Ntuple Indemnity

Alas, it appears that my personal ambition to direct the world’s first A-list movie based on a video game may be in jeopardy. John Woo, who has emerged the Hong Kong to Hollywood transition with only mild vocational injuries compared to the likes of, say, Tsui Hark, has optioned the rights to Metroid. John Woo will never read this post, but here are some comments regardless.

Metroid is a unique challenge in that the games are a series of solo pieces with no character interaction – just a silent heroine running around exploring a mysterious and atmospheric sci-fi environment and shooting up silent enemies. The plots are voyages of discovery, an expository technique that does not transfer well to a film placed in front of an audience with no control over what is going on.

This is an opportunity to establish a video game movie renaissance – though I suppose “renaissance” falsely implies that game movies have ever been worthwhile – not unlike the market’s current saturation with comic book adaptations. The reason why the comic book movie is such a popular genre right now is because for the most part, the material is treated with respect and visual acumen; let’s ignore the Halle Berry pseudo-Catwoman for a second. Marvel Comics saved itself by entrusting its franchises to the likes of Sam Raimi and Ang Lee, directors with a track record of knowing a thing or two about visual communication. This is why the hottest comic book property in development right now is Batman Begins: Chris Nolan knows how to make a movie. John Woo is the first really estalished director to attach himself to a video game franchise, so this opportunity had best not go wasted.

The other reason for the success of the current rebirth of bringing comics to film, regardless of how watchable the films are themselves, is because the showpieces in the genre capture the colour and vibrance of the comic book medium without treating comics as silly, juvenile or inferior. If something is to be stylistically faithful to its source material, it must respect its source material’s medium and adjust accordingly. For instance, The Lord of the Rings worked on the basis of taking a fantasy world very, very seriously.

Yet some frequent mistakes on the part of comic book movies are similarly in need of being rectified, should Metroid go ahead. We are essentially talking about an adventure starring a solo costumed hero, so there are two approaches. One, the 1989 Batman route of diving right into the hero’s mission and carrying it through the entire movie, with only passing connections to the hero’s origin. This is the preferred route. The danger with the second approach – the Superman and Spider-Man method of focusing on the origin story for half the movie, and leaving fully-fledged good-evil conflicts to future instalments – is that it tends to result in movies that are heavy in the first half. Superman and Spider-Man delivered their best in the origin stories, leaving paper-thin hero-villain conflicts underdeveloped. This basically ruined the first X-Men, but thankfully, X2 picked up the ball. However, Metroid does not have the guarantee of a sequel. If there is no attempt to gamble on a multi-part franchise right from the beginning – and there probably shouldn’t be one – we need to see Samus make it all the way to Mother Brain in the span of two hours. The titular character of Daredevil made it all the way to Wilson Fisk in ninety minutes, origin story included, which killed any prospects of developing either a story or a franchise.

Now, nobody pretends that in the public at large, the Metroid franchise is intrinsically a ticket-selling franchise. In terms of name recognition, it is equivalent to a Hellboy or Punisher at best. That should give Woo some room to manoeuvre when striking a balance between an atmospherically faithful adaptation (i.e. not Super Mario Bros.: The Movie) and making a coherent film. However, everything about John Woo’s development as a director since his entry into the American system rings alarm bells about his possibly ending up with the equivalent of a Hulk on his hands, a movie that moves in the right direction but goes further than what a mainstream audience can handle, and stumbles into the gap. Mission: Impossible 2 is one such red flag.

Metroid is one of those projects that needs to be a success. Having Woo’s name attached indicates potential, but that also represents a potential danger. Let’s see how this all unfolds.

As I pointed out in the preceding post, April Fool’s came and went without anything truly worth mentioning on a humour front except for the odd joke only comprehensible to CUSID debaters, but these guys thought it would be clever to use it as a launchpad for a letter-writing campaign to get a film of The Hobbit greenlit for production. As it is an initiative by TheOneRing.net, the most-read Tolkien website on the Internet (and with good reason), it already has a few thousand supporters in its pocket. Remember, this is the same site that strikes fear into the hearts of those who dare to include The Lord of the Rings in any poll, for fear of being swamped. Any obscure site it links to on the front page can expect to have bandwidth trouble for weeks.

But popularity aside, people should really take a few steps back and wonder if a film adaptation of The Hobbit – even (or especially) one by Peter Jackson – is really that great an idea. The book is a very linear and episodic adventure in many ways, which could land it in the same adaptation trap as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. While it’s been turned into everything from a stage production to a video game with varying degrees of success, the prospect of a top-notch film project is, at this time, unconvincing. At the same time, there is the danger of the film having to choose between being faithful to the oft-forgotten fact that the novel is a children’s story, and the demands of the audience demographic riding the post-The Return of the King fallout. In terms of playing to the audience and fulfilling expectations, it faces the same challenges as the Star Wars prequels have thus far. As far as a Jackson film goes, the reason why so many fans are clamouring for one is out of the desire for stylistic continuity. But The Hobbit has little stylistic continuity with The Lord of the Rings in the first place, except for perhaps the first eight chapters of the latter, from which Jackson took arguably the biggest departure.

I saw Hellboy tonight and was suitably entertained, if not outright impressed. It never sinks down to being outright nauseating and oblivious to basic cinematic technique like some Leagues we know, but also feels second-class in the face of the A-list adaptations of the Marvel renaissance. Aside from an incomprehensible villain-story that boils down to a lot of occult symbols, reincarnation and an apocalyptic desire to set the entire world on fire, it was an entertaining piece and worth two hours of my time. I will elaborate further if I ever get around to it, but between Home on the Range, The Alamo, Kill Bill, The Punisher and a whole lot of exams, April is going to be a busy month.

While on the subject of Dark Horse Comics, I have yet to acquire The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist #1, which was finally released in late February after months of legal delays. Considering the extent to which this here writer has been eagerly anticipating the title since its announcement, a purchase, reading and review are more than a little overdue.

That was the most predictable Oscar ceremony ever, but at the same time, entirely devoid of controversy. Most of the vitriol this year can be directed at the shortlisting stage, and was already covered in the previous post.

If there was one film to finally hit the eleven mark again, it was The Return of the King. The clean sweep was clear as soon as it took Adapted Screenplay, the one that was most likely going to hold a consolation vote. But in the context of rewarding the entire trilogy – for after all, it is one movie, only with a split release sequence – well done, Academy.

The big question is, what conceivable project will next hit the eleven mark, or even break it? This may not be as impossible as it seems, given that The Return of the King was a rare winner that received no acting nominations. The sweep, though, could be attributed to both the onus to compensate for the losses of the first two – something that should have been done from the start, and was three years in the making – and a weaker, less competitive field this year. Facing facts for a moment, if The Lord of the Rings was not in the running, it would be a much tighter race, with the well-crafted but just shy of worthy Mystic River taking the prize, but win counts maxing out at five or six. Needless to say, it would be indicative of a relatively sparse year. On the other hand, if that opened the door to Finding Nemo, I would not complain – until it failed to win, that is. But this is all idle speculation.

To hit such an astronomical nomination count, let alone a win count, you need to work with built-in epic material from the start. Ben-Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings are all epic pageantry material. The Last Samurai, on the other hand, is not. It needs to be something that makes everything before it look small.

That said, the one to watch out for next year is Troy, not because it will get eleven Oscars or even eleven nominations, but because it is based on exactly the kind of source material that should poise itself for those numbers, from possibly the one cinematogenic storyteller bigger than Tolkien. But it doesn’t have ten hours to work with, now does it?

What we can expect in the film industry over the next few years is an influx of people trying to make the next Rings, like certain attempts to make the next Titanic (see: Pearl Harbor). The attempted-epic market already saturated itself this year, so let’s not see this trend spiral out of control.

The moment of the evening, of course, was Michael Moore in the midst of a “fictitious war” in the Pelennor Fields.

One would think that December would be the zenith of this online record, given the sheer volume of material to discuss; unfortunately, the overwhelming quantity of happenings – for good or ill – ultimately mitigated the publication of anything useful on this here page.

Based on the unlikely assumption that the entire readership has, in fact, not abandoned this page and left it for dead like a Students’ Union VP on Khao San Road, some updates are in order.

First things first: No, I have not seen Cold Mountain, Master and Commander, The Last Samurai or Lost In Translation. This abnormal deficiency of Oscar-season movie criticism, or any criticism at all, will hopefully change over the weekend. One must remember, however, that Laziness Conquers All – a certainty as physically entrenched as the Law of Ropes.

Yes, I did see The Return of the King, albeit only a single-digit number of times. Apparently there was an expectation that after surviving the marathon known only as Trilogy Tuesday, I would immediately write a detailed scene-by-scene analysis of the entire film – geek’s prerogative, one might say. I actually did this; immediately after returning from the cinema, I wrote two comprehensive analyses on the Entmoot forums – some rambly general first impressions and the rather more comprehensible adaptation notes. It has been suggested that I post these more permanently and prominently. This may or may not happen.

Coming up soon, should I have time to do it this weekend amidst catching up on the current state of cinema and editing the next UADS newsletter, will be an annotated photo album detailing various misadventures in Inchon and Bangkok, followed by the World Universities Debating Championships in Singapore.

Eventually I will do some kind of 2003 wrap-up, which will quite predictably be full of praising The Wind Waker and Finding Nemo and determining whether or not they compensated for an otherwise pretty bleak year. Don’t hold me to this.

The big news this weekend – besides the fact that Thailand’s Panupol Sujjayakorn cleaned house at the World Scrabble Championships in Malaysia – was this Aint-It-Cool News rumour about how Revolution Studios has greenlit the David Hayter Watchmen project, and John Cusack might even be attached to play Dan Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl.

If this is true – and that’s a big If at this point – I have some serious concerns.

First of all, if the unmitigated disaster that was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is any indication, people should really think twice before touching something by Alan Moore. Especially when it’s the something by Alan Moore.

What are we toying around with here? It’s not run-of-the-mill comic book material. Even though I am relatively new to the medium, it did not take me very long to realize that Watchmen is the Lord of the Rings of comic books. And as with The Lord of the Rings, although I am concerned with faith to the source material, the top priority is on pulling it off with the artistic, cinematic merit it deserves.

Right now, Watchmen is a wildcard for one reason alone: David Hayter has never directed a movie.

Hayter’s record so far is as the screenwriter behind the two X-Men movies. I do have considerably greater faith in his ability to adapt a working screenplay after seeing X2, but no matter how many chances I give the first film, I still can’t like it. It’s not horrible, but lukewarm at best, and a lot of it was just plain sloppy. However, this is only one concern.

If Hayter is seriously intent on directing the project, my advice would be thus: follow the panels. Watchmen, the book, had a certain mastery of layout worthy of much comprehensive analysis on sites like Watching the Detectives. Follow it. Learn some lessons from the composition and juxtaposition that made it such an exemplar of the graphic novel medium.

It’s a well-known fact that Terry Gilliam wanted the project once, but would only do it if it were in twelve one-hour sections, which no executive in his right mind would consider theatrically releasable – but is a really great idea. Gilliam was the right man for this project, just as he was the right man for Harry Potter and the definitive man for Don Quixote. Lord knows he tried to do Don Quixote. And nobody but Gilliam should be coming within twenty miles of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

As for John Cusack – this is actually a pretty good casting choice. Put him in a big pair of glasses and dress him up in those conservative Dreiberg clothes, and the look is apparent.

Everybody can rattle off their dream cast list for Watchmen, kind of like how people were speculating Sean Connery for every conceivable role in The Lord of the Rings back in the roaring nineties. Everybody recognizes that Dr. Manhattan is the stumbling block. We’re hearing people shout for Sean Penn to play Rorschach, Tom Selleck as the Comedian, Val Kilmer as Ozymandias. At this point, I’m more worried about the script.

But we’ll see. For the time being, I’m going to reclaim my spot in line for The Incredibles.