fit a medieval aesthetic. The Invisibility Cloak is no longer just a close-up of Harry traipsing around under a semi-transparent cloak; it does not stop him from leaving revealing footprints in the snow. The climax is bookended by shots that pass out of Hogwarts and back in through the gears of a large and very symbolic clock, and its initiation – when Hermione activates the Time Turner – is without question the single best moment I have seen in any film this year, a shot that trumps its counterparts in even the most legendary movies that involve the manipulation of time.

The casting work deserves a great deal of recognition, in supporting roles big (Gary Oldman as an appropriately scruffy and bonkers Sirius Black) and small (Lee Ingleby as Stan Shunpike), the best of the lot being David Thewlis’ precisely-in-character performance as new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor Remus Lupin. The concern of the main and recurring characters outgrowing their roles is not too much of a problem at this stage, but definitely shows through (a fancy way of saying, “Gosh, Neville Longbottom is tall”).

What holds the film back is the difficulty of reconciling a consistent linear structure and pace with the complexity of Rowling’s book. In The Prisoner of Azkaban in particular, Rowling constructs her plots very much in the style of Agatha Christie, dropping seemingly unrelated clues to a grand and sinister mystery for ninety percent of a work, then tying them all together in a singular denouement that answers every lingering question in one fell swoop. Even the 1974 film of Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express discovered that with so many interrelated clues, the adaptation process that leads to a coherent screenplay is a game of pick-up-sticks. The remedy that screenwriter Kloves tries this time around, which peels off a few of the outer layers of the mystery and spreads the rest of it out so as to achieve a relatively even distribution of clues and solutions, is an improvement upon the last two films in the sense that the adaptation work seems considered right from pre-production and not in the cutting room; however, the consequence is a barrage of abrupt revelations and name-dropping that would be an information glut for all but those who have a thorough memory of the original work.

To illustrate some of these concerns, I am now going to discuss a plot-specific adaptation issue, so if you have not read the book, go catch up with the text and come back later.

The biggest omission in the film is a critical one, and sorely missed, which is that the identities of Mooney (sic), Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs are never revealed, and Remus Lupin never explains how it is he knows how to operate the Marauder’s Map, even though Snape’s implicit line about Harry getting it “straight from the manufacturers” (in a perfectly executed staging of the scene where Snape catches the boy wizard out of bed at night) remains intact. It would have taken a minute – just one question from our dear inquiring Harry, and an answer in return. It is only excusably problematic that the details of how the whole matter of betrayal and the Secret Keeper charm are never explained, but an understanding of the roles of Lupin, Pettigrew and Black in relation to James Potter is key to what Azkaban contributes to the grander saga, which is an introduction to the dynamic of the parental generation, as well as a clue to the form of either Potter’s Patronus.

It should be emphasized that we do see individual scenes that go into the various relationships with the elder Potter on a one-on-one level. A delightful chat between Lupin and Harry about the latter’s parents whilst all the other students are at Hogsmeade, a scene not in the book, may well be what Rowling referred to as the unintended clue to Book Six. Still, it would have been nice to see such a vital clue tie it all together. As it stands, the fact that Lupin could read the Marauder’s Map at all is a plot hole; and while tackling the Shrieking Shack as a ten-minute dialogue sequence would not have been feasible, whittling it down does make it look like Harry trusts Black’s side of the story far too quickly.

These complaints aside, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is in every way a superior film compared to its two precursors, and the first one that is not only highly watchable, but a lot of fun. No longer does it feel like the whole affair probably looks a lot better on set than it does on screen; and finally, we see some literacy in the language that is unique to cinema. While The Chamber of Secrets was developing this communicative aptitude with key scenes like Tom Riddle’s diary and the fight with the Basilisk, now we have an entire movie that does J.K. Rowling justice, a movie that captures the dark, yet lively spirit of Harry Potter from beginning to end. It could have been longer without penalty, but that does not stop it from already being a must-see for veteran Potterheads and non-fans alike.

Ideally, Alfonso Cuaron should be invited back for at least one Potter movie. Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) is already working on The Goblet of Fire, and I maintain that there is no better person for The Order of the Phoenix than Terry Gilliam, but Cuaron now has a proven record of knowing how to commit Rowling to film.

Next: some equally belated thoughts on the Calgary Flames’ blaze just short of glory.

This story broke two weeks ago, but my intention was to put it off until after I had seen the touring production of Rent at the Jubilee Auditorium, for reasons that will become immediately clear. Before long, E3 and Waterloo DDT got in the way as far as coverage goes, but I digress. The story is that Chris Columbus, whose name will be conveniently lost in history because of a) that fifteenth-century explorer guy and b) Bicentennial Man, is planning to adapt and direct Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer-winning musical.

Even without the supposition that the film adaptation of any seminal work from another medium should immediately raise eyebrows, this is one of those things that you hope turns out way better than it looks on paper. Rent is a mature, contemporary and dynamic work of theatre that deals with the less fortunate denziens of Lower Manhattan – and by “less fortunate” I mean homeless and dying of AIDS, for starters. Then we have Chris Columbus, who has directed exactly two films worth watching, both on the merit of J.K. Rowling (who, by the way, has a brand-spanking-new website that everyone should check out).

Now, not to be an armchair director or anything, but as good as Columbus is at drawing quality performances out of child performers – please ignore Macaulay Culkin for a second – the last thing that any film audience would associate him with is dynamism. Columbus needs to get a top-notch cinematographer on board and work with him to shoot the movie with a tone that matches the rest of the source material, and do what he started doing on The Chamber of Secrets, which is breaking the habit of visualizing scenes with stationary cameras sitting around and watching the soundstage.

The central character of Rent, Mark, is a video artist who documents everything with a handheld he takes everywhere. It would be kind of sad if a director couldn’t live up to the work of one of his characters, no? That in itself proposes an interesting concept: shoot the entire film in handheld, giving it the feel of an urban documentary. As far as I know, it has never been done in an A-list movie musical, though it would not fit anywhere else, whilst for Rent, it’s so perfect that somebody out there should hire me for even mentioning the idea.

Speaking as optimistically as possible, though, this could prove to be a breakout project for Chris Columbus’ skills and reputation as a filmmaker. It’s good to see that he is taking on something challenging that may, in fact, finally provide an opportunity for him to develop.

In any case, I should be far more concerned about Joel Schumacher marching into sacred territory with The Phantom of the Opera, but casting Emmy Rossum as Christine indicates that he’s doing something right. I say that solely on the basis of Rossum’s brief role in Mystic River, and it would be best if next week’s The Day After Tomorrow does not shatter that perception.

Back in October I wrote about my concerns on the subject of adapting Watchmen to film, particularly if David Hayter was going to direct.

Chuck those out the window. Ain’t It Cool News finally lives up to its name and reports that the director attached to the project is none other than Darren Aronofsky. Hayter is still on board from the writing aspect, which is encouraging, but bringing an established independent-film veteran with a proven record behind the camera is even moreso. This is, in as few words as possible, a step in the right direction.

It’s clear what has to happen from this point onwards. David Hayter, do what you did with X2 and not what you did with X-Men – polish a script that doesn’t get lost in a forest of some of the most well-defined costumed heroes in the entire comics medium. Darren Aronofsky, work the same kind of chilling visual magic and style you brought to Requiem for a Dream. The potential here is nothing short of doing justice to the paragon of comic-book literature in the same way Peter Jackson did justice to the paragon of fantasy literature; you can either beeline straight to the Oscars, or screw it up completely. I would prefer the former.