Only in Blogs

I always used to hate it, years ago, when movie ads would end by saying, "only in theatres!" I was like, Geez, what else would it be? Movies open in theatres, then come out on video months later; that’s the way of the world. How hard is that to understand? But of course, you know they have to say that because there's that one person who would try going to Blockbuster expecting to rent the big movie that just came out that weekend.

I know that sounds weird, but we've all met that one person who just doesn't understand how the world works, even if they've lived in it all their lives. You know, the one who tries to order a Big Mac at Burger King, and is genuinely surprised and angry that they can’t get one.

It would be convenient if there was a name for such a person, like the way we decided that “Karen” would mean self-important complainers. That made it easy for all of us to have a simple name to refer to the concept, even if it did poison the name and lead to prejudice against thousands of innocent people. Maybe for this concept, we should choose a name that's already fallen out of favour. How about Millicent? It’s a rare name, so whatever anger they have over this will be offset by the fact that we're mentioning them.

Anyway, that's why the "only in theatres" line bothered me: the ignorance that it was coddling. I mean, I try to be patient of ignorance, but in this case it's a kind of wilful ignorance. To misunderstand the world so badly, you must be ignoring everything around you. And advertisers were just encouraging it. It would be like airlines placating Flat-Earthers by guaranteeing that none of their flights would go near the edges of the earth.

Though really, I suppose the “only in theatres” line wasn’t to protect the ignorant consumers from wasting their time at Blockbuster, so much as to protect the movie studio from irrational complaints from Millicents disappointed they couldn’t rent the movie hours after its release. And in the process, they’re also protecting that poor kid working for Blockbuster who would have to explain the logistics of the movie industry to angry customers. Customers who probably also thought they could use their Subway Club card to rent at Blockbuster.

But what really bugs me is that today the ads have to specify, "only in theatres," because they might actually be making a major release on streaming services. Sure, it’s convenient that there are so many ways to distribute movies today, but I feel like the simpletons won.

But another way of looking at this is that however complex the world of the 90’s used to seem to these people, that’s how complex the world has actually become. The world was inevitably bewildering to a person who thought they could buy something at Kmart and then return it for their money back at Sears. But now, that’s how complex the world is even to normal people. Today, we are all Millicent.

Why She Had To Go, I Don’t Know

Today I saw odd news of a lawsuit over the movie Yesterday. The problem is that there was a trailer for the film that included a scene with Ana de Armas, but she wasn’t in the movie at all, and now a couple of viewers are suing.

First, take this with a grain of salt: although some outlets are reporting it as the studio “losing” the lawsuit, what actually happened is that the studio tried to get the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that movie trailers are themselves an art form and thus protected by freedom of speech. But the judge ruled that the trailers are just commercials, and thus subject to false-advertising laws, so the trial can begin. But that trial itself has not been decided.

This is one of those case where I don’t know who to cheer for. On the one hand, this is a classic case of America’s litigation culture. Two people rented a movie for $3.99 and are now suing for $5 million. That’s both excessive and super creepy that they think watching Ana de Armas in a supporting role is worth $5 million. But on the other hand, I am — along with many others — really sick of misleading trailers. To be fair, this wasn’t a case of a pre-planned bait-and-switch; de Armas was supposed to be in the movie, but test audiences really hated the subplot she was a part of, so the final cut axed it entirely. But the movie studios have really strained people’s trust for years, and it would be nice if something curtailed that.

It’s just unfortunate how these things so often become all-or-nothing. Yes, it would be nice if studios paid the price for false advertising, but not one studio paying the price for an incident which wasn’t the most egregious example. And it would be nice for movie watchers to get justice, but not a reward for an excessive lawsuit that looks like a disturbing celebrity fixation. The ideal would be some sort of treaty between moviegoers and studios: you start making more honest trailers, and we won’t unleash the Stan army and their lawyers on you.

Find An Ending, But Don’t Cheat

There’s a concept in storytelling called deus ex machina , which is when a conflict is resolved by an unreasonably lucky occurrence, rather than the characters overcoming the obstacle. I first became aware of it when I took drama in high school. It stuck out for a few reasons:

• It sounds cool in a way that other Latin phrases like habeas corpus and carpe diem don’t.
• It sounds even cooler when you realize it literally means “god from a machine”
• It allows you to condemn stories for a reason that would be too hard to explain otherwise. So many people want a happy ending and don’t care how it comes about, and it’s a struggle to explain why these happy endings aren’t satisfying. But now I can just say it’s a deus ex machina, and they say, "huh?" But I feel better.

But I have to say to science fiction creators: please stop using this in titles. It started in 2000 with the cyberpunk video game Deus Ex. Okay, that made sense, since the blurring of humanity and machines gives the phrase new meaning, with the idea that what was once thought of as exclusively divine could now come from a machine. But then there was a movie about humanoid robots a few years ago called Ex Machina, essentially copying the same idea, but leaving out a different word to sound original.

Now I see that there’s another game coming out called Daemon x Machina. Sure, that’s funny and appropriate to the subject matter (battling giant robots.) And old-school Unix users will appreciate the use of “daemon.” But really, can’t we come up with some new ways to describe stories involving robots, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics? It’s becoming a cliche and something should end it. I don’t even care if it’s something unanticipated that comes from out of nowhere.

Rated Xmas

I don't know if you're aware of it, but there's become a whole subculture of TV Christmas movies. Okay, "subculture" isn't really the word for it: in our modern world, we have so many entertainment choices that there can be an entertainment trend that exists on its own and has ardent followers, but much of the public remains oblivious, like Amish Romance. Well that's what has developed here; several specialty channels will be showing nothing but Christmas movies all through November and December. But it's just a few channels, and mostly during the day, so you may not know about them at all. But there are so many - with more being cranked out ever year - that there's apparently a great appetite for them. The Hallmark Channel in the U.S. is making most of them, and here in Canada they've been picked up by several channels with compatible programming. Mainly that's the W Network. Hey, remember when that started and everyone expected it was going to be radical feminism 24/7? Innocent times.

Generally, these are laid-back romantic-comedies, though there isn't even the pretense of going after the bro market, so the stories are very focused on the female character, and not a hint of slap-stick or gross humour. And there's a theme of people finding themselves, finding their love of Christmas, or, a new appreciation for their small town.

Interestingly, they seem to be mostly made in Canada. For one thing, we've become the cheap film capital of the world, and we have snow.  And that leads to something interesting: The stars of these movies are either soap stars, or people who used to be on sitcoms. But most of the supporting cast are Canadian actors. Even if you don't know them, you've seen them in commercials. But the mainly American audience for these movies wouldn't know this, they'd just wonder why the same few people keep popping up in one movie after another, and assume that these folks have somehow decided to specialize in just holiday-related roles.

I've complained in the past about the ubiquity of Christmas, and how long we celebrate it, so you'd think that I'd be really annoyed by these movies. And yet, I'm not. For one thing, I don't hate Christmas, I just hate having it shoved down my throat non-stop. I find that it's quite pleasant having Christmas in nice little parcels that I can take or leave, even if they start early and schmaltzy.

My only complaint is that, as I said, these movies are all variations on a theme, and it would be nice if other networks concentrating on different genres would offer their own Christmas movies. That could be difficult. Like say, there have been only a few Christmas horror movies. And there aren't really any sci-fi Christmas movies beyond Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. And twenty-eight Doctor Who specials. 

Of course, there's a discussion every Christmas about whether Die Hard counts as a Christmas movie, since it doesn't have much in the way of Christmas themes, but does take place on Christmas Eve. I always thought that argument was kind of silly, but perhaps I'm being too harsh. It's just the first of a new wave of Christmas action movies. The next one should be along any time now.

A Bad Title

There’s a new movie opening next week called The House with a Clock in its Walls. I don’t know about the movie: it looks like a cheap excuse for special effects and Jack Black. And it’s a bad sign that it’s been relegated to a post-Labour-Day opening, meaning that the studio doesn’t have high hopes. But there’s one thing we do know for sure: that is the worst title in the history of movies.

Just to make sure, I looked up some lists of the worst movie titles of all time. There are some bad ones, but I think we may have a new loser here. Actually, I was a little disappointed by much of the bad title lists. I was expecting some of the all-time awkward names (I Love Trouble, Cutthroat Island,  Moon Over Parador) but for the most part, they were just strange and/or bad movies with appropriate titles (Santa with Muscles.) I mean, I have no doubt that Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot was a terrible movie, and it’s a terrible premise. But once you’ve made that movie, what else could you really call it?

Lately, the bigger problem with movie titles is that they’re vague. Edge of Tomorrow was a title that didn’t tell you anything about its intriguing and exciting concept. And one of the all-time great movie titles, Snakes on a Plane, was nearly called “Pacific Air Flight 121” and only changed back at star Samuel L. Jackson’s insistence. And they made a movie about tiny people fighting for control of a forest, and what did they call it? Epic. I had trouble finding it in IMDB, because if you just search for “epic,” it returns all the movies that are classed as epics instead. What could be vaguer than naming something with a genre?

But The House etc... could be worst. There have been other movies with overly-long titles (The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain) and overly literal titles (Life as a House) and titles that make an interesting concept sound boring (John Carter,) but it’s amazing that they put them all in one movie.

Who’s A Good Ancestral Wolf?

There’s this new movie called Alpha, about the first ever pet dog. It looks like another of those movies that is going straight for heartwarming, without any big stars or promises of explosions or special effects. I don’t know how it got a summer release instead of going straight to download. Or straight to the Walmart $5 DVD bin that somehow just keeps going no matter how many people abandon DVD’s.

And, of course, it has dogs, which can carry a movie all on its own.

I was wondering if it even had religious overtones. I know that seems like a stretch, but in today’s movie industry, if a movie doesn’t have stars, action, comedy, or art house chic, it’s a mystery how it even exists. I start to wonder if it’s an extension of some brand that’s really popular in the American-Christian subculture.

But then it hit me: this movie is set — according to the ads — 20,000 years ago. Apparently, that’s based on some guesswork, since dogs might have been domesticated before or after that date. But still, 20,000 years. That’s an American family movie taking place 20,000-screw-you-Young-Earth-Creationists-years-ago. So it’s not just non-religious, it’s going to be offending the super-Christian. That’s kind of surprising. I’m sure that for entertainment aimed at the entirety of American culture, they would probably choose to take science’s side and assume that the Christian Fundamentalist boycott wouldn’t amount to much. But for family-friendly entertainment I would think that they would rather have hard-core religious families on side, and just let Neil DeGrasse Tyson rant about the inaccuracies. That’s especially given that this movie is going to have appeal to people who aren’t really in love with the usual Hollywood fare.

So this is kind of a weird concept: heartwarming family science. And I just read a review that pointed out that the stars in the sky are accurate even taking into account the drift of stars over those twenty millennia. So now I’m picturing Neil DeGrasse Tyson in the theatre weeping along with everyone else, having never seen such scientific accuracy in a movie.

The Twenty-First Century's Yesterday

Comic book author Warren Ellis pointed out something interesting. He's looking forward to next year, because it was the year when the original Blade Runner took place. No, it's not because he's saving up for one of those cool florescent light umbrellas. He points out that it is the last thing in science-fiction. We all lived through 2001 without any monoliths, and went right through 2015 without hoverboards. But next year will be our last future year. I would point out that it's not just Blade Runner: Akira also took place that year. That will be -20 geek points, Mr. Ellis.

Of course, it's not really the last sci-fi future: Buck Rogers is still waiting for us in the twenty-fifth century. And all of Star Trek has yet to happen, even Khan conquering a quarter of the world. That was supposed to happen in the 1990's, and he's really taking his time about it. The point is, when it comes to near-future science-fiction stories, the predictions run out after the first couple of decades of the twenty-first century.

That's not too surprising. Back in the twentieth century, 2000 was pretty much what people thought of when they thought of the future. There wasn't much need for a sci-fi author to set a story any further into the future. That would be like saying that the story took place the day after the future. So now those of us who lived in the twentieth century have to get used to the idea that we're living beyond what was once our future.

(As an aside: I referenced the light-up umbrellas in Blade Runner above, even though I was pretty sure that I remembered seeing that someone was actually selling them. So I looked it up, and found that they were available, but are no longer being sold. So that seals the argument that we are now ahead of the future.)

Ellis thinks that this development will be liberating, because there are no longer any expectations handed to society by our fiction. That's good, because it's always been disappointing when we cross one of these future anniversaries. Above, I referred to how 2015 didn't measure up to the future depicted in Back To The Future II. And to me, the big symbol of disappointment in the future was 2001, which represented incredible discovery as a movie, while the real-life year will always be associated with a shocking act of terror that represented humanity at its worst.

So I'll also look forward to not having it occasionally shoved in my face that the world's future is not as good as I was promised. I'll miss the invitations to nostalgia, but in today's world, that's hardly a problem.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #40 & 41

#40:

Superhero movies are more popular than ever. That's right, Batman made people forget about Superman IV, and it's been all success from there. Except Batman and Robin, you'll want to skip that one.

Anyway, the point is that now it's not just the biggest names that are getting their own movie franchises, even the more niche characters get big budgets.

#41:

You know Bob Ross, the super laid-back artist with a show on PBS? Sadly, he dies in 1995. But he is still well remembered, and is as much a pop-cultural icon as ever.

Anyway, put those two facts together, and, by 2018, this happens and it doesn't even seem weird:

In Your Eyes

You may have seen the story about a man in Britain who is planning on playing the piano in a public square until his ex girlfriend takes him back. A few people have congratulated him on his romanticism, though more are thinking he should really move on. This is an example of a phenomena I've seen many people point out: that the behaviour portrayed in romantic movies - particularly rom-coms - would be creepy if not abusive in real life.

What's interesting is that although most people agree that the man's behaviour is not healthy, there's a divergence in the explanation for it. Some have seen him as just another love-crazed guy, albeit one who's taken it too far (and too public.) And some people have gone straight for a paternalist explanation, saying that he is acting out of a feeling of entitlement. They would say that he is unable to cope with a woman rejecting him, since he - as a man - feels he has a right to a sexual relationship with his chosen woman.

I'm certainly not saying that doesn't happen; there are a lot of men who look at the world that way, including many that you would think would know better. But that's hardly the only explanation. After all, our messed-up sex roles make people do crazy things, but love alone also makes people act plenty crazy. I'm not absolving him of blame - harassing behaviour is harassing no matter the reason. But that's also kind of my point; bad behaviour doesn't necessarily have a bad cause.

There are a couple of lessons here: One is that we have to be careful when we go from trends to individual cases. For instance, even if you know that many blacks are unfairly treated by the police, that doesn't mean that you can assume that any particular black person who gets arrested is being framed. Secondly, we as a society still have a long way to go in figuring out heterosexual men. There's an assumption out there coming from people of many backgrounds that all a man's actions are motivated by sex, and that sexuality is purely about ownership and dominance. I doubt it was ever that simple, and in today’s world, you just can’t jump to conclusions about a person’s motivations.

Where's The Over-Analyzing Emoji?

Since The Emoji Movie is out, I should probably say something about them. And if the reviews are anything to go by, I’d better be quick. I have to admit, I never really liked emojis.

I don't really hate them. A part of me is fascinated by the idea that we could be developing a new interlingual pictogram writing system. And I'm pleasantly surprised at the development of the eggplant emoji; that showed a subtlety I didn't think society was capable of.

But ultimately, I don’t like the inelegance of it. I appreciate things that have a few simple components that can be assembled in a variety of ways, as a challenge to creativity (say, Lego.) I also appreciate things that are so varied and complex that they give rise to virtually endless possibilities and ultimate personalization (say, the Web.) But emojis fall in the anti-sweet-spot between those two possibilities. They're varied enough that they don't really take creativity to use, but limited enough that they can't express individuality.

And before you reach for counter-examples, yes, I know that there are some epic examples of expression through emoji. I saw that tweet where Kyle McLachlan explained the entire plot of Dune in emojis.

🌏💧✋🕋🗡🚀🏜☀️🌡🌶💯🚱⏳🌅🌑😡💉😱😈💀💥🌛🌙🐭💥🚶🏻〰🐛️⌛️👳🙏💥😴🛌😳💥🐛💥👊⚔👑 #dune https://t.co/bXwpdYC8jz

— Kyle MacLachlan (@Kyle_MacLachlan) August 16, 2016

But here's the biggest problem I have with emojis: I miss smileys. I loved their simplicity, the challenge of making punctuation look human. I also appreciated the subtlety: None of the overacting we get from emojis. It was just a humble little facial expression, conveyed with minimalist cuteness by the technological descendant of the "Have a Nice Day" face.

Remember how there was so much concern over not having black faces in emojis? No need to worry about that with smileys. They don’t have enough detail to tell what race/gender they are. The smiley is the only true post-race character. It smiles for all of us.

Ripley, Believe It Or Not

So far, here's the reaction I've seen to Doctor Who announcing the first female Doctor:

• 25% people happy about the new casting
• 12% people saying “it’s about time”
• 5% dudebros complaining
• 30% people eagerly anticipating the dudebros complaining
• 20% progressives complaining she isn't also black, Muslim, gay, etc. 
• 5% arguing whether she is now a “Time Lord” or “Time Lady”
• 3% fans trying to correct newcomers ("You call her 'The Doctor,' not  'Doctor Who.'" “Oh,  I get it: it’s only the show that’s called 'Dr. Who’” "No! you have to spell out ‘Doctor!’”)

As you can see, I was pleasantly surprised by how little complaining there was.  Of course, social media is not a representative sample of opinion on anything.  But there are people who were perversely fascinated by especially sexist criticism, and they seemed to be having trouble coming up with particularly extreme examples.  So I’m assuming they didn’t have much to choose from.  Of course, that could be because they’ve been burnt by past campaigns against women in science fiction.

But on the other hand, I’ve been surprised by how many people are acting like this is completely unprecedented. Trekkies are off to the side, waving their arms to get our attention and point out that they did have a female captain for seven years. It’s like when Wonder Woman opened, and people were talking about how this was a new era with a female-led action franchise, there were a number of memes showing Buffy, Xena, and Katniss looking miffed at that. To be clear, I’m not denying that women have been tremendously under-represented as characters in these genres, I’m just curious as to why we keep forgetting the previous steps we’ve taken.

It reminds me of something from the music business. I remember years ago someone pointed out how, at the end of the year, when they’re writing their retrospect stories, they always seem to declare this the Year of the Woman, that this was the year women finally asserted themselves in the music industry because of the success of singer X, singer Y, and Madonna.  And yet, things never seemed to change much, and popular music continued to be male-dominated.

I’d always assumed that was because the music business has women in visible positions, but not powerful positions.  There are lots of women singing songs written by men, being produced and promoted by men, with most of the profits going to men. So we’re constantly overestimating how much real power women have in the industry.

But now I’m not so sure. Maybe we do have a problem with shifting our perspective in response to incremental progress. That’s not too surprising, really, since our ideas about the state of the world are deeply ingrained. And humans are notoriously bad at noticing slow, steady change. So I guess the lesson here is to revisit our assumptions more often.

All That Meets The Eye

I was never a big fan of the Transformers when I was a kid.  I guess I was a little too old to be interested in them when they came along.

(The blogger, on the eve of his 44th birthday, looks down at the Lego race car on his desk and realizes that his previous sentence may not be entirely accurate.)

Okay, maybe I wasn't too old.  It was more a matter of not having the feeling of intrigue in the whole concept.  On the one hand, I found the idea of the "transforming" quite interesting.  Seeing how you could design a robot to fold up into the shape of a car or plane or something was a fascinating spatial challenge.  Seeing how they did that gave me a joy that I now only get when unpacking Ikea furniture.

It's just after that which I didn't get.  Okay, these cars are now robots.  What do they do? Fight? That's it?  And yes, I know now that they have a big backstory.  But at the time you didn't really get that idea when the commercials just showed kids making up their own flimsy battle scenarios.

Speaking of made up flimsy battle scenarios - the movies.  I haven't seen them either, and once again, there may be a lot more to them, but the ads and the impressions of others seem to indicate that they don't really do anything but fight.  Sure, it's now in excruciating CGI detail instead of eight-year-olds waving their toys at each other, but it still doesn't draw me in.

And this is a bit off-topic, but can we spare a thought for the Go-Bots? The Pepsi to the Transformers' Coke have been ridiculed over the years, and largely left-out of eighties nostalgia. But it's hard to believe that in today's world where they make blockbusters on any pop-culture property, that no studio would take a chance on them.

Anyway, there's yet another Transformers movie coming out. And it looks like it's doubling-down on the concept of fights between giant robots that are inexplicably built out of a lot of really tiny, intricate parts.  That leaves me with a question - again, having not seen the movies - do the Transformers, you know, transform?  All they ever show is them in robot form fighting it out.  And since the battles are epic, destroy-everything-in-sight affairs, there doesn't seem to be much point in hiding.  I'm assuming that if you see a the aftermath of a Transformer battle, with a neighbourhood turned into a huge crater of destruction, and then notice a few undamaged cars in the middle, they aren't fooling anyone.

Cashing-In Their Chips

There's a new Chips movie coming out - oh, I'm sorry, I mean CHiPs. It's based on the 70's/80's TV show.  Though really, it's not a movie of the TV series, it's a spoof of the series. Though really, it's not a spoof of the series, it's a generic "dumb guys" movie where the characters are named after the ones in the original.

I don't really like this idea of reviving pop-culture artifacts just to make fun of them.  No, I wasn't a fan of the original show, nor do I believe that anything is above satire.  But we're not talking about an SNL sketch here, we're talking about a movie that probably cost more than the entire series' combined budget, aimed at the children of the people who watched the original.  That really seems like kicking them when they're down.

The thinking behind it is transparent: they get the name recognition of an existing property, but don't have to worry about offending or alienating legions of fans.  Somewhere out there are people who still take the show seriously, and are probably really angry right now, but it doesn't matter to the studios, since they don't make up much of the movie-going population.

I actually feel a little sorry for them.  Sure, they don't have great taste in TV, but they're getting thrown under the bus just because they're aging and few in number.  And the fact is that we're all going to be in their position eventually.  We all have our guilty pleasures in entertainment, and they'll all make for easy fodder for lazy movies.

Someone Needs Changing

I wonder if Hollywood has run out of ideas yet...

Getting close, but no.

I'm sure the marketing for this one will be pretty annoying, and there's still six weeks to go.  So at least consider this possibility: Sometime in the last few months, some studio exec had to stop and consider whether it was worth re-rendering the entire movie with a Trump-style toupée on the baby.

Movie Star Killed The Video Star

It’s too bad the Age Of Blogging didn’t overlap the Age Of Music Video. The world could have wasted so much time writing about them. I'm reminded of this after watching the glorified podcast that is the remains of Muchmusic. They have a show called Retro Lunch, which defines "retro" as 70's, 80's and 90's, and "lunch" as 1-3 pm.

I had plenty of opinions on videos: black & white is over used, concert videos are a cop-out, ironically cheap videos never work, opening credits just look pretentious. But there is one truth above all: movie soundtrack videos always suck.

Okay, there are a few examples that work, but that's usually because they break out of the usual format of scenes of the band playing interspersed with random clips from the movie.

At the time, I recognized that this didn’t work, since it's just forgettable images of the band without even the energy of the concert videos, combined with movie scenes so brief that they don't really tell any story. The weakness of music videos was that they often devolved into random images, and movie videos were the worst example of this.

And it got worse if the song ended up being much more popular than the movie. A band does a song for a Julia Roberts vehicle, they use scenes from the movie in the video, then the movie tanks. Everyone forgets the movie, so they won't recognize where the clips come from. So now future generations will wonder how the band got Julia Roberts to be in one of their videos, and why they just had her appear in a few disjointed scenes.

This problem was bad enough when it was just a few years after the movie. But now it’s just surreal to see a song you remember, by a musician who’s a legend, with scenes of a movie you don’t remember. You can’t even figure out what the movie is about from the short clips, and you’re trying to remember the name of that guy in the movie who was in that other thing with whatsisname.

Must Love Dogs

There's been a big controversy over the movie A Dog's Purpose, after footage leaked of a dog being abused on the set. That's frustrating, since it happened with a movie that's all about the love of dogs, and there are supposed to be checks on animal abuse in movies. And you'd think that a hugely pro-dog movie would be particularly conscious of the need to treat their dogs well.

As an animal lover who isn't a dog person, I guess I have an outsider's view of the issue, and I'm amazed at how this film has gone from one extreme of dog lovers' passion to the other. If the ads were any indication, it was relying on dog-loving schmaltz and little else. It seems to be that kind of uplifting movie that I hate: rather than help you to see the world in a better light, it creates a mythology that tells you what you want to hear, like a second-rate new age religion.

Now, that dog spirituality has all been reversed, and you've got to think this whole movie is going to be a financial albatross to the studio; the one constituency that you were relying on now hates you.

My apologies to albatross lovers who may have been offended there.

So I have to wonder if dog lovers feel used. I'm not saying their hurt feelings compare to the injustice done to the dog, but this was a blatant manipulation of their emotions. When it turned out that some on the set were not so committed to the animals after all, that only underlined how people's feelings were just being used for profit.

On The Offensive

There's a perception in the world today that people are too easily offended; you can't mention anything without someone complaining about it. Personally, I don't share this view, but that's not what I'm here to argue about. Instead, I'd like to open people's minds to the possibility that some good can come from people being offended. No, no, not that harmony and mutual respect and all that crap. I mean we can use it as a weapon to get rid of bad pop-culture.

This is the aspect of Political Correctness that gets lost in the debate: A lot of politically-incorrect media isn't that good to begin with. Stereotypes are many things, but at their heart, they're cliches. That's why I'm always perplexed when a comedian laments all the humour prevented by political correctness: I can understand why you might want to fight for the principle, but I wouldn't think you'd actually want to tell decades-old jokes.

I'm thinking about this because of the new movie Split, which seems to be the usual kidnapping/murder horror movie, where the twist is that the antagonist has multiple personalities. Of course, people are complaining about the portrayal of people with the condition, or as it's properly known, Dissociative Identity Disorder. You might assume that I saw an article about how people are angry about the movie, so I wrote this post. But no, I hadn't seen anything about the movie other than the TV spots for it every ten minutes. I just assumed there'd be complaints based on how the condition is being used as an easy story device.

It really doesn't look like a great movie. I'm not a horror fan, so I'm not the best to judge, but it looks transparently manipulative. And it's from critical punching-bag, M. Night Shyamalan. And it's being released in the movie graveyard of late January. And the plot is disturbingly similar to the terrible film-within-a-film that Charlie Kaufman's brother writes in Adaptation.

So putting aside the principles, I think you'd have to root for the folks targetting the movie. Letting them drive this movie out of the theatres isn't going to start a slippery slope to newspeak. So how about you spend this month arguing for freedom of speech in the abstract, and look the other way while activists run this flick into the ground. Let's use the power of offense to benefit us all.

(I swear, they just ran another ad for Split as I was finishing this post.)

I Am Jack's Disappointment With Social Media

Watching the Playstation Fiesta Bowl, Ohio State got off to a slow start when their kicker missed his first two field goal attempts. That's not a big deal, unless you're a fan of The Ohio State University, which I'm not. But during the awkward let's-show-close-ups-of-the-guy-who-screwed-up shots, they mentioned that the kicker's name is Tyler Durbin. Of course, that's quite similar to Tyler Durden, the character from Fight Club played in the movie by Brad Pitt. So when I saw that "Tyler Durbin" was trending on Twitter, I had to check it out, assuming I'd see creative humour based on the movie.

But I was disappointed. All I saw was angry, mindless condemnation of Durbin. In a few cases, it even escalated to idle threats against him, should he ever return to campus. Okay, there were a very few that made Fight Club-related jokes of the form, "The first rule of Missed Field Goal Club is..." But mainly, I was just overwhelmed with the unrepentant anger expressed. Certainly, I've been frustrated when a team does poorly in the big game, but I've never felt that much anger at a single player. Oh, and by the way guys, if your team's first-half offense consists entirely of two missed 40+ yard field goals, then the kicker is not the main problem.

This brings to mind a complaint I have about how people portray Twitter. I've heard voices in the media describe Twitter as dominated by celebrities. That's always news to me, as I find that it's dominated by writers, comedians, scientists and activists. But that's because Twitter (and the Internet in general) is what you make it.

What's depressing is that this isn't a new point. Back in the nineties when it was first going mainstream, we reached a point where most people had heard of the Internet, but only a few had any significant experience with it. So you'd sometimes see reports in the media (the old media, I mean) where they'd get people's impression of their first experiences with the new medium. And their thoughts usually included, wow, there sure is a lot of porn out there.

That angle was great for the media to demonize the Net as a chaotic underworld. But it also betrayed something about the people being interviewed. Then, as now, porn rarely just appeared on your computer for no reason. If you found pornography on the Internet, it was probably because you were looking for it. So although most people seeing these stories didn't realize it, the interviewees were essentiallly admitting that they had been given a chance to use this amazing new communications technology, and used it to look for porn.

Really, nothing has changed. The Internet is still what you make of it. If anything, it has become more personalized; with social media, you can surround yourself with people of whatever type you want. While that often means that you insulate yourself from the realities of the world, it also means that you can ignore hateful sportsfans with limited movie experience. Just remember that even if you're ignoring them, they're still out there, only a hashtag away.

It's The History Eraser Button, You Fool!

As a fan of the Stargate franchise, I was delighted to see that new trilogy of Stargate movies probably won't happen.

If you're confused, here's how it happened: Stargate was a 1995 science fiction movie from director Roland Emmerich, a poor man's Michael Bay. It was built around Kurt Russell and the premise that the Egyptian god Ra was an alien enslaving humans. It didn't have a lot going for it other than that, except for some impressive (for the time) visuals and action set-pieces.

A few years later, someone thought it would be a good premise for a TV spinoff. The idea got handed to some new people, and they came up with a complex backstory for all the cool looking stuff in the movie, added and rewrote characters, and injected a lot of humour.

The result was a show that was far superior to its inspiration in every way except special effects. On the list of TV spinoffs that exceeded their movie inspirations, it's a solid number two behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Okay, Westworld has probably pushed it to number three, but you get the picture. It maintained a cult following, and lasted ten seasons, and spun off a further two series.

But in Hollywood's current attitude that absolutely anything with any name recognition must be made and remade as much as possible, Emmerich arranged to restart the movie series. The catch here is that he was going to ignore the TV shows and start over where the original movie left off.

Of course, in today's media landscape, reboots and rewriting are an accepted hazard of fandom. Different franchises have had their own ways of dealing with it:

• Star Trek - we'll start a new timeline, so we can change everything and pretend we're not changing anything. Your beloved characters are safe and sound and unchanged in their own timeline that we're never going to use again.
• Star Wars - we'll drop all the peripheral stuff that only the hard-core fans know about anyway. But the main story from the movies won't change at all. What about the prequels? Well, you know, it's like...look, is that Baba Fett?
• Batman - just accept that each generation the same story gets retold, but darker.
• Doctor Who - People used to think it was silly to have a show that reboots itself every few years, but you're not laughing now, are you?

But in Stargate's case, it seems a little more severe. Rather than change the actors or the tone, this would have rewritten the story, premise, and style. And I know it doesn't really matter; creating a new story with the same name and a superficial resemblance shouldn't take away from my enjoyment of the franchise as it was.

In today's pop-cultural world fandom is part of the experience. It's expected that there's going to be discussion on the Internet, extra stories in other media, and humourous in-jokes with fellow fans for years to come. Really, that's the most troubling thing about reboots and remakes: the idea that your part of the pop-culturesphere is going to be paved over to make way for someone else's experience.

Give Up Truckin'

There's a movie coming called Monster Trucks. It won't be out until early next year, so you normally wouldn't be hearing about it so early. But it made the news not in the entertainment section but the business section. Apparently, the movie is so bad that the studio's accountants are taking a $115 million write-down on the movie, which is accounting-speak for "this movie's gonna bomb, so we'll just write all the negative numbers in the budget right now." And it's all under the assumption that it will bomb at the box office.

You might think that a movie about monster trucks would be a slam-dunk for Americans. And it stars the guy from the new MacGyver, who I was surprised to see is not also one of the guys from Supernatural. The idea is that this particular truck is possessed by an actual monster. See, this is what they call a "high concept" film, where there's a simple premise, which is explained in the title.

This preemptive panic by the studio had invited people to start piling-on the criticism. A movie about a monster living in a truck? What a silly idea, of course it's a failure. It gets worse when people find out that the movie was inspired at least in part by a studio exec's five-year-old. Again, cue the amateur critics, tut-tutting the idea.  But really, it's not that different from Cars, which was wildly popular. And Disney even managed to wring more money out of that concept with Planes, which you have to think would be a flimsier idea that going with trucks.

And the exec's son? Was it really such a dumb idea to get a kid's input on a kids' movie? After all, that little consultation could have prevented Mars Needs Moms. I don't understand why the same public that notices, or even revels in, the stupidity of movies, thinks that it's obvious which movies are going to be popular. And also, give the public a little credit for being open to oddball ideas.  Can you really say Monster Trucks is an inherently worse idea than Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs?  

I'm not saying it will be a success.  Though studios are sometimes surprised by bombs, if they know the movie is in trouble this early, they're likely right. Having seen the trailer, it looks like it could be dumb fun, though not nearly what I would expect from a movie whose two defining concepts are "monsters" and "monster trucks."  So I have no doubt the write-down is correct. But don't fire that exec's kid just yet.