* I’ve frequently talked about how much I loved, and love, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe–the prototype for the genre-mashup “art of enthusiasm” I enjoy so much today. El Mayimbe at Latino Review has a lengthy synopsis of a draft screenplay for a new film adaptation of the franchise by Justin “The New David Goyer” Marks. On the one hand, Mayimbe says:
It’s a hard and edgy PG-13 tinkering on [sic] a [sic] R. The script has ZERO CAMP or CHEESINESS. NO FUCKING ORKO EITHER! The writer takes the MOTU mythology very seriously. Whatever made the cartoon corny is not in here at all. In fact, there is not a single beat of comedic relief [sic] in the script.
Which, you know, barf. God forbid we don’t take a franchise that featured a half-skunk half-man named Stinkor seriously!^ However, it’s possible that to translate the awesome-(in the awe-provoking sense)-to-a-five-year-old quality of the original toys and cartoons to a modern blockbuster audience, you have to jump into the madness of it all with both feet; winks and nods toward admitting the original was goofy may just lead to a a watered-down G.I. Joe-style attempt to flatten the weirdness into a conventional action-flick mold. The screenplay sounds fun enough, ripping off Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films (right down to an “in ancient times” prologue nominated by a powerful woman from the film’s present) and the superhero-in-training movies of today just as unabashedly as the old He-Man stuff ripped off Heavy Metal and D&D, which is probably as it should be. And the He-Man world’s po-faced mixture of fantasy and science-fiction is apparently a very big deal to Marks. So we’ll see. (Via AICN.)
* A good day for rants, part one: Ken Lowery bemoans Hollywood’s perennial failure to follow up for-women smashes like Sex and the City with more movies for women. Romantic comedies–which my mother calls “sappy crappies”–don’t count.
* Curt Purcell responds to CRwM’s epic series on torture porn, defending the “High Horrorism” of supernatural horror and arguing that fusty Victorian/Edwardian notions of dread actually date back to prehistoric, even primordial times. It’s a great post, though I want to add two things: 1) I don’t think CRwM went nearly as far in the “supernatural horror sucks because it’s too unrealistic” direction as Aaron Weisbrod’s old Dark But Shining essay on that notion, and good on CRwM for that; 2) the comment thread at Curt’s post is the usual roundelay of pro forma, largely baseless responses to the torture porn issue (they suck; they’re just slasher movies but not as cool; the term “torture porn” is insulting to the horror genre) that Curt and CRwM’s posts on the topic have commendably avoided.
* A good day for rants, part two: Look, I’ve got a lot of problems with the superhero movie wave of the past few years, including (heck, especially!) the supposedly good flicks, let alone the real dreck. Even so, I found Chris Nashawaty’s anti-superhero-movie piece at EW to be perhaps the most sloppily researched and argued genre-entertainment thinkpiece it’s been my misfortune to come across in literally years. You truly have to read it to believe it–it’s so bad I don’t even know where to begin.^^ Fortunately I don’t have to: My pal Zach Oat at Movies Without Pity takes a chainsaw to Nashawatay’s strawman arguments, factual distortions, generally abysmal critical judgment, and sucker-punching of Stan Lee. (The Man is a complicated figure in comics history who has a lot of things to answer for; churning out drab, cookie-cutter ideas during his ’60s-era heyday is most certainly not one of them.)
^ Do no fanboys realize that hating Orko, Snarf, the Ewoks, et cetera because they make fucking He-Man, Thundercats, Star Wars, et cetera too silly is ridiculous beyond comprehension? Have they never watched the rest of He-Man, the Thundercats, Star Wars, et cetera?
^^ Okay, that’s not quite true: Anyone who apparently loves Independence Day forfeits their right to complain about X-Men: The Last Stand. Or, really, anything else.
6 Responses to Carnival of souls