Hollywood Nazis

When Spotlight won the Academy Award for best picture this week, my first response was "What the hell is Spotlight?"

Once I was told that it was about last century's child abuse scandal, my first thought was "Really? Is there nothing new to make films about? It's almost as bad as the 90-year-old Nazis in films!"

And which point all I could think was: Can we please stop with the Nazis?

Not sure if you've noticed, but there are still films trying to harp on World War II and Nazis.

But keep in mind, I grew up in the 90s, where there was a deluge of 100-year-old Nazis. Bulletproof Monk, for example, literally had a Nazi in a wheelchair, who had to have been at least 100 years old. And, sorry, if I want old, wheelchair-bound Nazis, I'm going to stick with Doctor Strangelove.

If you think that this premise is gone, nope. Hate to break it to you. But you've still got The Lady in Gold, a film with Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds released just last year. Yes, 2015 had a film about hunting down art stolen by Nazis. And that premise has been the plot of at least one episode of every other television show in the last ten years.

But don't worry.  As the film Three Kings turned the hunt for Nazi gold into the hunt for Iraq gold, I'm certain that there will be films in a few years that boil down to hunting down pieces from the Iraqi museum (most of which, by the way, was actually hidden by the caretakers of the museum, but it'll work because few people actually know that).

So, part of the question becomes ... why? No, really. Why? Do we not have enough bad guys in the nearly 80 years since World War II? You know, that whole Cold War thing? War with al-Qaeda?Terrorists?

First of all, we have to recognize that this isn't new. That's been part of my problem for a while with films in general. Hollyweird likes to ignore the elephant in the room -- or the actual threat in the crosshairs. Hollyweird has lousy target recognition.

During the Cold War, how many films had bad guys who were Soviets and good guys who didn't look as douchey as the bad guys?  Hell, the closest you get to even having Soviets as bad guys were in films based off of John le Carre novels, and even then, those plots shoe-horned in enough moral ambiguity that you wondered if le Carre could figure out who the good guys were if there weren't a literal map telling him where the bad guys resided.

Don't even try to talk to me about The Hunt for Red October. It was made in 1990, when the Cold War was like five minutes away from ending, and they could get away with it after 8 years of Reagan kicking ass and taking names (seriously, half the news articles of the time were about how Reagan was going to destroy the world by pissing off the Soviets; "Hmm, the Soviets didn't nuke us. Maybe we can make one film....").

And yes, there was Red Dawn. But at the end of the day, for every Cold War film that was actually ABOUT the Cold War, there were a dozen films about evil militias or evil generals. For every Hunt for Red October, or Red Dawn, there's at least one Seven Days in May, about the United States military taking over the government. Even Missing in Action or Rambo films were less about Vietnam and more about how the United States has mistreated veterans (yes, before the VA scandals of Obama. Surprise), or how all veterans are deranged psychopaths (First Blood was just ... ugh).

No, no.  The "real" enemy wasn't the Soviet Union. It was people who really wanted to defeat the Soviet Union. They were the problem. Communists (who were already working towards their ultimate casualty list of 100 million dead -- yes, Communism killed 100,000,000 people last century, look it up) were not the enemy.  Anti-communists were the enemy! And thus the phrase was born that "I am not pro-communist or Anti-Communist, I am anti-Anti-Communist."

Yes, anti-anti-communist.  It was a thing. Really. Look it up.

As much as I liked the mid-90s films The Rock and The Long Kiss Goodnight, both of them wonderfully mindless action flicks, look at who the enemy was in each film. The Rock had a collection of US marines taking US citizens hostages, and the latter had a black ops US government agency creating a fake terrorist attack to increase their funding.   And yes, if you've heard that second plot before, it's only been duplicated about a dozen times since then, perhaps more.

Keep in mind -- both of these films came out within five years after the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993.

(For those of you who want to feel old? This year's college freshmen weren't even alive when it was bombed the first time).

Luckily for Hollywood, one lone atheist militia member blew up an FBI building in Oklahoma City, and the 90s became the decade of the evil militia. Every. Five. Freaking. Minutes.  A cliche that continues to this day, even though it has been superseded by events. And history was rewritten so that bomber Timothy McVeigh was a "Christian." So, double-bonus point for the PC jackpot.

Then there was The Siege, where a campaign of terror is ongoing in New York City, and martial law is declared, and the Muslim community is thrown into internment camps. Funny enough, even though the man in charge of the military occupation of New York (played by Bruce Willis) started the film by saying "Martial law is a very bad idea, you do not want to do this," at the end of the film, he is the "real" enemy, and is arrested for torturing a terrorist to death. He is yet another crazy general. Because that's never happened in cinema...oh, wait, it's a recurring cliche.

After 9-11, when "the world had changed" ... the Tom Clancy novel The Sum of All Fears, where jihadis nuke the Superbowl and try to kick-start World War III, was turned into a film about Neo-Nazis.

Yes, that's right.  At the height of awareness about Islamofascist psychos, they made a film about Neo-Nazis.

See? Hollywood loves them some Nazis to kill. Even when they're almost entirely irrelevant in the real world.

And since 9-11, what films have actually dealt with Islamic terrorism? Aside from historically-based films? Not a lot. American Sniper was a biography. I'm told The Hurt Locker might as well have been a documentary. Zero Dark Thirty? A history. SOrt of.

And then there is Valley of Elah, or Syriana, which are anti-war agitprop, and one film called The Kingdom, the punchline of which is "this is a never-ending, vicious cycle."

Oh yay.

You know how bad it is when Hollywood has finally decided to make Cold War films. Currently. Heck, I'm certain that Hollywood loves Russia right now, and the new Cold War we have going for us, because Hollywood would rather fight Russia than talk about Jihadis. It's the only way I can explain the last Jack Ryan film even existing. Hollywood would rather perform icky sex acts upon Vladimir Putin than do a film where Jihadis are the bad guys. And EVEN THEN, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit made certain that the antagonist was a little sympathetic, and not part of the Russian government, but a billionaire.

How does one explain all of this?

To some extent, Hollywood was firmly in the pocket of the Soviet Union. If I recall correctly, the Soviet Union had cut them some checks, especially to penetrate the Screen Actors Guild. And you don't offend the guys sending you cash.

But there is of course, always one constant -- Hollywood's initial reflex is always, "America is evil, and we don't want it's enemies to be angry with us and kill us." During the Cold War, it started as "There are no enemies on the left -- Soviets are our friends," and there was an actual public stance where they stated "We don't want the Soviets to be angry with us and nuke us."

Oh look -- Islamofascists go insane over political cartoons and comic strips of "Hagar the Horrible." Mustn't offend them, lest they cut heads off of some Hollywood execs. Or Allahu Akbar a movie studio with a suicide vest.

Hollywood always needs an enemy for the movies. When they can't come up with the standard religious nut / crazy General / White Supremicist Militia / big business (what they see as Conservatives, basically), they seem obligated to utilize some variation of Nazis.

"But Declan," I hear you say, "what about books made into films?"

What about them? They come with their own villains. As most of them are sci-fi / fantasy, there is little connection to the real world.

But if you wantto think about them in a political fashion?

The Hunger Games? Fascist dictatorship.

Harry Potter? Villains stressing racial purity, and idiots looking like Neville Chamberlain.

Lord of the Rings? Evil armies trying to take over the world, based off of Tolkien in World War I, published after WW2.

Marvel films? Hail Hydra.

I'm sure if it ever comes up, there's someone around to say, "Hey! Nazis did this!"

But, on the question of fighting Jihadis? Sure, there are always some ways around this.  300, for example, could be seen as allegorical for going against the villains of the Middle East in the Persian Empire.  Though you're never going to get away with having James Bond go after Osama bin Laden. Or anyone who even looks like Osama.

As John Ringo once wrote in his book Live Free or Die, as someone tries to explain to an alien why reporters hate his guts...

"I'm what her culture, her tribe, has long seen as the bad guy. Wealthy, self-made, conservative. White. Male. I'm a more comprehensible evil—and it is viewed as evil—than the Horvath. ... The difference is, I try to understand them. They don't even try to understand me. They see my motivations as being theirs. I'm rich because I'm greedy. I have power so I must be ambitious for domination.”

Also, he continues, at the end of the day, this conservative (okay, really a libertarian) concludes that the good liberal reporters know that the conservative and the Christians behind him, aren't really going to kill them. The aliens? They will.

Conservatives and Christians are not going to cut off the heads of Hollywood people who hurl names at them, nor will we start shouting Gloria in excelsis Deo before detonating a suicide vest.

So at the end of the day, the endless use of the Nazi is the endless, desperate search for any villain that won't get them killed. It is the search for the "correct" enemy, so the film has the "right" message. It is a search for a cartoon character villain who seems somewhat real. Because Nazis don't need depth. They don't need motivation. They're Nazis, they're evil.  And most importantly, Nazis are completely irrelevant in regards to any major world event, or any real contemporary evil.

After all, not all villains can be evil conservative religious billionaires. Though you'd know they'd try to get away with it if they could.

E3 Roundup

If you don't already know, I'm on a blog called The Catholic Geeks.

As opposed to my radio show called the Catholic Geek, singular.

Anyway, I did a whole bunch of blogs on E3 this week, that make for a nice collection of upcoming games.

Enjoy.

Microsoft Opens strong at E3
Halo 5: Guardians
Recore   New IP
New controllers
Dark Souls III: Die Hardest.
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
Tom Clancy’s The Division

Rise of the Tomb Raider Gameplay at E3
Dedicated to one game. Only.

Fallout 4 at E3
Yup. Fallout is back.

E3 Is Doomed.
YAWN.  Doom is back

Dishonored ... Again

Super Smash Bros.

Playstation Event Fights Back with Exclusives

The Last Guardian -- new IP .... first announced 8 years ago.
Horizon: Zero Dawn -- new IP
Hitman
Street Fighter V
No Man’s Sky -- new IP
Dreams -- new IP
Firewatch -- new IP
Destiny: The Taken King.
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate .... sigh.  AGAIN
Final Fantasy 7. The Remake.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Star Wars: Battlefront
Uncharted 4

Ubisoft wages war For Honor

War For Honor -- a new IP

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

EA Brings back Mass Effect and Mirror’s Edge

...And Star Was: BattleFront

Square Enix Blows Up E3

Hitman

Just Cause 3

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Kingdom Hearts

Deus Ex

Nintendo isn't dead yet, With

Xenoblade Chronicles

Star Fox Zero

Super Mario Maker

Plots within plots: Subplotting

Ah, subplots, when you need to give your story a depth of character that it might not otherwise have. Granted, the way I look at them is probably cheating. I see character arcs and romance story threads as subplots, too. Then again, I can be a romantic sap at times. Personally, I've never had a subplot that has not impacted the main plot in some way.

If you've never read the Tom Clancy novel The Sum of all Fears, there is an entire story thread involving a sequoia being shipped from Japan to California for the construction of a Bhuddist temple. And this goes on for pages upon pages. All the while the reader is wondering “What does this tree have to do with a story about Islamic terrorists rebuilding a nuclear bomb to be used at the superbowl in order to spark World War III?”

Then the tree falls off the ship that's carrying it, and nearly hits a nuclear submarine. The sub thinks it's under attack and we're off to the races. Growing up, when multiple plot threads collided, my family called it “The tree hitting the sub.”

If you want a subplot that has little or nothing to do with the main one, I will point you to the David Weber novel Honor Among Enemies. The premise is simple: the heroine, Honor Harrington, is politically inconvenient, and she's packed off with several ships, mostly loaded with the scum of the fleet. One subplot involves how one of the honest, forthright crewman has to be trained to fight back against the dregs of the fleet. It's fun, satisfying, and while it doesn't really impact the main plot, it does show the reader the ramifications of the main plot on people other than our primary cast.

In my own work, I may be too single-minded to do anything but have subplots that tie into the main. For A Pius Man, I even had the love story feed into the main story. That one was so integral, if it had failed, so would the rest of the story. 

But, then again, if Terry Goodkind could have true love save the world in his book series, then why couldn't I?

Though, come to think of it, there is at least one book I've done that did not technically need a subplot. The book was A Pius Legacy. In it, the UN had declared the Pope a war criminal – very long story. The subplot revolved around a hapless writer and historian brought in in order to be counter-spin to the enemy. Then the enemy decides to shoot back with real bullets. Was it needed? Maybe not. It didn't add a whole heck of a lot to the plot, but it added a lot to the story.

After all, in a war of politics, it doesn't exactly help if one side isn't actively dueling with the enemy. As much as I like to joke that my Pius books consist of nonfiction slipped in between gun battles, it can't all be about shooting bad guys to pieces. Damnit.

Heck, by the end of the series, the amount of politics that crept into the war that develops needed a subplot all by itself. It had to be there in order to explain a war between the head of the CIA and President “Barry,” and why a lot of countries don't act the way sane people would expect them to. 

However, that subplot was more like a sneaky Clancy subplot, and at the end of the novel, the geopolitics involved wound up impacting the main plot like a truck t-boning a volvo.

In all of these case, these subplots were planned. They were reasoned out, outlined, thought through, and I knew exactly what I was doing...

Adjusted for value of "I know what I'm doing."

In Codename: Winterborn, my hero, Kevin Anderson, is being hunted by a guild of mercenaries – imagine an umbrella organization for private military contractors. Some of these mercenaries are good soldiers who want a paycheck. Some are patriots who want access to good technology, and can serve their country better in the private sector. And some are plain old sociopaths who want to be paid to indulge in their hobbies of mass slaughter. 

While Kevin goes through his own personal checklist of politicians who won't be missed, he gains the respect of some mercenaries, pitting some of his hunters against other members of the guild. The internal conflict of the Mercenaries' Guild gains Kevin some strange allies that keep him alive at some interesting moments. I hadn't planned it, I hadn't considered it, it just sort of happened.

Yes, sometimes a subplot is just what happens when your world decides that it has something to add to your novel.

Requiescat in pacem: a Pius in memoriam

I have never cried through a blog post before, but this year, I've buried five childhood friends: Vince Flynn, Andrew Greeley, Tom Clancy, Sheamus Heaney and Elizabeth Peters.

Yes, it's strange to say that some of my best friends were writers that I've never met, but you must consider a few things.  I've been reading these people for a very long time, and they've lasted longer than every relationship I've ever had, sans family.

Sheamus Heaney's Beowulf is the first and best translation I've ever seen of the epic poem. It was smooth and easy to read, and was just plain straight English.  He died in his 80s, with a few international awards, so he had nothing to regret when he left.

Elizabeth Peters, aka Barbara Mertz, introduced me to Egyptology the old fashioned way -- by writing about murders at Egypt excavation sites. There was a reason I was a child who knew an awful lot about the Egyptian pharaoh Akanten.

Her characters were witty, well drawn, and brilliantly done, even though none of them were particularly handsome. It was smart writing with intelligent heroes and villains, and enough history to make it interesting without making it painful. I will never see the rest of the family of archaeologists she created, who grew up with me -- the only offspring of this Nick and Nora of the desert was my age, and aged at almost the same exact rate.

She died at age 85. She had a damned good life, and I will miss her. It just hurts when a childhood friend has died.

Tom Clancy was my bus ride home every day during Freshman year of high school. When the film Patriot Games came out, it was one of the first movies my father loved so much I just had to get it for him immediately. Jack Ryan was fun, because he was a nerd who had to be an action hero whether he liked it or not.  After I played SSN, a submarine game based on an idea of his, the Spratley Islands and the South China Sea were never the same. Splinter Cell brought me back into the world of gaming by showing me an interesting story with my games.

I probably learned more about history from Tom Clancy than I did from any history class in high school.  When 9-11 happened, my first thought was "Didn't Tom Clancy do this already?"

When he died, he was only in his 60s.  Not fair.

Vince Flynn .... I've discussed Flynn's writing other places. He was a fun author, who only used politics when it suited his plot, which was most of the time. Not bad for a thriller author who spent most of his writing time using terrorists for target practice. His first book about CIA assassin named Mitch Rapp was about terrorists taking over the white house. This was before terrorists became popular (1999), and he did a wonderful critique of what went wrong during the 1990s in the intelligence world.

One of the nice things about Vince Flynn was that he always has a domestic element to his novels. Domestic as in "do we have to kill the politicians before they get us all killed." Again, Flynn has had politicians as antagonists since the 1990s, so he didn't jump on a Tea Party bandwagon.

He helped write the best season of 24, day 5, which started with a bang, a boom, and a massive shootout in the first episode. he was a good, solid author. And he was only 47, damnit.

And then there was Fr. Andrew Greeley, who was with me the longest. Greeley wrote mysteries, and romances, and even one or two thrillers of his own.  A Catholic priest from Chicago, I grew up with him in the house.  I read his novel Angel Fire when I was 12, one of those books that you start at night and finish by dawn. I probably learned more about my faith from Greeley than I did from 12 years of Catholic school.  He was essentially a childhood friend.  Granted, he went off the rails a little when he hit the 21st century.  As a Chicago Democrat, he went from little jabs of "being a Republican is a sin, but excused by invincible ignorance" to just being snotty about his politics, which means he may have written about 15 lousy books..... I'd settle for having a few dozen bestsellers of quality writing.

He was also 85, and I expected him to live forever.

Eternal rest, grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. And may their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed,through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen

Trailers for "IT WAS ONLY ON STUN!"

Yesterday was the big announcement -- I'm published! Muahahahahahaha

Anyway, I thought I should show you both trailers for my book.

The first one is set around fan favorite Sean Ryan -- while he was a character in A Pius Man, he started here, in It Was Only On Stun!  Yes, we're starting with the fun trailer.

Awesome, right? Thankfully, that's mostly due to the music.  Do I own all those weapons? Of course not. But that's why you have friends who are police officers.

Now, the second trailer is probably something I will come to regret.  Remember all of those neat videos I did for A Pius Man?  I got my friend James to voice one, and Matt to voice another?  Well, It Was Only On Stun! has an author who writes "the Matthew Kovach mysteries" -- he's about 5'10", slightly overweight, wears glasses, is blond with blue eyes.

I figured, what the heck, he looks like me, I might as well do the bloody trailer.

This, however, was the result.  I suggest you watch until the end.  At least that is funny.

If you want to buy the book, go above. It'll take you directly to a kindle, or a hardcopy purchase.

The Videos of A Pius Man

Thus far, anyway.

I was wandering through the video section of the APM Facebook page, and I realized that I haven't done a video trailer for ... a while.

If you're relatively new, you've probably never seen any of the trailers.  Unless you're really diligent in spelunking through the FB page, then you've probably come across them.

This is where I've collected the ones done thus far.

This wasn't the first one, but it was a remodeled version of it. I cleaned up the typeface a little, and I think the visuals are spliced together better.

The images are obviously not done by me. Anyone who's found the Vatican Ninja images I've done will notice that.  They're from a lot of books that take one side of the Pope Pius XII argument, such as it is. And, just maybe, a Dan Brown novel.

I'm subtle like that.

And then, then there were the character trailers.
[More below the break]

Novels to films, a brief history

I have received the question, at times, about who should play characters in a film of A Pius Man.  This got me thinking about adaptations. Given the last decade of novel-to-film movies, the question becomes more interesting.

Looking at the slew of Harry Potter films, filmed comic books, etc, I find that Hollywood has obviously hired people who can read.

Why do I express surprise? I can answer that with another question.

Does anyone REMEMBER the 1990s?

Let's look at a few authors who had their work turned into films.

Michael Chrichton:

Author of such noted works as Jurassic Park, Congo, and Rising Sun, he probably had the most good fortune of any author short of Stephen King in having his books translated by Hollywood. And that's the sad part.

Anyone who's read Chrichton's work will appreciate a book I saw while shopping in London. Star Trek as Written By Other Authors—the short story as “written” by Chrichton had five charts and graphs over three pages. While no one missed those in the film versions, I'm sure they missed a few other things.

In Jurassic Park, the novel, the differences were numerous and frequent. There were dozens of Velociraptors, and part of the problem was that raptors had been escaping to the mainland. The park staff was more than the seven people we saw over the course of the film, and security was so well armed, there were moments when it looked like it was Park security versus the dinosaurs in an all out war that included missiles.

Back then, there were few complaints because, despite all the differences, it was still a fun movie, and to create a full adaptation would have required a miniseries. Elements from the first novel would be scattered throughout the next two films.

The Lost World: The sequel to Jurassic Park, the novel, was... better than the filmed version. While the novel followed up on the original enemy from the first one (the problems of Jurassic Park were caused by industrial espionage), the movie decided to make the primary adversary was the stereotyped “Evil Businessman #1.” Someone decided that the movie needed to be made into an endangered species riff, complete with an action lead played by.... Matthew Vaughn, playing an ecoterrorist? And we're going to throw in a cute kid, just because Spielberg likes cute kids. There's a reason that the third film consisted of little plot, less character, and mostly running.

Rising Sun: Someone must have been asleep on the job when looking up their cultural research. I can only conclude that Hollywood wasn't paying attention the day that the Japanese Emperor declared that both blacks and women were “inferior”... why else would they change make one of the lead policemen of this murder mystery into Wesley Snipes?



Tom Clancy: The major problem here lies in one book, one that I'm sure everyone remembers as a film.

The Sum of All Fears: The premise of the novel was simple. Middle Eastern terrorists nuke the Superbowl in order to prompt the United States and the Soviet Union into World War III. It's up the National Security Adviser Jack Ryan to talk everyone down.

I will usually grant a lot of leeway to people who adapt a screenplay. A lot. The previous film had been several years before, and Harrison Ford had moved on to other things. It would have been reasonable to have gone onto later novels, changed actors, and move on. Alec Baldwin had played Jack Ryan in the first film, The Hunt for Red October, I would not have objected to bringing him back. And they had already skipped one novel—The Cardinal of the Kremlin—due to the fact that there wasn't a Kremlin anymore. Taking the character of Jack Ryan from his post as CIA director (from the previous film, Clear and Present Danger) and making him NSA director (in Debt of Honor, the first post-Cold War novel), would have been nice and easy.

Instead, the film for Sum of All Fears was a series reboot about shiny new CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck), going up against.... wait for it... Neo-Nazis. Most of whom were taken out in an ending sequence reminiscent of a Godfather film.

So, wait, the movie comes out after 9-11-01, and for some reason, terrorists from the Middle East are inferior villains? Hollywood's racism is astonishing; somehow, European bad guys are superior to any other flavor of bad guy, especially if the Europeans are evil Nazis.



Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

The Relic: The first book in their series about mysterious FBI Agent Prendergast, who seems to specialize in X-Files quality strange, without the space-alien level stupidity. The Relic was a thrilling tale about a monster in the New York Museum of Natural History. When the book was first written, the museum in real life looked like a great setting for a horror film. Part of this team consisted of a graduate student Margo Green, her wheelchair bound mentor Dr. Frock, and, of course, Special Agent Prendergast. The mystery starts with what, exactly, could have killed a museum security guard in two blows—one to rip open the chest, and one to smash the back of the head clean off.

The adversary of the novel was a genetic mutation that was about eight feet long, like a cross between a panther and bug... it had an exoskeleton like an insect's chiton, only bulletproof. It survives an encounter with a SWAT team with full assault rifles and a grenade launcher.

The film... eliminated multiple key characters (one being Prendergast, goodbye series), killed off several who were necessary for any possible sequel, replaced everyone remaining with pure cliches, and made the creature a thirty to sixty foot monstrosity. This extra large beastie is supposed to have slipped into a small employee restroom to kill a guard, when it couldn't even fit into the hallway leading to the restroom. It manages to kill an entire SWAT team because they all run like scared rabbits—possibly frightened by the horrid graphics—and it starts bleeding because it took a few rounds from a .9mm handgun (to quote the governor of California, if it bleeds, you can kill it). But, no, in this film, they had to try blowing it up with bad CGI fire.



I'm going to cheat for the next few books. They are not the nineties, but they are film adaptations that went horribly sideways.



F. Paul Wilson—The Keep.

This one is interesting. F. Paul Wilson, Fordham graduate, agnostic, and all around interesting person, who even created a character with a rabid following—one so rabid Stephen King is President of the fan club.

One of his earlier books was called The Keep. It opens in 1943, with the German High Command getting a communication from an outpost in Transylvania: “Something is killing my men.” In another area of Europe, a man awakes, and knows he has to get to The Keep before everything ends. It essentially starts out as Dracula and ends as Lord of the Rings.

Enter: the movie. The author himself has concluded that the set of The Keep had a lot of white powder going up a lot of noses. Frequently. Not even Ian McKellen could save this train wreck. The synopsis of the film is as follows: creature kills Germans in WW2; a professor in the Keep makes deal with creature. Professor's daughter sleeps with guy who comes out of nowhere. Creature kills everyone in the Keep. Guy who comes from nowhere has an entrance with lots of light, creature goes away. Credits roll. Audience goes “huh?”


Clive Cussler—Raise the Titanic!

Before there was Indiana Jones, there was Clive Cussler. His main character is Dirk Pitt, one part old fashioned swashbuckler, one part nautical engineer. You may have seen the movie Sahara, made from another of his books—not a great film, but a decent popcorn movie. Better than this one.

Premise: there is an element that might be able to power a sonic-missile shield for the United States (this is the 70s). The only known sample was on board the Titanic, so, we—guess what—RAISE THE TITANIC! (this was before anyone knew how badly the ship had been totaled, so go with it). The book had everyone sail away on the resurrected vessel after a tense shootout with Soviet agents who had found out about the plan and tried to steal the precious material.

The movie, of course, had to have the Soviet bad guys come on board, and our hero scuttles the ship to make sure they don't get it. No victory, just a draw.

Movies of the day suffered from the Hollywood's idea of detente—there are no victories, only draws. If that was the only problem Raise the Titanic suffered from, it might have been salvageable. Instead, Hollywood took a fast paced, tightly written book, and turned it into a slow, ponderous mess. To tell you how bad it was, Clive Cussler saw Raiders of the Lost Ark and cried—mainly because it captured everything that he put into his own writing.


Today, I look at several adaptations—if you have major kvetches, I suggest holding off of them until my conclusions.

Lord of the Rings: Scenes lifted directly from the pages, dialogue from the novel, subplots taken from the appendix. You don't get much better than this. The major quibble I can conjure up is the buildup to the climax of the second film, The Two Towers—and I can blame that on the director's fondness for the buildup in the film Zulu, which felt like nothing but screaming “WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.” Aside from that part of one film, I couldn't complain even if I wanted to.



Harry Potter: I read the books. They weren't bad for YA novels, and a nice parody of the English school system. The more you know about British culture, the funnier they were. Frankly, I thought the films improved on some things. Granted, some of what was left out of the films confused me... in movie three, there's no explanation for a major device of the film, or how another character knows of it. In #4, our protagonist asks why something went odd with his wand, and no answer is given. I say its odd because both “problems” could have been corrected with about three lines of dialog each. And, while confusing, no big deal. The end.



Comic books.

These are clumped together, and easy.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: For a film that was studio mandated, it wasn't bad. Originally wanting to make Frank Miller's storyline about the mutant with anger management / memory / family issues, the people who did the film were ordered to make an origin story. Considering that the details of everyone involved in Wolverine's past were essentially turned into memory goulash, it was possibly the most comprehensible version they could come up with. I'm still confused about complaints that “Deadpool wasn't done well. He was just Ryan Renolds.” Considering that Deadpool wasn't the main character, and had, maybe, five minutes on screen, I don't think you can do anyone well in that amount of time.



The Spider-Man Films: The comic book career of Peter Parker looks like a rubric to diagnose bipolar disorder. Check. The whole Goblin family drama—mostly. Check. Parker puts on the black suit and turns from nerd to.... evil nerd. Big check. Though he could have taken tips from Neil Patrick Harris on being an evil nerd.

The biggest complaint has been about Spider Man 3, particularly on the character of Venom... well, as Sam Raimi said, “I had never read Venom in the comic books, since they came after my time. Because of that, I didn't have a natural inclination toward him. And when I read those comics, at [producer] Avi Arad's urging, I didn't understand where Venom's humanity was. I know that kids think he looks cool, and they think he's a good villain for Spider-Man. I actually didn't. What was it about Peter's own makeup that this villain represented some weaker or darker side to? Just looking like a dark version of him is not enough for me. The more I read [Venom stories], the less interested I became.” So, I get that. Though I wonder why he bothered putting Venom in a film if he didn't really like him.

Aside from that, there could be aesthetic quibbles—why they felt they had to make the Green Goblin look like a power Rangers, I don't know.


Batman Begins: I've had some people complain about the opening of the film, and how Bruce Wayne had been trained to become Batman. My usual response is that, if you read the comic books, the way it was done in the film contained the simplest, least convoluted explanation, as well as introducing the primary villain. And if there are any complaints about The Dark Knight, the best I can come up with is that the movie should have left off with catching the Joker, leaving Harvey Dent / Two-Face to be an ominous thread to be expanded into another movie. The last fifteen minutes felt odd, but having one of your key actors die in the middle of shooting can mess up a schedule a bit.



Now, aside from the above example, I will not say that modern day Hollywood adaptations are all perfect. That would be impossible. However, without lingering on minor quibbles, I can point you to several movies made recently that were based on books and made into something... different.


Shooter, based off of Stephen Hunter's novels about a marine sniper who had been framed for murder, turned into the usual conspiracy theory film about evil government employees messing around in Africa for one natural resource or another. That it starred Castro fan Danny Glover was a hint that the book would be rewritten.


[NOVEL SPOILER ALERT] The Bourne Identity was based off of Robert Ludlum's novel of the same name. A tv miniseries was made in the 1980s, starring Alan Chamberlain. The CIA had sent operative David Webb, war veteran, after assassin Carlos the Jackal, seeming to be another assassin and competitor named Jason Bourne. During the operation, he is shot in the head while fleeing a ship at sea, and awakes with amnesia. In piecing together the story of his life, he believes that he really is an assassin, the CIA thinks he has gone rogue, and the assassin he's hunting is returning the favor, and a civilian he saves from being gunned down in the crossfire is a female accountant who grows attached to him.

The movie: Boat, amnesia, perfect operative, check. Carlos the Jackal is replaced by African Dictator #1 from the nearest cliché yard, and the CIA isn't interested in listening to what happened to him, they all just want him dead. Period. Everyone involved on the CIA end dies, except for Julia Styles, using her amazing blonde powers. Bourne hooks up with a backpacking, gypsy-like female with no discernible education, intellect, or personality.

The Bourne Supremacy – The novel: elements in the government want to use David Webb to flush out another assassin, only this one has taken over the name of Jason Bourne. So, they kidnap his wife, the accountant he saved in the first novel, leaving clues that end him after this new Bourne. The CIA isn't the bad guy, but they are manipulative, which pretty much goes with the trade. Webb's other friends within the Agency lend him aide as he tries to find his wife.

The film: Still on the run as Jason Bourne, his girlfriend gets her head blown off by a Russian assassin on orders from a CIA administrator left over from an X-Men film .... Start your average revenge plot. Kill more CIA agents. Throw in some Russians, because they are obviously still the massive, intimidating threat that they were when they had a working government, now that they're taking orders from us, somehow.... huh? Julia Styles still manages to survive.

The Bourne Ultimatum—the novel is simple: Revenge of Carlos the Jackal. The film: obviously not, because they didn't have Carlos in the first film anyway.


In short, Hollywood has apparently become literate since the 90s—or, at the very least, is CAPABLE of adhering to source material such as novels and comic books. I'm certain that part of it has to do with a director appreciating the source material (Lord of the Rings), or a horde of slavering child fans who will tear them apart if they screw up the movie (the whole Harry Potter / Twilight franchise), or having the Intellectual Property owners run the studio (Marvel / WB). When you consider what has come in the past, things have improved.

Though, apparently, all bets are off when a film include Matt Damon or his clone (Mark Wahlberg). Still, even those films at least resemble the books they were based on to some degree. So, whenever you have a quibble about your favorite character in a novel / comic that's been adapted to film, or that elements had been changed, shifted or modified, always remember one very important lesson that I have learned over the years.....


It can ALWAYS be worse.

And if you don't believe me, ask the hordes of video game fans who have ever gone to see a Uwe Boll film of their favorite game.