Nethermore

***Spoiler Warning: I’ve tried to keep from spoiling surprises in the following review. However, in discussion of the story, there may still be spoilers. Read at your own risk.***

I spent Thursday evening watching The DaVinci Code with a friend of mine who really enjoyed the book and the movie. She suggested I update the blog more often so she’ll have something to do at work. This one’s for you.

I’ve been trying to figure out which I liked better: the movie or the book. Usually I can tell hands down which version of a story I like more (usually the book) but in the case of The DaVinci Code, I’d have to say that the book and the movie were both similarly entertaining. The movie didn’t suffer from the book’s biggest flaws, and vice versa. In other words, the book is better because the movie was made, and the movie is better having previously read the book.

In my opinion, the biggest flaw of the book was Brown’s methods of manipulating the reader by hiding the truth of certain plot elements. Most-appalling among these tricks was his use of viewpoint characters. Later in the book, you discover that two of his viewpoint characters are actually the same person. If an author can pull this off without the reader feeling jerked around, then it’s a successful technique indeed.

I felt like Brown was toying with me. I rarely get mad at authors, but this genuinely ticked me off. As I reader, I like feeling smart. I like guessing 90% of the twists and then being surprised by the other 10%. Brown’s trick made me feel dumb because I had considered what he might be doing with the viewpoints but dismissed it offhand with the naïve thought, “No self-respecting writer would do that.” Well, Brown did it.

Despite that, I still enjoyed the book.

And the movie fixed that problem with the viewpoints, mostly because of the way film as a medium works. They never showed the villain from his own viewpoint until the moment that it’s revealed the viewer who the villain is.

For some, the big-budget documentary-style infodumps about the Crusades and the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail might make this movie seem a little long and boring. For those of us who like documentaries, the information comes across in a fun and entertaining way. I enjoyed these historical asides as much as I enjoyed them in the book. However, the amount of info given in the movie made me wonder if the viewer who has not also read the book might get confused about particular points of the plot. I don’t know any other way the filmmaker’s could’ve gotten across this information without making the movie even longer.

The filmmakers did a great job of speeding up the action to match movie pacing. Brown’s books have good pacing anyway, but there was one scene in particular that was way too long in the book. Langdon and Neveu are escaping the Louvre. In the book, the pair take several scenes to escape, in the which they discuss history and symbolism. In the movie, the escape it achieved in one well-placed cut. Brilliant.

There were a few other places where the book was trimmed, if not so well as the scene just mentioned. However, in each case I could see why the filmmaker’s chose to do what they did, and the cuts didn’t bother me too much.

The flaw of the book that was perpetuated in the movie was the Setups and Payoffs of the treasure hunt. The keys to the scavenger hunt were reliant upon knowledge that the characters have but that the readers may have never seen before in their lives.

For example, when Robert Langdon looks at the numbers scrawled on the floor of the Louvre, he says, “Oh my gosh, she’s right! It’s the Fibonacci sequence!” Am I as a reader/viewer supposed to hit my head and say, “Duh! Why didn’t I see that earlier?”

Most satisfying payoffs come when the reader realizes that they didn’t see the solution earlier, but—having now seen the solution—can look back and see all the steps leading up to it. Maybe Brown’s use of information never before revealed is a staple of the thriller genre, in which I’m not widely read.

The movie’s Bishop Aringarosa had simplified—and more powerful—motives. In addition, the screenwriters created a better motive for Bezu Fache, which was a lot more realistic and engaging than the paper-thin motives attributed to him in the book.

On this point, I began to notice that most of the liars and hypocrites and villains in the movie had been twisted by corrupt forms of religion to become the monsters that they were. It’s this kind of self-serving portrayal of religious people that sheds bad light on those people who believe but are not fanatical in their belief.

Granted, religion misused will—and has—twisted individuals to commit terrible crimes. The Crusades and suicide bombers are two extreme examples. But it seems that Hollywood thinks that religion is the only thing that can twist a person, turning a blind eye to the things that will twist you more quickly and more surely—like the misuse of wealth, power, and fame. Fanaticism can turn anything into a “religion” that will corrupt. The ideology of Hitler and other leaders shows that the twisting can be any belief, not just religious. And our own political climate right now shows that a belief and faith in one political party or another is equally as scary and wrong as the religious zealots who commit crimes in the name of their gods.

I did like that—contrary to their relationship in the book—Langdon and Teabing provided great foils for one another. Teabing fell on the side of Christ being an ordinary man. Langdon wanted to keep the possibility open that Christ was more than just a man. This little exchange of opinions helped balance the movie out in showing two sides of the religious conflict.

But Langdon’s own opinions in the move provide evidence that even if the secret of the Holy Grail were revealed to the world, it wouldn’t have the earth-shattering, Catholic-crushing consequences suggested by the “history” presented. A religion that has revered Christ as a God for almost 2000 years isn’t going to be easily swayed by a bunch of historical documents. And even if it was, it wouldn’t be as instantaneous as the movie suggests. Scientists and scholars would have to translate and catalogue and dissect and postulate for decades, and they would never come to a consensus. Every historian would have a different opinion and different pieces of the documents to support their own claims.

Look at the Dead Sea scrolls. They were discovered over 50 years ago, and scientists are still debating about their significance.

But in pontificating about these questions, I’m ignoring things of deeper and more-lasting significance.

For examples, the locales in the movie—down to the Louvre bathroom—were just as I imagined them while reading the book, probably because I’m somewhat familiar with most of the locations Brown chose. And Roslin in Scotland—now that’s a place I could live out the rest of my days.

The best part of the movie was the jump scene. You’ll know it when you get there. It left me breathless. I’ve never unintentionally gasp-grunted in during movie because I was surprised. But my breath was short, and my heart racing after this little bit of film trickery. I loved it. Best jump scene I’ve ever experienced.

Watched Open Season last week. Would’ve been worth it if I’d seen it at the dollar theater instead of paying eight bucks for it. Regardless of what I paid, this movie is well-made, the characters are somewhat interesting, and there are several laugh-out-loud moments that make the movie worth seeing. I just wish they had been able to keep up the comic pacing that those gem moments had.

The weaknesses of this movie are the weaknesses of almost every other movie that goes through the studio pipeline: predictability. The plot was so stereotyped that the friend I went with kept calling the plot points before the movie got to them. And I was doing the same thing. This is where the sidekick reveals that he’s really a loser. Here’s the point where the friends break up. Here’s the point where they get back together. Here the hero changes and gains acceptance.

If you go see this one, realize that it doesn’t just rely on a stereotypical plot, but on other stereotypes as well. The hunters in the movie are shown as buffoons and idiots who want to destroy the outdoors. And maybe there are a few of those types around. However, from my experience, hunters are usually care a lot about the environment. My father hunted for sport, but by golly, we ate almost everything he shot, despite the gamey taste, etc, etc.

Despite its flaws, I still enjoyed the movie.

My question is, whatever happened to 2D animation? Filmmakers didn’t address the real problem by killing their 2D animation studios because “2D doesn’t sell any more. 3D is where the big bucks are.” The real problem wasn’t the medium the story was told in—the problem was the story itself.

We’ve reached a point where the quality of 3D animation is largely taken for granted. Gone are the days of poorly-rendered mediocrity from the large studios. But still, Pixar is the only studio doing it right by striking at what a movie is all about—the characters and the story. Wish the other studios would take a page from the Pixar book of story telling.

I guess they finally got internet connections in the spirit world. A friend of mine showed me that Geoffrey Chaucer has set up his own blog over at blogspot. It’s called Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog, and it’s a very clever idea, if you ask me.

Of Geoffrey’s most recent posts, he asks his readers to please vote for him over at Hot or Not with this plea: “Plese uote for me and saye that ich am hotte.”

Afterward, he reviews the new stageplay “Serpentes on a Shippe.”

(Caution, the following paragraphs may contain a slight spoiler for Lady in the Water, not that it matters much, since the movie kind of spoils itself.)

In other news, I watched Lady in the Water over the weekend. While it wasn’t a total waste of time, and had a few touching moments, over all it is a strange little movie too heavily laden with symbols and coincidences (think the coincedences of Signs on steroids).

I was worried about Shyamalan acting in one of his own movies since I didn’t think he was very good even in his bit parts in the others. To his credit, he does a decent job with his character in Lady in the Water. In other words, his acting wasn’t annoying. However, I do wonder what he’s trying to say by casting himself as the writer who will write one of the most-important books in the history of humankind.

I’ve tried to mark where there are spoilers about the movie. Regardless, if you haven’t seen the Pirates sequel, you may want to read this afterward.

My expectations were low going into the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel on Friday night. In fact, they were so low that I was sure I was going to enjoy the movie as just another popcorn flick. Boy, was I wrong.

The movie was terrible, and not just because it failed to hit my low expectations. Now, some of this may not have been the movie’s fault. The sound system in the theater was bad, which resulted in the group of us not knowing what was being said some of the time, and without the sound, some of the more dramatic moments felt . . . well . . . muffled.

Regardless, the plot was convoluted, confusing, and contrived. All story-telling involves a little bit of manipulation of reality in order to make things fit into a self-contained tale that will produce particular emotions in an audience. But when the audience knows they’re being manipulated, they feel it and resent it. The parts involving Will Turner’s father felt particularly contrived.

Now, the movie wasn’t a total waste of time. The cinematography, acting, and visual effects were top notch. And the movie did have its fun moments, like Jack Sparrow’s first appearance in the movie.

But from that point on, Jack begins a downhill tumble in making the audience hate him. At the end, when the other characters raise their hands in support of Jack Sparrow, I lost all respect (the small amount left) for them. Couldn’t they see that he was a terrible person, and that everything he had done in the movie was out of selfishness? The screenwriters had lost all credibility with me long before that moment, but that was point when I realized that I would be waiting for the dollar theater to see the third installment.

Then I wondered if it was a different group of screenwriters who worked on it. Nope. Same people. The sloppiness of the plot and writing makes me wonder if they cared more about making loot than making a good story. The characters were so entirely out of character from what we saw in the first one that they could have been replaced with new names and faces and nobody would have known that this was a sequel to the first.

The detractors will say, “It’s just the first half of a movie. Give it a chance.” Not one of my complaints has anything to do about this being a half movie. If it were a good “half movie,” I’d be resenting the wait for the third movie.

But none of our group cared enough about the characters or the story to even bat an eye when things abruptly ended. We just wanted to leave the theater. The reaction of the rest of the audience was the same. Even when the projector screwed up and projected the slide-show ads they show before movies, nobody said anything . . . we just continued to watch, hoping the movie was almost over . . . or that it would miraculously get better.

Spoilers and Predictions—skip to next heading if you haven’t seen the movie.

I was hoping for some good “aha!” moments with what I thought was foreshadowing throughout the plot. Jack Sparrow’s compass doesn’t work for him, but when Elizabeth Swann uses it, it always points at Jack. I thought they were going to reveal that the dead man’s chest was actually Jack Sparrow, and that his heart was somehow that of Davy Jones. Nope. Dead Man’s Chest refers to an actual buried treasure. How disappointing.

And it was also pretty obvious to me that the creole witch doctor lady is Davy Jones lost love and will play a big part in resolving things in the third movie.

OSC’s Review

Some people have loved this movie. Orson Scott Card lauds it as the best movie of the summer. He’s one of my favorite authors of all time, but I’m going to have to disagree with him on this account. His review leaves me wondering if he saw a different movie than I did.

It also makes me wonder if I should give Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest another chance.

Maybe when it’s on DVD.

A faithful reader sent me this movie review. He goes by the name “Chalupo.”

So I was watching this movie called Nacho Libre, and it’s doing so good that they are already coming out with a sequel on June 28th—at least that’s what the previews showed. I think it was called Nacho Returns or something, but this time our hero Ignachio has super powers. This time he has Eagle powers so he can fly, catch bullets in his eye, but is allergic to Kryptonite (I’m not sure what that means in Spanish, but I think it’s something bad).

There’s still red and blue stretchy pants, but that’s the only thing that Nacho 2 stays true to. Instead of corn on a stick, fat starving orphans, hot nuns, and iconic wrestling masks, there are explosions, a superhero pretty boy that makes all the girls in the movie jealous, and a wussy villian in a non-stretchy pants suit.

And speaking of the villain, I think his name was Lex Luche or something, and he wasn’t that impressive. He didn’t even have a mask! Mr. Luche is so jealous of Nacho’s pretty-boy looks—or maybe his red stretchy pants; I’m not sure—that he starts destroying the whole world. Except for Mexico. In fact I don’t think Mexico even exists in Nacho 2 at all. The makers of the first Nacho really forgot their Mexican wrestling roots in this one—which is sad.

So in conclusion, if you are looking for a fat wrestling friar to save the orphans check out the original Nacho. But if you want to see Nacho save the whole world, then maybe Nacho Returns is more your thing. Or not. What do I know? I’m just a man of science.