August 6, 2012

From “Mutt of Ice and Fire” by Altos Wexan

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This post is part of the August 2012 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “fire and ice”.

The other night I just about lost it. My dog was pacing endlessly, refusing to go to bed and running downstairs every time I brought him up. I’d taken him out dozens of times during the day and during the night but he’d only gone inside the house where it could be tracked all over. Then my mom called and said she had decided to put the dog, who is technically hers, down not at the end of August but immediately, one week from today. She and my brother fly in today.

Kind of puts things in perspective, having to call the vet and the funeral home to schedule euthanasia and cremation.

In my head, I know she’s right. He has end-stage senile dementia and incontinence that won’t respond to the most powerful medication we can throw at it. Despite or perhaps because of the anipryl, which he’s been on for two weeks, my dog’s sundowner pacing and incontinence have gotten worse. Since I picked him up from the boarder a week ago 75% of his excretions have been in the house, to the point where I had to cover the floor with puppy pads just for my own peace of mind. I’ve gone through nearly 50 pads and 2 bottles of cleaner in that time. And, as happened the other night, sometimes his pacing is so bad that neither of us sleeps a wink.

In my head, I know it’s no kind of life for either of us to live. My dog is always afraid, always confused, and not at all himself. I’m bound to him like a straitjacket, with no ability to live my own life; I have to come home in the middle of the day, I can’t go out at night, I can’t even work out upstairs for more than half an hour. Mopping and Glade plugins can only do so much for the cleanliness of my house when the flow of excrement just won’t stop.

And yet in my heart I am devastated, I am torn apart, by the thought of euthanizing my dog. Despite all my frustrations, when I’m confronted with what our life has become versus his death, I’m almost willing to take that on as a burden. To keep him alive, I’m willing to put up with a level of responsibility that any dog owner or even me circa 2009, would cringe at. I can take it, I tell myself. For his sake.

After all, he’s my mutty buddy who’s lived with me for two years, the puppy who used to run with us on the Lake Michigan sands, the dog who was always so happy to see us that he’d charge back and forth barking with his favorite squirrel toy. He was born into a house of giggling Michigan teenage girls in 1998, named after a character in Titanic, an enthusiastic snowpuppy who used to come in with snow and iceicles matted into his fuzz. Even moving down here to the land of volcanic summers and no winters with my parents abroad, he’s been the only one to greet me, the only one to be happy to see me, the only one who I could hug after a long day in what’s been a very lonely and often depressing period for me.

It may be that we’d do the same for any family member, if we could, who was too far gone mentally to have any quality of life. For me, making those surreal calls to vet and crematorium in which I couldn’t bring myself to use the real words for what I was doing…I can’t honestly say which is worse, not knowing when a loved one may die, of knowing down to the second. The man at the crematoria took pains to tell me how they treat pets like humans, giving them all the dignity and care that they would any other body. He mentioned having to lose his own three dogs, which I appreciated, one pet owner to another.

The vet said I’ll have the option to be there with him at the end. It will destroy me, but I think I should.

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July 25, 2012

From “Why I Hate Reboots” by Andrew A. Sailer

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Hollywood loves its trends. From 3D circa 1955 (or 1983 or 2009) to westerns, slasher flicks to torture porn, gritty urban thrillers to disposable-tissue romcoms, moviemakers love molds into which they can pour resources for guaranteed returns. The latest trend is the so-called “reboot” which likens the creative endeavor to pushing the power button on an iMac.

We’ve seen this sort of thing before; remakes have been a part of cinema for decades (lest we forget, The Maltese Falcon was the second adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s novel). It’s entirely possible for a remake to equal or eclipse the original (as with Infernal Affairs and The Departed). It’s also possible, as during the remake glut of the early 1990s, that the result will be as creatively bankrupt as any other formula.

So why single out reboots? And what, if anything, separates them from a simple remake? First and foremost is the matter of time. The Maltese Falcon (1941) was made a decade after The Maltese Falcon (1931) (I’m ignoring Satan Met a Lady [1936] here, largely because it was such a loose adaptation). Ocean’s 11 (2001) followed Ocean’s 11 (1968) by 41 years. Of course anyone who looks can find plenty of exceptions like the aforementioned Infernal Affairs (2002) and The Departed (2006) with only a 4-year gap.

The second crucial element is that the reboot should be part of a franchise or intended franchise. Batman (1989) had 3 sequels over 8 years when it was rebooted; there were 20 official James Bond films over 40 years (1962-2002) before Casino Royale (2006). The Incredible Hulk (2006) reboots Hulk (2003) since the latter was intended to start a series; Eric Bana signed on for three films at the outset.

With that out of the way, what’s to hate about reboots? Plenty.

The most disappointing thing about reboots, in my opinion, is that they seem to have inspired people to really, meanspiritedly bash the originals. It’s as if the only way many people can enjoy the reboot is to convince themselves that the original was a piece of crap, which is sad if you happen to like any part of that original. Look at how the (for the time) highly original elements of Burton’s Batman were denigrated: Jack Nicholson’s gleefully over-the-top Joker was slammed as a “creepy old uncle,” Danny Elfman’s dark, iconic score was suddenly too “jolly,” and the entire production too “lighthearted” or “unrealistic.” The fact that both the original and the reboot might have their own merits proves to be too much doublethink for most people to handle. What you said is all too true. Listen to people’s comments about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man series versus the 2012 reboot: it’s as if the 2002, 2004, and 2007 films and their stars were universally panned at the time when at least the first two were stunning critical and commercial successes. That’s what reboots do: they create dark alternate realities a la Back to the Future II where the previous movies were all terrible despite Tomatometer scores north of 80%. It’s hard to embrace even the best of reboots, like the Nolan Batman movies, when they subtly insist that the old movies were terrible and should be forgotten.

There’s also the formula aspect: reboots must be “darker, grittier, angstier” than the original. The model for this is the admittedly excellent Batman Begins, which managed to do this despite the original Batman being pretty damn dark, gritty, and angsty to begin with. You can see the formula at work in The Amazing Spider-Man, which gives its hero a tragic past with parental issues (like Batman Begins), regurgitates an origin story that was covered previously (like Batman Begins), and includes a villain that was never utilized in the original films (like Batman Begins). Throw in some Twilight-inspired casting choices and a bunch of big names in supporting roles (like Batman Begins) and the formula is complete.

The gap between remake and reboot is shrinking as well. It took 33 years to reboot Planet of the Apes the first time but only 10 to reboot it the second. Batman Begins was made 8 years after Batman & Robin and 16 years after Batman, but The Incredible Hulk followed Hulk by 5 years, the same as Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man. James Bond got only 4 years between Die Another Day (admittedly not the finest hour for the franchise) and Casino Royale. It’s getting to the point where a reboot of any franchise, with both the promise of new box office dollars and those of potential sequels, is on the table no matter how recently or how well the last movies were made. How long before Warner Brothers reboots Batman now that Nolan is done with him? The Amazing Batman starring Robert Pattinson as Batman and Kristen Stewart as Catwoman could be hitting screens as soon as 2016!

Finally, in most cases, rebooting is excessive. Why not just recast? Casino Royale is an excellent film, but did it really need to take 40 years of franchise history to the curb just to make Bond darker, grittier, and angstier? Brosnan and Dalton were both praised for bringing those same attributes to the series in 1987 and 1995 but neither necessitated a reboot; the producers just ignored or minimized aspects of the series they didn’t like. In fact, editing a few minutes out of Casino Royale would leave it pretty firmly in continuity with the earlier film (the same can be said about The Incredible Hulk).

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July 11, 2012

From “The Proling” by D. Terra Goldman

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Orwell is the man. Nobody writes against the totalitarian left quite like a disappointed socialist!

One thing that I note, while reading 1984, is that most commentators completely overlook the Proles. That’s incidentally a good way to tell the difference between someone who’s actually read the book and someone who’s just absorbed its broad strokes from Cliff Notes or cultural osmosis. Just ask them about the Proles, or listen to them assume that all the citizens of 1984 Oceania have telescreens (they don’t) or are under constant watch by the Thought Police (they aren’t, at least not to the extent of the Party).

But in many ways, since the destruction of all but a few of the old, monolithic Communist evils, it’s the Proles who represent some of 1984‘s most compelling and timely material circa 2012. After all, the Proles don’t have the overt, draconian surveillance imposed on the Outer Party; instead they’re kept satiated with prolefeed, a constant stream of low-quality, mind-numbing entertainment (and of course “Pornosec”).

I wonder what Orwell would think of a few hours of US/UK “reality TV” or supermarket tabloids in that context? It certainly is mindless stuff, on the whole. But you have to ask yourself if our proles–or us, the proles–are simply heaving down our prolefeed either at the behest of an oppressor or, perhaps more chillingly, the behest of no sinister agency at all. To borrow another dystopian metaphor, could the clamshell earphones of Fahrenheit 451 exist if there were no oppressive, external force driving them–nothing but the free market?

Maybe we are have all made proles of ourselves, and no one will realize it until someone or something steps into the vacuum to become Big Brother.

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June 9, 2012

From “Why I Hate MMORPGs” by Andrew A. Sailer

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I’ve decided that I hate MMORPGs, despite the fact that, once upon a time, I poured dozens of hours and bushels of dollars into their gaping maws.

Look at what happened to 38 Studios. The company was created from the get-go to make an MMORPG. It retained R. A. Salvatore to write 1000 (!) years of backstory and hired Todd MacFarlane as art director, to say nothing of the talent that was attracted from all over the industry. The studio put out (almost as an afterthought) a single-player game using those assets that was a success, but given the amount of money being shoveled into the MMORPG dev furnace almost no amount of cash flow would have been enough. Just imagine what kind of single-player game, or single-player game with a multiplayer component, that could have been made with that talent for the reported $500 million debt the company rang up.

Worse, when an MMORPG fails–as 90% of them do–there is nothing left. The game is useless and can no longer be played and all player progress is lost forever. If there’s a particularly dedicated fanbase a few pirate servers might be set up, but that’s it. Given the relatively short lifespan of some of these incredibly expensive projects, like Tabula Rasa (2007-2009) or The Matrix Online (2005-2009) or Earth and Beyond (2002-2004), all that money might as well have been piled up and burned. But because Blizzard has had such success with World of Warcraft, as well as a few other niche players, developers and financiers with dollar signs in their eyes keep trying.

From a narrative standpoint, too, the games leave much to be desired. Star Wars: The Old Republic has been lauded for creating an experience that feels almost like a single-player adventure (in other words, like the single-player Knights of the Old Republic) but that came at the cost of $200 million, the most expensive video game price tag of all time. Developers without that kind of muscle are severely limited in the kind of story they can tell, often falling back on repetitive fetch/kill quests or dungeon grinding. And it goes without saying that there can never be any kind of narrative payoff, as the games have no end. When you inevitably lose interest and cancel your subscription you don’t even have the satisfaction of a narrative well-concluded.

Just imagine if some of that money and talent had been spent on a game like Mass Effect or Skyrim.

 

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