Tom, Larry, and I discuss a range of topics from cartoon reboots, demolition versus reconstruction, James Gunn, Teen Titans, and much more.
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The Internet is all a-twitter over actress Anna Diop shutting down her Instagram account, with Paul Feig ignorantly jumping on the attack train against critics of the new Titans streaming show.
Feig is, as always, lying. The criticism isn’t due to racism against Ms. Diop, who is Black. The criticism is mainly due to the actually racist costume given her for the program, making her look like a street walker. The visual implication is that Black women are whores. If that’s not racist, what is? (For the record and for those who don’t know, Starfire, the comic book character Dion is playing, is an orange-skinned alien.)
I honestly don’t know what DC-Warner Bros. was thinking in dressing up a woman of color as a prostitute and then hiding behind accusations of racism to try and defend that mind-bogglingly stupid decision. But the controversy runs deeper than one might think.
As the crew at Midnight’s Edge have pointed out on a number of occasions, this is part of a pattern of attacking audiences for not liking the craptastic material shat out by major studios in recent years. Oh, you think the corporatized Star Wars, Star Trek, DC, Marvel, etc. suck? Oh, then you’re a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, and so on. It’s not that we produced bad content. You’re all just whiny childish bigots!
But this shameless tactic ran out of steam a long time ago, and this time there’s no defending the indefensible.
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If you haven’t heard of Skippy the Jedi Droid, you’re probably not alone; the concept appeared in a one-off story in 1999’s Star Wars Tales #1 and was written by Peter David. The narrative centers around a Force-sensitive droid named Skippy, and yes, (spoiler alert) it’s the very same R5-unit with the bad motivator that appeared in the original 1977 Star Wars film. Using its powers to Jedi-mind-trick Uncle Owen into buying it from the Jawas, it has a vision of the horrors likely to take place if it and not R2-D2 and C-3PO is purchased, so it blows out its own motivator and uses the last of its fading consciousness to mind-trick 3PO into suggesting R2 as a replacement, thus saving the galaxy.
This makes Skippy quite clearly a Gary Stu, the “male” (if programmed gender identification may be applied to sexless droid constructs) equivalent of a Mary Sue.
Defenders of the Disney Star Wars movies, Paul Feig’s abominable Ghostbusters adaptation, and CBS’ STD like to resort to the straw man tactic of crying sexism whenever the term ‘Mary Sue’ is used to accurately describe the shallow, one-dimensional concepts their creators try to pass off as well developed characters. The failure in this method of defense, of course, is the existence of aforementioned male equivalent personified in Skippy (as well as The 300’s King Leonidas), but let it not be said that whiny shallow thinkers are willing to grow up long enough to acknowledge the absurdity of their accusations when faced with the cold hard facts.
But this is a problem that is plaguing Hollywood these days: Nobody was willing to be the adult in the room and tell the likes of Steven Moffat, Alex Kurtz-Man, Ruin Johnson, Jar Jar Abrams, Paul Fatigue, and others guilty of inflicting chronic Mary-Sue-ism on unwilling audiences, that they aren’t very good and certainly aren’t half as clever as they obviously think they are. Their twelve-year-old’s writing level is all too often condescending, cynical, contemptuous of the source material, and as a result, insulting to the intelligence of the audience. For all someone like Moffat, for example, claims to be a huge fan of properties such as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who, when you take a closer look at his concepts-in-place-of-characters, his version of Holmes is a classic Gary Stu, so perfect in his genius and social imperfections that he doesn’t need to change, learn, or grow.
By contrast, consider that in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes is truly challenged, both on the case he’s working on and in his perceptions of women’s abilities. He’s forced to confront his prejudices about the so-called weaker sex because he has been outsmarted by a woman, and as a result he is compelled to alter his views, to grow and learn as a person. For Victorian era England, this was a refreshingly ballsy move for Doyle and it paid off, in large part because it portrayed Holmes as a deeply flawed character who when challenged grows intellectually and spiritually, even if only somewhat, and that is what any given audience relates to. We cannot relate to or believe in a flawless, unchanging concept because it’s not based in reality. We reject it because we know that nobody is perfect, and therefore we cannot accept it in a narrative because to do so forces us to suspend too much of our disbelief to be able to get involved in the story.
Likewise, with Ma-Rey Sue, we simply cannot believe she can use the Force like a Jedi Master (Mistress?) without having undergone any real training, to defeat someone with ostensibly many years of experience. We reject it because it’s not based in reality, and any good story and character must have some basis in it. Otherwise we cannot get into the story. That’s why, when Ruin Johnson proved just how much of a rank storytelling amateur he is and always has been with his hack job on Disney’s Episode VIII, audiences reacted so harshly. We reject his and Abrams’ baloney for what it is.
And, of course, there are Feigbusters and STD, both of which rely on Mary Sues as the centerpieces of their respective tales.
The common denominator to all these is that they are so unrealistic that they cannot stand on their own. Audience won’t accept them, and on a certain conscious level, their creators know it. But instead of acknowledging their writing flaws and going back to learn how to write proper characters, the preferred tactic is to try to bolster the shallow one-dimensional concepts by tearing down the original source material. After all, they “reason”, if the original is destroyed, audiences will have no choice but to accept our creations. But the opposite effect has instead occurred: we dig our heels in even deeper in our rejection, because instead of responding to mistakes with acknowledgement and corrective action, we are attacked as sexist, racist, homophobic, and so on.
All of this is borne of contempt, and not only for the source material; too many of today’s writers hold their audiences in contempt as well. Steven Moffat even went to the extreme in one episode of Sherlock by going out of his way to ridicule fans for even trying to speculate about how the hero survived a presumably fatal encounter. But Moffat had set up questions to be answered later in the first place, and has no right to blast anyone for daring to try and come up with answers to questions he himself posed. Likewise, Ruin Johnson’s childish digs at Star Wars fans, both in The Last Jedi and on social media, speak to his sheer disdain for any who have the audacity to speculate on even the ham-handed questions Jar Jar Abrams put forth for viewers to answer on their own in The Force Awakens. And this betrays, too, an even deeper pathology: Why even pose questions at all if they’re not meant to be answered, and if you’re just going to mock people for doing what comes naturally when asked a riddle? In the minds of today’s corporate hack writer-directors, answers are irrelevant, and audiences are childish @$$holes for expecting any or trying to come up with their own. Payoff is for losers, nerds, people too dweebish even for nerds higher up in the social pecking order.
Thankfully, there’s a limit as to how much abuse audiences will take before they vent their frustration by refusing to buy the shi**y product being sold. Although media consolidation increases, diminishing the quality of what’s sold, consumers still have the right not to purchase it. And you can’t force someone to buy something no matter how you might try to enforce it under code of law. That’s largely why Obamacare, modeled as it was on Romneycare in Massachusetts, ultimately failed. Instead of restricting prices or coming up with a public alternative, legislators and executive alike tried to force consumers to buy product that is increasingly un-affordably priced and increasingly defective in providing a necessary service. Small wonder it failed. It did so because you can’t respond to diminishing demand for low quality product by saying, “you HAVE to buy it; you have no choice in the matter.”
At some point Hollywood is going to have to grow up and accept the fundamental truth of economics: people buy product only if it’s good, useful, and reasonably priced. If you only ever produce garbage, don’t expect them to plop down money they realize is better spent elsewhere. Cinema, of course, isn’t going away any time soon. But it may be that, tired of chronic Mary/Gary Sue/Stu-ism, audiences will soon force another Renaissance on the industry. This can be done in part by supporting smaller, lower-budget, well written and executed productions. If those make money at the box office, Hollywood will adapt as it did before and produce more of that level of quality, simply in order to compete.
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You have to hand it to DC-Warner Bros. Even though their half-arsed cinematic universe is has tanked, they’re still hell bent on throwing good money after bad with their announcement, as reported on polygon.com, of movies coming up over the next couple of years.
Upcoming entries in the failed ‘DC Extended Universe’ include this year’s Aquaman; 2019’s Shazam! and Wonder Woman 1984; in either 2019 or 2020, an as-yet-untitled Joker origin movie; and Cyborg, Green Lantern Corps, and Suicide Squad 2 in 2020. Other potential movies include Batgirl and Flashpoint (based on The Flash).
The problem with this is that, with the dismal performance thus far of Warner Bros.’ comic book movies since the end of the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy, no one is really asking for any of these except perhaps for the Wonder Woman sequel. Silly comparisons of the Shazam costume to the Batman costume notwithstanding, there’s really not much talk from comic fans or moviegoers in general to indicate a demand needing to be fulfilled.
That’s not stopping DC and Warner Bros., though, as they roll out their television trailer for a rebooted Superman comic under Brian Michael Bendis. With comics in serious decline in large part because of craptastic writing and seemingly endless comicversal reboots every couple of years, I won’t hold my breath until I see positive results that last. That said, DC at least listens to fan criticism and takes corrective action when it fouls up, whereas Marvel basically tells readers to f*** off. I guess we’ll be waiting a few decades for before we can finally see the awful One More Day storyline undone. Or maybe not. It seems that Marvel might finally be coming to its senses. We’ll see.
Speaking of Marvel, Sean Combs is talking smack about Marvel’s Black Panther, calling it a “cruel experiment” that isn’t the game-changer the media has hyped it as.
“‘Black Panther’ was a cruel experiment because we live in 2018,” Diddy said, “and it’s the first time that the film industry gave us a fair playing field on a worldwide blockbuster, and the hundreds of millions it takes to make it.”
Diddy views “Black Panther” more as a small baby step to inclusion than an outright game-changer. He told Variety that all industries have the same issue of letting black men and women hold top-level positions, even when black employees have been able to make their respective companies millions of dollars. For this reason, the billion-dollar success of “Black Panther” isn’t enough of a sign to Diddy that Hollywood is on its way to major change.
“For all the billions of dollars that these black executives have been able to make them, [there’s still hesitation] to put them in the top-level positions,” Diddy said of industries at large. “They’ll go and they’ll recruit cats from overseas. It makes sense to give [executives of color] a chance and embrace the evolution, instead of it being that we can only make it to president, senior VP. … There’s no black CEO of a major record company. That’s just as bad as the fact that there are no [black] majority owners in the NFL. That’s what really motivates me.”
Diddy continued by saying the success of “Black Panther” did not surprise him. He maintained that when black creators are given the proper resources in any industry, they always “over-deliver.”
“You can’t do anything without that money, without resources,” Diddy told Variety. “But when we do get the resources, we over-deliver. When Adidas invests in Kanye and it’s done properly, you have the right results. When Live Nation invests in artists and puts them in arenas the same way U2 would be, you have the right results. ‘Black Panther,’ ‘Black-ish,’ fashion; it’s all about access. If you’re blocked out of the resources, you can’t compete. And that’s my whole thing — to be able to come and compete.”
Actually, that’s pretty fair. It does remain to be seen if the success of Black Panther will lead to more opportunities for writers, directors, producers, and actors of color.
Finally, streaming service Hulu is coming out with a new series called Castle Rock, based on the fictional Maine town setting for many of Stephen King’s novels and short stories.
Andre Holland, of “The Knick” and “Moonlight,” plays Henry Deaver, an attorney who had left Castle Rock. He returns after becoming embroiled in the case of a young man (Bill Skarsgard) found being kept prisoner, seemingly outside the bounds of the law, within a secret chamber in the local penitentiary. (It’s the Shawshank State Prison, naturally.) The lawyer’s past in Castle Rock precedes him; just about everyone he meets seems to recall an infamous incident that resulted in the death of Deaver’s father when Deaver was just a child.
I have to say I’m on the fence regarding this series. On the one hand, it’s based on Stephen King’s work, and King has a well deserved reputation as a fantastic writer. On the other hand, it’s based on Stephen King’s work, and the visual media adapted from it over the decades has been hit-or-miss.
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Sorry for the lack of posting; last weekend I was dealing with a death in the family and wasn’t in the mood to try and do an episode of the YouTube webcast, or do any writing.
Anyway, I had opportunity to watch Hereditary, the horror movie written and directed by Ari Aster and starring Toni Collette. I won’t give away too much because I really don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, except to say that if you’re looking for something with a “happy” ending or that pulls punches, you might want to watch something else. But if you’ve the stomach for the cinematic taboos this piece of cinema breaks without so much as flinching, then I recommend you go see it on the big screen in a darkened theater. You really need to do that to get the proper horror film experience.
The story deals with the subjects of inherited mental illness and the cycles of abuse and covering up that go with it. Under the guise of witch-cults and demonic possession, the movie doesn’t let its audience off the hook in condemning the failure of families to address hereditary insanity, warning that as long as we refuse to confront it and take action to get sufferers into effective treatment, the cycle will continue.
As horror movies go, I thought it was fairly good, although there were a few weak spots in the story as there are in any tale told in human history. But the good far outweighed the bad, in my humble opinion. It handles its subject matter on a far more adult level than many might be comfortable with. I was particularly impressed with the creepy performance turned in by Milly Shapiro, who plays daughter Charlie.
But the movie got me thinking of the horror genre more generally and its place in film theory. Having taken it in film school, I saw a lot in Hereditary that really ought to be in other genres, but is instead sorely lacking. Yes, by that I’m specifically calling out the brainless modern iterations of Star Trek and Star Wars.
I have long been a fan of horror (and its twin, science fiction) as a storytelling medium, especially for its ability to tell sociopolitical morality tales. In my last video, with Tom Connors of Midnight’s Edge, we were talking about how much horror has been influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, the seminal 1960 flick about a motel owner whose domineering mother drove him to become lost in maintaining the memory of her. John Carpenter’s Halloween famously used the character of Michael Myers to replay Hitchcock’s archetype of the emasculated male driven to slaughter young people, especially women, in an effort to reclaim his masculinity. Further, the character of Laurie Strode, like Norman Bate’s parent, represents the Primal Mother, whose power to dominate or defend against male aggression ultimately prevails. And, of course, in a nod to Psycho, Donald Pleasence’s character Sam Loomis was named after the boyfriend in Hitchcock’s masterpiece.
1980’s Friday the 13th, directed by Sean S. Cunningham, turns the concept of the primal mother dominating her offspring to the point of consuming him, on its ear by reversing it: The trauma of losing a child consumes the mother, who then becomes the child in her own mind in order to both erase the tragedy and get revenge. So powerful is this cinematic concept that Cunningham has been battling it out in court with Friday co-creator Victor Miller in court over ownership, which is a whole story in itself.
And who can forget Wes Craven’s 1984 horror-slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street, wherein Craven successfully pulls off what Hitchcock did decades before by killing off the movie’s opening protagonist part-way through the story?
All these films were much-influenced by Alfred Hitchcock, who was a master of manipulating his audience and who possessed tremendous understanding of the human psyche. Hereditary is no different in owing its story’s concepts to Hitchcock’s use of the Primal Mother to frighten audiences. It is through the matrilineal side of the movie’s family that the evils are passed on, and it is the ever-present domination of the family matriarch even in death that drives the action. To the extent that the male characters factor into the story, it is as victims, the dominated being controlled and ultimately consumed by the females.
Of course, Hereditary borrows as much from Robin Hardy’s 1973 masterpiece, The Wicker Man, as it does from Hitchcock, in misdirecting the audience, although those who’ve seen the earlier film will probably see it coming from a mile away. That, I think, is the only major weak spot in Aster’s narrative, but it’s hardly his fault nor can it really be helped. It still works.
There’s a parallel between Hitchcock’s concept of powerful women emasculating weaker males, and Hardy’s. In The Wicker Man, Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Neil Howie is tempted by Britt Ekland’s Willow MacGregor in a seductive nighttime dance that leaves the former frustrated and impotent to deal with his own sexual urges, which he continually suppresses. And it is that very suppression, borne of fear of women masked in pseudo-Christian righteousness, that ultimately proves his undoing. One less frightened of women might have given in and saved himself in the process, but his unwillingness to acknowledge his urges as normal and healthy and alter his attitude toward women, dooms him.
The pattern in these films and their imitators is one in which women have far more power over men, for good or for ill, than many are comfortable with, and in the slasher subgenre of horror, the only way for males to reassert their masculinity is to lash out in violence. They are compelled to kill or dominate in their own twisted manner, unable to cope with the control women have over their lives.
As this concept applies to modern horror and slasher movies, and cinema in general, I think there’s something lost in the seemingly endless string of reboots and reimaginings. None of the reboots really capture the spirit of the originals, leaving shallow, empty shells of the stories told far better and with much more informed inspiration by writers and directors who have greater understanding of both cinematic language and human psychology. For all we’re supposed to believe that STD and Disney Star Wars are promoting “strong women,” they’re really not, because the female concepts have nothing beneath the pretty skins of the actresses portraying them. The concepts are poorly written and executed, make goofball mistakes that belie their supposed strength, and are so incompetent and unsympathetic it is difficult to believe proclaimed strength.
Too many of today’s so-called writer-directors have learned only the technical aspects of movie-making, without learning any of the deeper storytelling taught in film theory. It really takes more original projects by people such as Astor to tell the kinds of horror-driven morality tales we need. The blockbuster adventures over-saturating movie theaters just can’t do the job, at least not on the adult level Hereditary and its contemporaries do. For all the social and political subtext in, say, Black Panther, it can’t even begin to compete with lower-budget, more independent films. That’s because a budget of tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars generally suppresses true creativity, almost requiring movie-makers to play down or ignore deeper meaning altogether. There’s too much pressure to go for the cheap thrills and laundry-list checkpoints, because something that actually makes people think about the subject matter within the story is considered too risky given the amount of money being spent. Better, the studios think, to take the safer path.
The problem is that this risk aversion provides hit-or-miss results, and as we’re seeing with Star Wars, it’s more miss than hit. But the beauty of having a lower-budget horror story is that the risk might be higher, but so too are the rewards at the box office if it scores a home run with audiences. Consider that Carpenter’s Halloween, made for $320,000, pulled in seventy million dollars worldwide at the box office, far exceeding what was spent to make and market the film. Suppose Marvel Studios and LucasFilm were forced to make smaller films that focus more on character and storytelling, than on a laundry list of stunts and gimmicks? How might cinema change for the better?
Anyway, those are my thoughts. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. If you like what you read here and want to help me improve the webcast, please consider becoming a patron by clicking the link to my Patreon page and subscribing. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and hit the bell icon to receive notifications when I upload content.
I wasn’t going to write up another blog entry about Star Wars until the rumors over Kathleen Kennedy’s departure from LucasFilm had been officially confirmed or denied by Disney, but the last few discussions I’ve had with others on social media have driven me to explain my thoughts about the use of identity politics in the franchise, the real reason it’s being exploited, and the impact it’s obviously had.
Now, it’s no secret that establishment media have basically attacked Disney in general and LucasFilm in particular for pushing “liberal” values in the new movies produced under Kennedy’s watch as president of the studio: the “liberal elitists” in Hollywood seem to be waging all-out culture war on “centrists” and conservatives by trying to displace traditionally white male characters and archetypes with females and persons of color.
And to be sure, as The Intercept’s Briahna Gray writes, “many Democrats now bristle at the notion that the Democratic Party should reach out to working class whites all. Understandably fearful that “wooing” white voters might require an appeal to bigotry, it’s now commonly argued that the Democratic Party should concentrate its efforts on nonvoters of color instead.” And we certainly seem to be seeing a similar pattern of pandering to demographics that are predominantly non-white and female, with snarky public statements and remarks appearing to confirm what many critics of the new movies believe.
Gray goes on to write:
Nonwhite and/or female candidates are praised for advancing “identity politics” if they win — regardless of how they campaigned. And efforts to include white voters in one’s coalition are blamed for faltering campaigns — regardless of a candidate’s more substantive failures.
But to subscribe to the notion that Kathleen Kennedy and her merry band of suck-ups are pushing so-called “social justice warriorism” on an unwilling fan base is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of their intentions. Remember that in today’s increasingly corporatized, consolidated media, companies looking to squeeze every last penny out of their product want to sell to as many buyers as possible in order to maximize profits. That means targeting demographics that have been traditionally ignored, or that company executives think have been ignored, so that they can fill as many movie theater seats as they can.
People need to understand that “corporate thinking is short term”: Disney and its subsidiaries are only concerned with making immediate profits. Politics are not immediate; they are long term goals, strategies, tactics, and so on, to be accomplished over a period of years, or even generations. To the extent that corporations and the people who run them have any ideology at all, it’s one of making money. And in that quest to make money, costs have to be cut as much as possible, and product has to be sold to as many consumers as possible.
So you have corporate focus groups trying to figure out how to best pander to various demographic groups, e.g., Millennials. Millennials and later generations are increasingly non-white, and represent many races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and so on. Focus groups try to come up with what they think is the most effective way to play to their wants. “Oh, you don’t think your group was adequately represented in the previous Star Wars trilogies? No problem! Our new, IMPROVED trilogy has something and someone for everybody! We’ve got “strong women”! “Blacks”! “Asians”! “Pansexuals” and “LGBTQ”!
The focus groups decided that the supposedly shrinking white male heterosexual demographic was no longer sufficient to support the Star Wars franchise for Disney, which wants to get a good return on its four billion dollar investment in buying LucasFilm, Ltd. Hence we now have Ma-Rey Sue, Potato Sack Tico, Carrie Poppins, Holdo, Poe, Finn, Pan-do Calrissian, and so on, all created or retooled to have as broad demographic appeal as can be gotten away with.
Of course, it’s a cynical exploitation of identity politics in order to sell toys and movie theater tickets. Why wouldn’t it be? While it is true that politicians, most of whom are either corporate lobbyists or company executives, use corporate talking points to sell themselves on the campaign trail, the reverse is equally as true: corporations exploit politics to their immediate financial gain.
And this, not actually held political beliefs, is what drives the cynical pandering to identity politics. Corporate executives and their stooges are ultimately a nihilistic lot, believing in nothing beyond short term profit. But they are just aware enough to understand that most human beings do have beliefs, and they are not above exploiting those beliefs to sell their product. But the drawback is that people generally know when they’re being pandered to, and they reject it. That’s why Solo: A Star Wars Story has lost money for LucasFilm and Disney. As Gray writes in her article:
Nonwhite and/or female candidates are praised for advancing “identity politics” if they win — regardless of how they campaigned. And efforts to include white voters in one’s coalition are blamed for faltering campaigns — regardless of a candidate’s more substantive failures. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And with a belief that demographics hold the key to unlocking a Democratic victory, Democrats stand poised to ignore the most important lesson of 2016: People turn out for material change.
Thus is explained why Kennedy and her sycophants seem so oblivious to the reasons behind fan reaction to the movies produced under her watch. They don’t want to admit that they screwed up, and so they’re blaming everyone but themselves for having alienated fans to the point that Star Wars has gone from being a property that makes and breaks box office and merchandise sales records, to one that loses money, in just three (really two and a half) short years.
To be sure, the Marvel movies are as guilty of exploiting identity politics to cater to target demographics as much as their sister productions, but not nearly as obviously or as insultingly. And whereas LucasFilm has been either insensitive or outright hostile to the fan base, Marvel understands its own far better and is content to show much more respect, which is why you don’t see much fan anger toward Marvel. It would be one thing if LucasFilm and the people presently running it were properly apologetic and took steps to remedy its mistakes, but instead it is taking the same failed tactic of doubling down on those blunders and them compounding these monumental screw-ups by lashing out, whether directly or through paid media shills (who used to be a lot more reliably honest in critiquing movies).
At the end of the day, LucasFilm needs to publicly acknowledge what it has done, own up to it, apologize, and take corrective measures before it completely destroys Disney’s plans to construct theme parks and hotels based on Star Wars. And maybe Disney will take action where Kennedy will not; after all, over a week has passed since rumors began flying about her impending departure from LucasFilm, and so far there have been no official statements denying them. If she is indeed being pushed out in favor of someone who can handle the franchise far more capably, that is all well and good. But the damage has been done, and if Disney isn’t careful, if it simply replaces one bad egg with another, then Star Wars is pretty much done for at least another generation.
And that would truly be a tragedy.
In this week’s episode, Tom Connors from Midnight’s Edge joins me to talk about the new Halloween film being released in October.
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‘Halloween’: Jamie Lee Curtis, Jason Blum Dish on Michael Myers’ Return
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The Halloween franchise is returning to the big screen this Autumn with a whole new entry directed by David Gordan Green, who got the project thanks to actor Jake Gyllenhaal. Taking a page from Toho, producer John Carpenter, who co-wrote and directed the original 1978 slasher film, has decided to eliminate all but that production from canon, displacing even Halloween II, which many fans consider to be the second half of the original Michael Myers story.
To get an idea of what’s going on, it’s necessary to go back and retell some of the history behind the production of Halloween II and why Carpenter and his creative team behind the new movie have decided to do what they did.
In 1978, Halloween, which was produced for $325,000—a fairly small bit of change at that time, debuted in theaters and quickly gained acclaim, not to mention box office success with a box office gross of $47 million domestic and $23 million foreign, for a total gross of $70 million. Needless to say, the film was a huge hit, and helped spark a slew of imitators trying to capitalize on its success. These included the much lesser quality Friday the 13th franchise, which had a fair share of simulated blood and gore and gratuitous nudity.
Not to be outdone, bank-roller Moustapha Akkad wanted sequels with which to compete against the imitators, and went ahead with plans to produce one. Carpenter and Halloween co-creator Debra Hill were at that point done with the film and wanted to move on to other projects, but by 1981 it was clear that Akkad was going to do the sequel whether they wanted it or not. Unwilling to be cut out of their share of the profits, they agreed to come aboard the project, but relegated themselves to writing and producing, handing the directorial reigns to Rick Rosenthal.
The intention was to officially wrap up the Michael Myers story and be done with it, and in fact, 1982’s Halloween III had a completely different story and characters with no apparent connection to the previous two films. Carpenter envisioned an anthology series centered on the holiday of Halloween, and for better or for worse, the failure of that at the box office led to the resurrection of Myers and his arch-nemesis Dr. Sam Loomis (played by the great Donald Pleasence) six years later.
For reasons that are still a bit murky, the decision was made to insert more blood, gore, and boobs than was in the original film, and on top of that, add the plot twist that made Jamie Lee Curtis’ character Laurie Strode Michael Myers’ sister, thus explaining his stalking of her and her friends and subsequent murder spree.
Carpenter and Hill were never thrilled with those decisions, which were made under studio pressure and displeased Halloween II director Rosenthal, who voiced his upset over re-shot scenes to put in more gore. So when the opportunity came up to start over with a new movie, Carpenter & Co. took full advantage.
The trailer and press interviews tell us a few things about the story:
Yeah, thanks for giving me my mask back, posh British documentarians (and keeping it so well preserved).
Now, ordinarily I’d protest against the exclusion of 2-6, because it happens that I had a big crush on actress Danielle Harris from 4 and 5 and I never liked how those three films were so disrespectfully eradicated from canon when Dimension decided to do its twenty-year reboot in 1998. But with John Carpenter involved and guiding things behind the scenes, well, I have to admit I’m curious to see exactly what he and director Green do with the story. Curtis says that the new movie lives up to the original, but then, we got that sort of spin twenty years ago and the final product turned out to be less than stellar. So we’ll see.
Anyway, what do you think? Let me know in the comment section, and while you’re at it, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and become a patron for extras and to help us improve the quality of our webcasts. Thank you.
In this week’s episode we address the drama playing out between Viacon and CBS, with Sheri Redstone representing Viacom in one corner and CBS’ Les Moonves in the other, why things are happening, and how they might affect media content going forward.
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The drama surrounding the efforts by Viacom and CBS to merge back together after its split in 2006 has been well documented in the media, but the ongoing twists and turns are worthy of examination.
Viacom head Sheri Redstone, daughter of Sumner Redstone, has been trying to wrest control of CBS, in which she has a majority share, from network C.E.O. Les Moonves, with whom she is not happy. Moonves’ handling of CBS properties, including Star Trek, has been less-than-stellar, and court filings reveal that she intends to sell the combined company for a higher price than she would get if the separate organizations were sold individually.
In fact, CBS lawyers sued Viacom in court over the planned merger, only to be denied. Moonves, for his part, wants to keep his job, which wouldn’t necessarily happen if things go in Redstone’s favor, hence the lawsuit to stop the merger from taking place.
CBS has pushed back its annual shareholders’ meeting to August. Complicating matters is that telecommunications giant Verizon is also trying to acquire CBS, which if successful would throw a serious wrench into Redstone’s plans. If Verizon is able to acquire the network, Redstone loses out on the massive profits from selling a recombined Viacom.
In the interests of full disclosure, I worked for Blockbuster Video, which at the time was owned by Viacom, from mid-1996 to early 2001. So I have something of a passing interest in seeing how this all plays out. I wasn’t all that thrilled with how Blockbuster was managed or the poor business decisions that alienated it from some of its video vendors, including Universal Studios. For a time, Blockbuster had to pull all Universal videos and merchandise from store shelves, it was that bad. (A couple of years after I left, a judge tossed out a lawsuit brought by independent video rental retailers citing unfair revenue-sharing practices, and prior to that, survived an anti-trust suit, though it was forced to settle another one over its outrageous and misleading late fee practices.) So it’ll be interesting to see where all this goes.
Keep an eye out for the video discussion about this merger effort.
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