Articles
 by Jeff Strand May 10, 2002 |
The
Seriously Whacked Point of View “Star by Jeff Strand |
WARNING: This column
does not deal with adventure games. In fact, it doesn’t deal with
games at all. Not even a little bit. Not even as a twist at the very
end. You will find nary a game-related tidbit in this entire column,
and therefore are encouraged to read at your own risk.
WARNING II: I wasn’t
kidding about the first warning. Really.
It’s a lot easier to experience
movie magic as a kid. The first time I saw Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory in a movie theatre, around age eight, I fell
completely under its spell. When I saw it in a theatre last year,
at age thirty, the spell was broken:
“Why is Charlie standing
outside the candy shop being all moon-faced because he’s too poor
to buy any chocolate, when the guy singing ‘The Candy-Man’ is giving
it to those kids for FREE? Look at him! He’s just pouring it into
their hands! Just walk in there and open your mouth, moron!”
“Wait a second…Charlie’s
mom slaves away endlessly to support her family, while Grandpa Joe
has lain in bed for twenty years. After two decades of watching his
daughter work, he JUST NOW decides that maybe he should give up his
tobacco habit to give the family a little financial boost? And Charlie
picks this lazy bastard to visit the factory instead of his hard-working,
devoted mother? And then Grandpa Joe, who has no real interest in
keeping his family from starving to death, suddenly decides he can
drag his butt out of bed for some free chocolate???”
“Is it just me, or
is this a slasher film for kiddies?”
“Those preachy oompa-loompas
would last about TEN SECONDS in any chocolate factory of mine before
I started beating them with giant gummi bears.”
Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka
is giving the exact same performance I saw when I was eight, but what
seemed magical and delightful now seems creepy and demented (and a
trifle over-medicated). The movie didn’t change…I did.
As a kid, I was a Star
Wars fanatic. I had an action figure collection that would–had
I not been so brain-dead as to open them and play with them and later
trade them for G.I.Joes–have financed several retirements. My best
friend and I arrived at Return of the Jedi several hours early.
(VERY STUPID MOMENT THAT I PROBABLY SHOULD NOT REVEAL TO YOU: My first
crushing thought upon pedaling my bicycle into the parking lot was
“Oh no! There are only a few cars here! Everybody else must have
gone home because it was sold out!”) And I loved that movie unconditionally.
I saw it four more times, and loved it just as much every single time.
Now, I never really continued
to watch the movies on home video, maybe a couple of times each over
the years, so when the Special Editions were released, it was much
like seeing them fresh, with adult eyes.
I realized that a lot of
the acting wasn’t very good. Same with the dialogue. As a kid, I watched
in horror as our heroes were about to be thrown in the Sarlaac pit,
where they would learn true agony as their bodies were slowly digested
over a period of a thousand years. As an adult, I thought, “That
sounds pretty bad, but unless there’s a catering service down there,
they’re lasting a few days, tops.” I was unable to completely
immerse myself in the movies like I did during their first
run.
That said, was there movie
magic at work? You’d better believe it. Sure, I may have gone from
adoring C-3PO to wanting to slap that prissy, whiny droid, but overall,
the movies still worked in a BIG way. When the Rancor creature goes
after Luke in Jabba’s basement, it’s a genuinely exciting scene, despite
the shoddy effects work. When Darth Vader reveals that he is Luke’s
father, it’s still a powerful moment, even after being parodied approximately
3,827,901 times. Maybe the movies don’t work from beginning to end,
but the original trilogy has movie magic galore.
I still believed in that
galaxy far, far away.
So, what’s up with Episodes
I and II?
Maybe we’ve simply become
more demanding. The entire Internet threw a tizzy fit over the title
of the new movie, but c’mon, Attack of the Clones may be a
goofy title, but so is The Empire Strikes Back (and for you
hecklers out there, Send in the Clones is no funnier than The
Empire Strikes Out).
We could also blame the
reliance on CGI effects. There’s no question that the Phantom Menace
Jabba the Hutt is more expressive, but there’s also no question that
the Return of the Jedi Jabba the Hutt looks like it’s really
occupying the same space as the actors. When Carrie Fisher is pulled
against him in her metal bra, you can almost feel the squish.
Or maybe we just need more
clarity of action. In the climactic attack on the Death Star in Star
Wars, we know exactly what the heroes are trying to accomplish.
We’ve seen it demonstrated. And the final sequence is loaded with
edge-of-your-seat excitement. During the final battle in Attack
of the Clones, there’s a lot of chaos and more CGI effects than
you can shake Buzz Lightyear at, but is it exciting…or just
busy?
When Luke, Han, and Leia
are trapped in the trash compactor, we know what it’s for. We may
question the need for a slimy creature swimming around in there, but
still, it’s quite logical that the Death Star would need some method
of waste disposal. When young Obi-Wan is trying to help Qui-Gon Jinn
and he has to wait for those opening-and-closing force fields…ummmm,
what ARE those things for, anyway? To give the video game adaptation
something to work with?
The new movies have no
sense of wonder. They’re entertaining but not thrilling. There’s no
magic.
Movie magic isn’t accidental.
Give us characters that we love and care about (c’mon, even if we
disregard J**-J** B**ks, there’s nobody in the new films that comes
even CLOSE to a Han Solo or a Princess Leia). Give us action sequences
that put us on the edge of our seat, that we admire with our gut instead
of our brain. Dazzle us with imagination. Make us believe that what
we’re seeing is real. CGI effects don’t make that impossible…I believed
everything I saw in Toy Story. I believed nothing I saw in
Attack of the Clones.
The nerdy little eight-to-twelve-year-old
is gone, and he’ll never completely return. But in May 2005, when
Episode III debuts, I’d love nothing more than for him to pay me a
visit.
(Hate mail regarding this
article may be sent to [email protected].)
You can visit Jeff Strand’s
Seriously Whacked website at http://www.jeffstrand.com.
