Category: movies

Les Mis BBC, a review

or: the one where I’m tempted to use capslock, and must manfully refrain, otherwise it would be all capslock.

I wrote a post almost a year ago mentioning the BBC adaptation of Les Mis, and made a lot of placating noises about how adaptations are never exactly like the book, and how in some cases I actually prefer adaptations that are wildly different from their origins. And in some cases, yes, that is still true. But with Les Mis BBC …

Oh boy, how do I put this.

Wicked the musical has some of the character tropes from the book, and has the same basic plot beats, but is completely different from the book in terms of tone and outlook. The book is nihilistic and pessimistic; it speaks of terrorism as the only way to combat a totalitarian regime, it speaks of death as inevitable, none of the characters (and I do mean none of them) are sympathetic, and there is so much weird R-rated stuff going on that it’s frankly amazing my parents let me read it in middle school.

Wicked the musical is about none of that. Wicked the musical is about finding meaning in life even when it’s easier not to, and about friendship and love saving people even at the eleventh hour; its characters are all sympathetic, except for the main antagonist, and nobody dies. And yeah, there’s a suggestive scene, but it’s nowhere near as raunchy as something from Heathers or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Frankly, it barely hits the PG mark.

Transforming a pessimistic book into an optimistic show, that’s something I’m fine with. More than fine. Enthusiastic about, even.

But what Andrew Davies did with Les Mis was the opposite.

Continue reading “Les Mis BBC, a review”

rainy day movies

Today was the kind of rainy Monday that makes you wish you were still in bed. The kind of day that makes you want to camp out on the couch with a mug of hot-beverage-of-choice (in my case, coffee) and watch a movie.

My rainy day movie tends to be Coraline. Yep, the stop-motion animated film with the creepy button eyes. Somehow the combination of stop-motion and the lullaby soundtrack music and all the loving care put into production — did you know that all of the dolls’ clothing was handmade, and Coraline’s tiny sweater was hand-knitted with miniature needles? — just makes for a lovely comfort movie. I can probably recite 90% of the dialogue from memory, I’ve seen it so many times. The animation is phenomenal, the script is tightly written, the music is alternately soothing and just the right amount of discordant. Laika puts care into all of their productions, and it shows.

Keith David as the voice of the cat doesn’t exactly hurt, either.

I know it’s a creepy kind of movie, with a few images (like the Other Father’s distorted face as he seems to become more candle wax than person) being a bit disturbing. If I had seen it as a kid, it probably would have given me nightmares. Disney’s The Black Caudron certainly did, and I didn’t see that one until I was ten. But as a teenager when I first read Coraline the book and delved into Neil Gaiman’s oeuvre, I found a little more horror in stories like “The Last Temptation,” which was also sort of designed with young readers in mind, and which I still enjoyed … unlike “24 Hours” in Preludes and Nocturnes, which was very much not for youth consumption, and if I never read it again it will still be too soon.

This begs a question about what exactly constitutes horror, and how different people see it as different things. But that’s probably a question for another post.

The book Coraline is stark and lonely and it’s got its fair share of existential dread along with the eldritch monster to be beaten. The movie Coraline still has all its teeth — it hasn’t been tamed or tamped down in any way — but it’s less about the existential dread and more about the relationships people build with each other. It makes for a brighter, warmer story — a comfort story — a well-used story, at least in my case. I can’t think of a single rainy morning or afternoon where I haven’t thought, “hum, I want to put on Coraline in a few minutes.” And maybe there’s another movie I’d rather watch instead, but my default for rainy days will always be Coraline.

What’s your rainy day default?

Superstar!

It’s Easter Monday – happy Easter, by the way – which means it’s time to go over NBC’s live broadcast of their version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ, Superstar!

I’ve had opinions about this musical for two years longer than I’ve had opinions about Les Mis, so buckle up.

Norm Lewis as Caiaphas was perfect of course. The Annas was pretty good too. Backstory: the reason I ended up actually wanting to see this particular version of JCS was because of Norm Lewis as Caiaphas. Norm played Javert in the 25th Anniversary Concert for Les Mis, and also on Broadway; the guy is fantastic. So whatever else went on with JCS Live, I knew that the Caiaphas would be perfect. And I was right; and Annas and the other Pharisees were excellent too. “This Jesus Must Die” is the best number in the whole production.

Alice Cooper was … eh, he was alright as King Herod. Fumbled a line, didn’t have as much flair as I expected actually. I mean, come on. It’s Alice Cooper. I expected a bit more vocal diva. He wasn’t horrible, he wasn’t bad, he was just kinda alright. And that in and of itself isn’t a bad thing – not every cast member can be a powerhouse – but if the guy’s one of the three people you’re putting on the marquis to sell the show, you kind of expect him to be a powerhouse. Sorry, buddy. I like your cover of “This is Halloween,” though.

Sara Bareilles was great, as expected. She made a really wistful Mary Magdalene, balanced the sweetness and the belting very well, which of course is her calling card. And man, she delivered. The few trills and embellishments she made didn’t detract from her songs. They reminded us that, oh yes, this is Sara doing the singing. Nice. Solid performance, 10/10 good Mary Magdalene.

Erik Grönwall as Simon the Zealot was .. really good. Really, really good. Strong belt, lots of passion, hit a nice high note at the end, sustained his notes well. So … why wasn’t this guy cast as Judas instead? I’m just asking. This guy has potential. He was a strong member of the ensemble, but he could have been a real powerhouse if he’d been given the opportunity.

Jason Tam as Simon Peter was also a nice solid member of the ensemble, again, lots of passion. His final denial (in a song titled “Peter’s Denial”, who’d’a thought it) was a desperate frightened scream, and man, it worked. I wanna see more of these guys.

Ben Daniels as Pontius Pilate was pretty decent. He’s no David Burt, but I’m pretty sure only Anthony Warlow would be able to match David Burt for sheer British snarly menace. Ben Daniels is also a tenor, as far as I can tell, and the Pilate role was definitely written for a baritone. But he put his all into it, and the result is a Pilate who genuinely wants to be good but ends up doing evil anyway.

John Legend was .. wait for it … legendary.

The actor for Jesus I’m most familiar with is Steve Balsamo of the original cast album. That dude had a pair of pipes – he hit the high notes as hard as possible, and held them longer than is normally possible for human lungs. He also didn’t embellish the notes at all, just sang them straight, no trills and no frills. John Legend hits it from the other direction – he keeps to the lower register for the most part, and does trills almost every line, and he holds his notes a reasonable amount of time. But here’s the thing, though: Trills and frills and dipsy doodles can be annoying if that’s all you do, and you don’t put any power behind your notes; but John Legend puts power into everything he does, so they weren’t annoying at all. His “Gethsemane” is a very different kettle of fish from Steve Balsamo’s, but it’s just as good, because they both put all of their passion into it.

Meanwhile, Brandon Victor Dixon as Judas was … sweet.

Which is an extremely weird adjective to associate with Judas Iscariot, the ultimate traitor.

He went for the Zubin Varla riffs, the same ones from the original cast recording, which … I don’t know, it’s a bit odd considering how far John Legend deviated from Steve Balsamo’s performance in the original cast. This Judas is very pop-y, if that makes any sense. I mean, JCS is a rock opera, but he doesn’t belt the way you’d expect in a rock opera. In fact he doesn’t belt at all. For contrast just look at Drew Sarich as Judas in Amstetten 2005, who super leaned into the rock aspect and belted every line he could. – and actually, Brandon Victor Dixon doesn’t even lean into the rock aspect as much as Zubin Varla did either. On the one hand, the way he did “Damned for All Time/Blood Money” does a damn good job of making Judas reluctant to betray Jesus, and there’s a solid ten seconds’ silent hesitation before he actually does so. And for “Judas’ Death” he’s impressively torn up about it. But on the other hand …

… Where’s the anger? There’s no anger! And not even a hint of spite! You’re telling me that Judas Iscariot, ultimate traitor, isn’t even a little bit angry at the man he betrays?

The point of JCS is to portray both sides of the betrayal, and to explain that Judas had reasons for what he did. The lyrics do indicate a certain level of not only frustration but anger and vindictiveness that Judas feels towards Jesus. Brandon Victor Dixon is a decent vocalist, but the way that he delivered the lines didn’t exactly say “anger” to me. There’s despair and love and anguish in there, sure, but those are nuances that I look for to balance out the anger. It’s like putting all the garlic and onion and celery you could ever want into a chicken soup, but leaving out the dang chicken.

And this is exhibited the best in “The Last Supper.” John Legend is pouring all his passion into his lines, but with a sad-sweet-despairing Judas, what’s usually almost a fight scene is instead … really vocally unbalanced. “To think I admired you – well, now I despise you!” are words that should be hurled like arrows, like daggers, like a freaking fireball. Instead they’re almost whispered. “The Last Supper” is the opening number in Act Two, and it should start off with a punch! And with John Legend as Jesus, it does! But then Brandon Victor Dixon opens his mouth and … it kind of falls apart. I’m sorry, buddy, I really am. I’m sure you’d make a wonderful Peter. But I’d pick somebody else as Judas.

And honestly – if you’re gonna pick a guy from Hamilton to play Judas, why not pick Leslie Odom Jr? Or do you not think he’d work as well in the glittery shirts?

Or Erik Grönwall would look pretty good in the glittery shirts too. Just saying.

adaptations, Hugo style

A couple weeks ago they came out with the main cast of the new Les Mis BBC miniseries that’ll be coming out sometime in the next few years. Filming apparently starts this February on-location in France and Belgium.

Guys, I am yelling about this.

Which, you know, isn’t surprising given that I’m a humungous nerd about the book. A tv mini/series gives you the chance to spread out and really delve into the fun details of a monster like Les Mis (they call it “the brick” for a reason – the unabridged novel is almost 531,000 words long). And while the musical adaptation is a lot of fun, and there have been scads of movie adaptations in the last four decades, most of them haven’t … well … really been all that accurate to the book.

I know, I know. Treat adaptations like they’re completely separate entities and you’ll have more fun. It worked with Neil Gaiman books like Coraline and Stardust, it worked (mostly) with the Harry Potter series, it worked with Wicked by Gregory Maguire. The book-to-movie or book-to-musical transition, which naturally involves snipping a lot of things to make sure it’s at the generally accepted 2-3 hour time limit, means that something’s gotta give. And that’s only taking the plot and characters into account, let alone the execution.

Anytime that you switch media, there are going to be changes you have to make. A graphic novel transmutes fine to a movie or tv series because it’s essentially a storyboard; a novel transmutes fine to a podcast because it’s essentially a script. But going from something with only one medium (pure words, pure sound, that mix with the reader/listener’s imagination to produce an experience unique to each individual that consumes it) to something multimedia (words and image, or image and sound) means that the image in the reader’s head isn’t going to match what you see on stage or screen. How can it? Unless we develop telepathic technology to project our imaginations onto a screen, there’s no way to tailor-fit someone else’s thoughts into a movie. Even a movie or stage director won’t be able to do that exactly, because the actors or the set designers or someone will throw in something different. And sometimes the things that other person thinks up are really awesome. I sure wouldn’t have pegged Coraline for a stop-motion adaptation. But inevitably there’s going to be somebody complaining that the adaptation “isn’t what I pictured.”

The time constraints create the biggest changes, though, and these can make or break an adaptation. Cutting down a megalith like Les Mis into a two-hour movie or a three-hour musical is … well, that’s why a miniseries or a full tv show is a better multimedia idea, just off the top of my head. I mean, heck, just look at the Mortal Instruments series, or A Series of Unfortunate Events. Both had movie adaptations that kinda bombed at the box office, but that are doing really quite well on the small screen. (I still need to watch ASOUE on Netflix … one more New Year’s resolution, I suppose.) It gives the adaptation creators a chance to really take their time with all of the plot.

Wicked the musical and Stardust the movie? Almost completely unrecognizable from their original books. I found the adaptations more enjoyable, but then again I’m prejudiced; as much as I respect Maguire and Gaiman’s writing (and I can’t thank Neil Gaiman enough for introducing me to Terry Pratchett’s books), I … really just don’t have a taste for a lot of the weird stuff that went on in Wicked and Stardust. Sorry, but nihilism and unhappy endings just aren’t my cup of tea. I’m an escapist at heart. And probably, for all the same reasons that I love the adaptations, other people might think they’re too saccharine and dopey and prefer the original books. Whoops. To each their own.

Les Mis? Well …

… This requires a Part 2.

Stay tuned.

the Janus man

I’ve nattered about it in other circles, so I might as well do it here. Be ye warned: this post is a long one.

As a consumer of media, I tend to go through cycles of intense obsession that die down to more reasonable levels after a few months (or years), but that can flare up again at any time with only the slightest provocation. To millennials, that much-bemoaned demographic to which I belong, it’s pretty par for the course. To the iGeneration, those people born after the year 2000, who are in high school or about to enter college (!!!), it’s also very much the norm. To people older than Gen Y, that’s … weird. For some reason.

Whatever. The original Trekkies pretty much laid the groundwork for fandom as it is today, y’all don’t get to sneer at us.

The point that I’m meandering towards, is that the level of obsession in the media I consume is directly correlated to the characters in that media. Whether it’s a book or a tv series or a movie, or heck, a period of history, it’s the people involved that I’m interested in, not necessarily the events.

Which is funny, because I tend to stay within certain genres and certain trappings. I’m not a horror or mystery fan. Shoot-‘em-up action films don’t do much for me. Mil scifi and hard scifi can be pretty interesting (see: Starship Troopers and The Martian), but I usually stick to space opera, fantasy, historical fiction, etc. I come for the setting, but I stay for the characters.

I stay for the authors, too. If someone writes one book I enjoy, I’m a lot more likely to read the rest of the backlog, even if it’s part of a different series or universe. That’s how I got into the Discworld: via Good Omens. And Good Omens itself I read because of Gaiman’s Coraline. Never underestimate the transitive power of a well-liked book.

It’s how I got into Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. If JKR is good at anything, she’s good at capitalizing on her backlist to sell the frontlist.

Which – you know, good for her. The woman’s got her own theme park. If I can be a tenth as successful as she is, I’ll have made it big.

(The Cursed Child is, uh, a different matter, but that and Pottermore are a different post altogether. Let’s table that for tomorrow.)

Anyway! Fantastic Beasts. Or more accurately, the characters of Fantastic Beasts.

The first time I saw it, I was reasonably pleased with the goings-on of the plot and the characters, up until a crucial reveal scene in the last quarter of the film. If you’ve seen the film, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t seen the film, maybe skip the rest of this post altogether, because it’s a big freaking spoiler.

The casting of Grindelwald was a mistake, in my personal opinion. Mr. Depp may be a talented actor, and I may have enjoyed previous films that he was in – Pirates of the Caribbean sparked a huge interest in the Golden Age of Piracy for me in middle school – but if you’re going to have a film with a central plot focusing on domestic violence, maybe don’t cast an actor who’s been charged with beating his (now ex-)wife.

Seems kind of tasteless.

That’s the casting, though. Even if they’d cast Jamie Campbell Bower (you know, the actor who played Young Grindelwald in the HP movies), the decision to make Creepy Antagonist Percival Graves actually an international terrorist is … well … I’d still chafe at the bit, I think.

It’s not that the movie isn’t internally consistent. On the rewatch, there are plenty of clues to indicate that the man isn’t just a fashionable-and-imposing-yet-creepy dude. The slight fixation on Dumbledore during the interrogation scene is the biggest indicator that he’s actually Grindelwald. The Deathly Hallows bit, as well, works as an alarm bell for them fans that know, that all is not as it should be. But … well …

I mean, the alley scenes with poor Credence do a pretty good job of that, too. There was enough emotional manipulation in those short scenes to choke a horse. And you don’t have to be an international magical terrorist to be a manipulative creep. Anyone can be a creep! Equal opportunity creepiness!

And he didn’t have to be the literal terrorist to agree with the terrorist’s ideas. That’s the point, isn’t it? Not everyone is Magical Hitler, but he didn’t get so much power without supporters. It would have been concerning enough, and it would have remained consistent with the rest of the story (except for that pesky Dumbledore question), if Percival Graves had still been Percival Graves at the end of the movie. I get that “terrorist infiltrates government by stealing a man’s face” is one hell of a plot twist, and hey, stealing faces is a sufficiently sinister magical thing to do, so hey, why not. It’s a good “gotcha!” moment. But wouldn’t it make more of an impact to say “hey, this trusted lieutenant dedicated his life to protecting people but now he agrees with the magical terrorist”?

Especially when – and this is the particularly sticky issue – right before the reveal, he actually poses a pretty good question.

“Who does this law protect? Us, or them?”

The question was already answered two seconds ago, but the question forces us to think about it. The no-majs who were killed during the Obscurus’ rampage, they sure weren’t protected by the Statute of Secrecy. Credence, who was executed by wizarding firing squad rather than be rehabilitated, he sure wasn’t protected by the Statute of Secrecy.

And it also confronts the fact that MACUSA was too blinded by pride to acknowledge that there was even a possibility of Obscurials existing anymore. They could not realize that an Obscurial was tortured into existence right down the street from their headquarters. Essentially, the government condemned a young man to die.

That law protected no one.

Graves was morally gross, but the dude had a point.

And the movie confronted us with that uncomfortable truth, right up until – whoops, actually he’s Grindelwald so we don’t have to weight his words at all. Everything that spews out of his mouth is a lie. We can dismiss the uncomfortable truth, because it came from the lips of a mass murderer.

Oh well.

The character of Graves – or GrindelGraves – was a ruthless man who would do whatever slimy thing it took to achieve his ends, but who commanded the respect and loyalty of one of the most sympathetic characters in the movie, Tina Goldstein. Her shock and sorrow when he sentences her to death is visceral, and not just because she’s about to die! There’s some legitimate betrayal going on there! What kind of man is he, that can inspire that level of dedication, and then turn around and condemn her to death?

Mmmm, he’s a terrorist. Well, there went all that moral complexity, right out the window.

On the plus side, the switcheroo means that distinguished-older-gentleman-with-the-rakish-clothes Colin Farrell is now officially a mystery. We don’t know who the real Percival Graves is! Is he an accomplice? Is he a captive? Is he dead? Until the next installment (and JKR is planning 6 more movies as far as I last heard), we have no idea. He’s Schroedinger’s character. And fandom has taken that blank slate and run with it.

I’m really hoping he isn’t dead. If we’ve introduced the face-stealing plot and we can’t retcon it, by God, let’s explore it to its full potential.

if you’re gonna break the rules …

… do it on purpose.

Because I’m more familiar with princess movies than, uh, a lot of things (what can I say: I grew up on Disney) we’re going to do the comparison using princess movies. But I’m sure you can find other examples in sci fi, or action, or any number of other genres.

Three princess movies that all contain fairytale magic, but are set in a sort of medieval/baroque/otherwise “period” era: Ella Enchanted, Cinderella 2015, and Beauty and the Beast 2017.

You know, right off the bat, that not everything is going to be realistic, because duh, there’s magic involved. At least one of the main/supporting characters is going to be inhuman. But the attitude that each of these movies takes toward that old-timey setting is very different.

You’ve got Cinderella 2015, what I’d call the middle of the spectrum. Most of the sets, the costumes, are based solidly in an 1800s French sort of style. The only obvious anachronisms are in the stepmother and stepsisters’ costumes, which are clearly done on purpose in order to show how different they are from everyone else in the story. And the fairy godmother, while she has little sparkly wings attached to her dress, is more glamorous than everyone except Cinderella — with LEDs in the skirts! — but in a way that doesn’t stick out badly, even if she only has one scene in the movie. The dialogue and setting and costumes mesh pretty well to provide that historical-feeling ambiance. (You can read a more detailed analysis of the costuming in Cinderella 2015 here.)

Then there’s Ella Enchanted, which has the fairy godmother in a mini skirt and go-go boots, and Eric Idle narrating, and Hattie as the president of the Prince Char Fanclub (zomg u guyz!), and the main character singing a Queen song during karaoke. None of this existed in the book this movie was loosely based off of, but the movie doesn’t care; it’s delightedly zooming its way through a story that can be whatever it wants, because there’s magic and elves and ogres, darn it, it doesn’t have to be realistic. The dialogue, setting, and costumes are all consistent in this regard. So the anachronisms, instead of being annoying, are entertaining. (See also: A Knight’s Tale, even though that one doesn’t have any magic involved.)

And then you have Beauty and the Beast 2017, which is very clearly trying to be modern in its sensibilities but historical in its setting and costumes, Which … really doesn’t succeed, because the modern sensibilities bleed over into the costumes, and not in a way that feels like it was done on purpose. Belle wears period clothes throughout the film except for the ballgown in the iconic scene. The contrast is pretty jarring, especially when you realize that that yellow dress wouldn’t look out of place in a high school prom; and that kind of dissonance is usually reserved for the antagonists, not the main character (c.f. Cinderella). Then you also have the dialogue, which in some moments is lifted straight from the original movie, and in some moments feels like it could have been lifted straight from the original movie, and in some moments has words straight from 2017 that just immediately ruin the moment. (At least for me: the Beast saying the phrase “too touristy” was a definite nope.)

I won’t even begin to go into the dance choreography.

The thing is, there’s always going to be something that doesn’t quite mesh with everything else. And that’s okay. But it’s like writing an essay for English class. If you want there to be a Solid Theme (i.e. Belle being “not like other girls”), then everything you do has to be related back to that theme. Make her other clothes more modern too, instead of just the ballgown. Or, if you want the solid theme to be “this could have taken place in a palace not far from Paris in the 1700s”, then even if you’re stuck on Emma Watson not having to wear a corset, you could at least make some kind of nod to the fashions of the time instead of that .. ruffled, cake-layered … thing. But the key is consistency.

I don’t care — and your audience won’t care either — whether you go full-on Research Mode and toss in as much trivia/jargon/whatever from that time period as you want, or whether everything is neon lights and karaoke. Just as long as it’s entertaining, and as long as it’s consistent.

The Stopping Point of Sympathy

Warning: Here be spoilers for the latest Game of Thrones episode 7×04, for them as hasn’t seen it yet.

There seems to be a line that people draw in the sand when it comes to the amount of bull they will put up with from characters. Puppy kicking is usually the first one. As soon as you see a character harming an animal, that character has to die.

Different people draw different lines in the sand, of course. For some people, Cinderella saying that she stays with her awful step-family because she needs to keep living in her parents’ house that they lived in for hundreds of years, well, that’s a bit too stupid for them, and after that they lose all sympathy for her. (I am very much not one of those people. But that’s an opinion for a different post.)

For some people, the fact that Wesley threatens to strike Buttercup in the movie (and actually does strike her in the book) despite how much he claims to love her, well, that rings a billion alarm bells for them, and after that they lose all sympathy for him.

And for some people, the fact that Daenerys Targaryen refuses to help Jon Snow to the benefit of every life in Westeros Essos and beyond, purely because she wants him to bow and he won’t (because there’s no time for politics when literal ice zombies are coming)–

Well. You can imagine that some people might lose all sympathy for her.

It’s amazing how a formerly sympathetic character can become, well, former, in the space of a few short episodes. Daenerys had a complicated personality; most people on the show do; so it wasn’t like she was entirely pure and perfect before Season 7 started. But someone had to bring King’s Landing around Cersei’s ears, and Dany was the girl to do it.

But as Jon Snow points out, they’ve got bigger fish to fry these days. The problems that these characters face are literally life and death. And Daenerys is too focused on her personal goal of conquering Westeros to acknowledge that.

And even when Jon shows her a most convenient proof that White Walkers are real, she still insists that unless he swears fealty to him, she will not help.

This is the point when my BS indicator went into overload. Sorry, Daenerys, but for that last battle between the Dothraki and the Lannisters, I was actually rooting for Lannisters this time. Roasting people alive is an effective tactic, sure, and no one ever said war was nice. But the Casterly Rock plan was created specifically to avoid roasting people alive. It didn’t work, but that doesn’t mean your next step is to start roasting people! And I wouldn’t be surprised if her dragon Drogon died from this. Congratulations, you’ve just wasted an incredibly valuable resource for no reason whatsoever.

Try to divorce yourself from the Mad King’s reputation now, Dany. I dare you.

The trouble with Bad Boys

Aka: the Twilight phenomenon.

Acknowledging that I was a wee middleschooler when the Twilight books first boomed kind of dates me — as either Too Old To Be Cool or Very Much A Young’Un — but hey, I have an insider’s point of view. Yes, I was Team Jacob. Hold on, this is actually relevant.

The fact that Jacob was a werewolf was the main reason I was Team Jacob, but there were other reasons too. (Hold on, I’m getting there.)

My sister was very much Team Edward. One of the mutual friends we had at summer camp was also incredibly Team Edward. And naturally we had big arguments about who was better and, naturally, which of us was right and which was a soppy idiot. Ah, middle school. Preteens are savages.

In fact the main reason I was so firmly Team Jacob and so anti Team Edward was that Edward was a creepy vampire stalker who literally wanted to drink Bella’s blood, but Jacob, on the other hand, Would Never Hurt Bella Ever.

Yes, I believed this even after reading New Moon. You know, the one where Jacob forcibly kisses Bella and she punches him to try to make him stop, and then he tells her it’s her fault her wrist is broken.

So romantic, right?

</sarcasm>

But this whole Girls Liking Bad Boys, whether the boys in question are vampires or leather-studded bikers or powerful demigods hellbent on conquest, is a bit of a puzzler. Loki murders hundreds of people on the screen and girls swoon? I mean, really? I was fourteen and embarrassing once too, but really, younger self?

I think I’ve figured it out, though. Here it is, the Theory of Awkward Antihero Obsession:

“Bad guys are attractive because they have the ability to do bad things to other people BUT, and this is the important caveat, they would never hurt ME.”

Makes sense, mostly. There’s a sense of self-preservation in there somewhere, so that’s alright.

The problem with the Twilight books, while we were mid-craze, is that our definitions of the word “hurt” varied so much. Now, of course, we’ve grown up a bit and we can recognize that both Edward and Jacob are creeps.

But was it a good story?

It seems like most of the movies and books that I like include at least one minor (or major) character that I like, who bites the dust. Well, considering a book like Les Misérables, where only three major characters make it out alive, basically any character you attach yourself to is going to die horribly; the disclaimer is right there in the title. But even regular things like, well, like GotG2 or Wonder Woman, have cool characters that I really like that somehow manage to die. For a reason, yes! For a reason that is consistent with their previous characterization, yes! But still.

I can still remember the first time a character I liked died, because I pitched a fit in the Sears by the refrigerator section and my dad had to calm me down again. What can I say, I was a weirdly emotional seven year old. These days I don’t have melt-downs in public places, I just write fanfiction. A much better coping mechanism, if you ask me.

But when I tearfully described how Rose had been killed in Martin the Warrior, my dad asked a question that made me very reluctant and also very mutinous and also very, very confused: “But was it a good story?”

Uhh, sure, Dad, it was a good story, I guess. But the character died. And I didn’t want that character to die, I wanted the bad guys to die. Only the bad guys are allowed to die. (What can I say, I was seven. I still believed an evil alien was mind-controlling my third grade teacher.) And the fact of that character’s death hovered over everything else. I haven’t read any Redwall books in uh, probably about a decade, but off the top of my head I can tell you that the ones I reread included Taggerung (because it had an otter as a main character) and the ones I didn’t reread had Martin the Warrior at the top of the list.

But was it a good story? Well, that’s the kicker, because it depends on what you think of as the story.

To some people, it’s the plot and only the plot that constitutes the story. The swashbuckling pirates steal from the rich and escape the British Navy and ride away into the glittering sunset. The girl escapes from her evil stepfamily and sews a beautiful dress by hand and marries the handsome prince. Keanu Reeves kills a bunch of people as revenge for Theon Greyjoy killing his pet dog, and the Green Goblin, sorry Willem Defoe, helps his old buddy Keanu out.

To other people, it’s the characters that are the story, and the plot is nice and they enjoy it but it’s basically window dressing. Say what you like about Jane Austen, but Pride and Prejudice is about characters making decisions about themselves and each other. The plot isn’t grand, and it doesn’t have to be, because the characters are strong enough to propel the plot by themselves.

So when my dad asked, “Was it a good story?” and I sullenly answered “I guess,” we were working off different definitions of the word.

It’s pretty difficult to want to return to a story that includes part of the story dying off, unless (like in Les Mis, or Rogue One, or Romeo and Juliet — stop giving me that side-eye, they do have this one thing in common) there’s a big old disclaimer stamped everywhere and really what you’re reading is how and why they die. But meanwhile, people who focus on plot are just puzzled as to why you’re sobbing into your handkerchief in the theater.

“The movie was better”

“… and other sentences to irritate the heck out of nerds.”

When it comes to films like The Golden Compass, or the Harry Potter movies, then “the movie was better” becomes utter sacrilege. But for other films, sometimes it’s actually the truth. No, wait, hear me out.

Take Coraline for example. Yes, it added a character; yes, some of the scenes were completely rearranged, or even nixed; yes, the end result is very different from the original book. But having another person her age around made Coraline’s situation a little more stark. Having more scenes with the Other World enchanting her made more sense. And the end result, while different, was an enjoyable film with not only cool stop-motion animation but a story that had more than one lesson to take away from it.

This isn’t to say that I don’t like Coraline the book. I just enjoy Coraline the movie as its own, separate, entity. And the same can be said for other book-film or book-musical adaptations. Does Les Mis the musical slightly butcher themes and character development in order to fit over 500,000 words into a three hour play? Yes. But, taken as a separate entity, it’s just as much fun as the book, and much more accessible. Fewer people are likely to run screaming from Hugh Jackman’s singing in the 2012 movie than they are from the Waterloo digression in the book.

What’s cool is when you have something like the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, where the director lifted an obscure comic character, Yondu Udonta, and took the bare bones of his identity and then created a whole new personality for the films. Maybe comic nerds are tearing their hair out over this, but I think it’s pretty neat. Take a look at Yondu’s page on the Marvel wiki. He’s a big blue alien with a bow and arrow, and he’s one of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Well, James Gunn sure expanded on that. An empathically controlled floating arrow, a space pirate crew, a tragic backstory, some truly hilarious dialogue, and a character arc that I think could make a pretty decent oneshot movie. I haven’t read the comics that feature the original Yondu, but dang if I didn’t enjoy the new Yondu.

And that’s what it’s all about, really. Pandering to the masses is what entertainment is for. There can’t be room for snobbery.