dave13-1

Imagine someone spent 60 million dollars to produce a live action episode of Inspector Gadget or Danger Mouse with an A-list cast and loads of expensive set pieces put around a thin, predictable cartoon plot involving a weather machine. It would still be better than this mess.

As I watched this thing play out on the cinema screen, I could not help but note how casually thought out the story was. Did the production's secretary knock out the treatment one Tuesday before lunch? Almost nothing happens in the first hour of the movie and what does happen is of little consequence. The movie takes forever to introduce the two principals and does so in long pointless scenes that serve no other purpose. Okay, John Steed is super cool and Emma Peel is super accomplished but we could have established as much in a thirty second long scene that ended with a handshake. And the sly, sophisticated humour of the original series was replaced with the single running gag that whatever anything out of the ordinary happens, the cast are totally unflappable owing to being English. Everything lanquishes along with no sense of urgency or threat.

Add to this the totally unbelievable conceit that Sean Connery's billionaire businessman, a national celebrity and admired public benefactor, would tarnish his reputation by plotting harm upon his own countrymen. This is the sort of anti-corporatist Hollywood nonsense that never fails to anger me. If the antagonist in the story is an evil corporation, even if the whole business is being played for farce, you know that the writers are a bunch of hacks. Try harder next time. If a real tech company came up with a working weather machine, they would immediately become the darling of the global warming crowd! There. I just put more thought into the movie's main story device in the ten minutes I have been writing this than anyone connected to the movie did in the months it was in pre-production.

This is the whole problem with this movie. Any creative thinking evident here went into prop gags and set dressings in the service of a script that could have been scribbled on a cocktail napkin between drinks. This is one of those movies where you get to the end and think, "THAT was the script they decided to go with?!" (I had the same reaction to Ghostbusters 2016.)

The Avengers is hardly the worst thing ever, or even the biggest disappointment of the 1990s. The Super Mario Brothers movie gets that title. But given the money and talent available, it is a clear wasted opportunity, and a waste of the viewer's time and attention.

...but in a surprisingly thoughtful way.

One of the most popular (to the point of cliche) anime genres is the 'harem sitcom'. An unassuming high school nobody joins a club whose other members are girls, and over time he wins them over. Yay. This is a relatable fantasy for the 95% of students who were not in the popular kid clique in school and the long endurance of the genre is proof of this. Both good and bad examples of the form abound, but I have never encountered one before that scrutinized the form itself so closely. Every cliched meet-cute, outing or other activity is minutely examined under the cold light of external logic. Would real people find anything meaningful in any of this? Are the behaviours of classmates genuine or are they just playing roles to help others understand how they slot into the larger picture. Is the popular jock really that one-dimensionally chivalrous, or is he acting according to the expectations of others? Is the brainy girl as well-organized and serene as she seems?

The show probes below the surface of the familiar in an attempt to find authenticity - the core element of the main character's personal philosophy - without turning meta or stepping outside itself. Looking for truth and substance within such a contrived and well-established form and doing so with no fourth wall breaks is a tricky task but the show runners are up to the challenge here and the result is extremely satisfying. The characters are slowly revealed to have insecurities and doubts, and become all the more relatable for this. And as the situation plays itself out, the drama feels fresh and original even though anime viewers have seen it all before.

I loved this series and waited almost breathlessly for each new season. Highly recommended.

Conan creator Robert E Howard grew up in Texas, reading cowboy stories and later writing them. He knew the most basic rule of western literature - the setting is also a character. Space matters. Travel by horse is slow and treacherous. Anything can happen out on the trail and most of it is not good. In a western, none of this has to be established, since everyone knows it already. In a fantasy world, the audience/reader needs to be filled in on the politics, social hierarchy, and geographical layout of the place. World building is a practical necessity, and at the same time it is also often the primary interest of the audience. A lot of the fun of fantasy literature involves making one's way around a completely novel dream of a world and wallowing in it.

Those responsible for this version of Conan - supposedly an adaptation of other works of REH which I am at a loss to identify despite having read all of Howard's stories multiple times - clearly did not understand this aspect of their task. The viewer never knows enough about the world depicted in the film to care about any actions taken by characters. This is the critical failing.

In a Conan story, our hero arrives from out of the desert or the mountains or from across the sea into a place and situation about which he knows next to nothing. After a series of encounters, he has learned much and has also acquired a few useful allies through strategic application of his rough charm. By this point the reader is fully aware of what needs to be accomplished and what are the consequences for failure. And victory requires more than just the defeat of a mad wizard or the army of an ambitious king. Time, distance, social conventions, local superstitions are all potential obstacles. Conan's adventures are puzzles that can only be solved with help, guidance, wisdom and perseverance. Conan was the man who would be king, and his saga was proof of his mettle.

Here we get very little of this. What we do get is a generic swords and sandals setting immediately recognizable to any Steve Reeves fan, a generic bad guy role that utterly wastes the talents of Stephen Lang and about forty or fifty million dollars worth of quite intricate but not very watchable CGI. This is symptomatic of modern Hollywood. Technology is the replacement for skill at storytelling.

I doubt that Howard himself would have thought much of the results.