The Culture Beat

That was the question being asked last week as this year’s San Diego Comic-Con launched another festival of all things pop culture including of course, comic books, wannabe blockbuster movies, video games, television and other attractions. Entertainment Weekly‘s Jeff Jensen traced the last ten years of ever more lucrative superhero movies and wondered if the viability of the genre was on the wane. Hollywood studios with mammoth budgets for next year’s Green Lantern, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and X-Men: First Class are betting that there’s still plenty of power in those spandex tights. Comic-Con displayed the casts of several movies due next year and in 2012′s The Avengers which combines the Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America and others in a Marvel extravaganza to dwarf earlier films.

Jensen is right to ask the question about how upcoming films can resonate with audiences now quite familiar with such characters–we relate to these characters on some level because we can relate to Batman’s quest for rough justice, Spider-Man’s struggle for a normal life, the X-Men’s societal rejection or the giddy fun of imagining ourselves in a cool metal suit. But what does Green Lantern speak to in the mass audience, or for that matter, the Green Hornet? Is the appeal of Thor or Cap limited to hardcore comic book geeks, the essential audience the Comic-Con panels were reaching out to but not the average moviegoer?

I think it will probably all come down to the story and the attitude of the production toward the character. If it takes an ironic stance toward the “star spangled sentinel of liberty,” Captain America, a character whose red, white and blue costume is hard to imagine in live action (see the picture I took at Universal Studios Marvel attraction) then the audience will mostly stay away. The new movie’s version of the costume, shown above, successfully adapts it to a live action practicality. As a character, Cap’s alter ego, Steve Rogers, a man of the 1940s patriotic spirit, was always at odds with his latter day resurrection into a more cynical and knowing culture–it was his quiet insistence on his American values that made him Marvel’s moral compass, what Superman is to DC Comics. I think it’s quite possible to pull it off if the director an script believes in the classic rendering of the character.

Thor, an actual Norse god, banished to Earth from his mythical home of Asgard by his stern father Odin, would, in big screen translation, have to avoid the attraction to wink at the material and pull a campy Wagnerian spectacle needing only Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny from the class cartoon “What’s Opera, Doc?”

This still from next summer’s release already reminds me of a scene from Das Rheingold or another of the Ring Cycle operas, missing only Brunhilda in a breastplate, helmet and spear. And Green Lantern’s tactic of using his power ring to create a giant boxing glove or fly swatter in combat has always seemed pretty cartoonish even for comics.

So success will all be in the tone and identification of the human drama of each character. Comic book characters only work because there’s something about the hero, other than their fantasy appeal, that attracts readers and makes them care about them. So, Cap is a man burdened with living up to the best ideals of his country–perhaps a metaphor for anyone serving in the armed forces, or with any duty to a higher national cause. Thor is a a golden boy who has never mastered himself or risen to the responsibilities of a royal household and must now learn to serve protect mere mortals, sort of a mythic rich kid who must do community service. And Hal jordan’s Green Lantern preceded and perhaps inspired George Lucas’ Jedi Knights, as an Emerald Warrior, a space cop keeping order on his assigned space sector. These are all types that, if adapted intelligently, will appeal to that desired blockbuster audience the same way Marvel second stringer Tony Stark’s Iron Man hit paydirt by showing that superheroes are always, after all, human.

A generation of kids who grew up endlessly watching home videos of the Toy Story movies and other Pixar films can now in their twenties perhaps for the first time see these beloved characters on the big screen and in 3-D which at least partly explains the over $100 million in its opening box office over the weekend, not to mention to nearly $50 million in oversees box office. Woody, Buzz and the rest of the toy gang are indeed back and the joy of toys is too.

As my family and I walked into the theater, my son, anxious that the film might be another disappointing sequel, muttered, “please be good, please be good.” I responded, “I’m not worried,” since I knew that, unlike other studios, Pixar’s production process has insured that all along the four-year process it takes from conception to post-production, quality control principles allow anyone in the creative process to speak up and critique the story’s development. If you catch story problems at this point and offer corrections and improvements, which is how things work at Pixar, you eliminate 99% of a movie’s problems.

This union of audience appeal with artistic innovation using digital animation has resulted in a string of nothing but hits for the studio 11 feature films, unheard of in Hollywood history. Toy Story 3 is perhaps the best film yet from Pixar, an amazing achievement given the risks of a second sequel when other franchises begin to show creative exhaustion (Shrek 3, Spider-Man 3 for example) and the demands of executives to squeeze more dollars out of a popular property when there are no good new ideas. But this being a sequel to the revloutionary first Pixar feature, the team was determined to get it right.

Andy’s toys have been gradually left behind as their owner’s teen years have naturally drawn him away from childish play to more age-appropriate interests. Woody is the only toy Andy plans to take to college, so the rest of the toys, feeling neglected, welcome a move to a nearby daycare center. Thus begins their next great adventure as they discover that not having a child who owns them means not being special anymore. And there’s more than the rough treatment by toddlers too young to play appropriately with them–the gang soon realizes they’ve been set up by other toys to serve as virtual prisoners in the daycare center. As they did in the earlier films, this involves another Odyssey-like journey of escape back to Andy, if they can find him in time, except this is the most dangerous adventure yet, and probably the funniest–the trademark Pixar rapid joke frequency we’ve experienced since the first film is firmly operational as every gag possibility is full exploited–only Pixar’s writers seem to know the magic of creating laughs that appeal to both child and adult without depending on mostly pop culture references, as the Shrek films have, to a fault.

And the Disney Digital 3-D process adds depth to the images although I question the necessity of this in such well-executed storytelling–I peeked over the top of the glasses several times and saw how much brighter the picture was without them and prefer that to the 3-D image that quickly loses its wow factor.

The level of invention is so high in the film that I couldn’t help thinking it seems ten times more creative than anything in the family category and most others as well (as evidenced by the groan-inducing trailers for upcoming kids animated films). This generosity continues in the famous Pixar end-credit sequence that takes us from the deeply moving climax back to guffaws and joy. Frankly, I feel privileged to live in an era where such instant classics dependably come to us annually, as if Walt Disney was back on the job–in a way, he is; Pixar’s wizards, led by Disney creative honcho John Lasseter, have always loved Disney’s animation classics and sought to perpetuate his vision and spirit. In a summer poor in mainstream movie entertainment, enjoy another miraculous work of great all-ages storytelling.

We saw the latest Jerry Bruckheimer-produced blockbuster film last night. And by we, I mean my son Benjamin, age 16, and I. Usually, my wife is part of our movie-going trio but we were going to Ben’s first drive-in movie experience, and Judith wasn’t particularly interested in the film, plus, she knew she’d be in the back seat of the mini-van and wouldn’t be able to see as well. We guys batched it the two-mile trek down to the Lake Worth Drive-In. We’d passed numerous time before while I wondered when we could finally introduce Benjamin to the outdoor movie experience that had been so popular in the postwar era before falling to the onslaught of proliferating multiplexes in the 1980s.

Drive-in movies had been popular in the 1950s affluence as they satisfied the population’s desire to not just see a movie but to recreate, to get out of the house into the great outside. A drive-in was sort of outdoors but with the added mobility of sitting in your big American car with the goodies you’d brought with you in the trunk cooler or picnic basket. The speakers hung on the rows of posts that looked toward the great white screen. Some drive-ins had sloped grass and gravel parking lines so that your car was angled up toward the screen to enable better viewing. I saw Walt Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson as a child as my first drive-in experience and will never forget the opening scene of a wooden ship desperately tossed on a stormy sea against the night sky behind the screen. The speaker box hung on your open car window with the tinny soundtrack playing.

The best part about a drive-in was that you could get out of the car and walk to the concession stand while able to turn to watch the movie, and perhaps still hear the audio playing from nearby speakers, never missing a thing. Of course for the youth demographic, drive-ins weren’t family affairs so much as infamous passion pits where heavy petting and more could occur in the privacy of a car’s cabin. As car culture faded in the 1970s oil crisis, so did the popularity of the drive-in as the seasonal nature of its outdoor venue and less than theatrical quality of the picture gave way to the blockbuster era of special effects and Dolby sound and variety of the new multiplexes.

Living in south Florida, there’s no winter to shut things down so the Lake Worth Drive-In, like others in the region does fine with the right kind of movie. We drove in and could see that there were two screens, one with its back to the road, and the other in the far corner of the large lot. We paid $6 for each ticket, not bad for an evening show. The box office clerk told us we were at screen 1 and to tune our FM radio to 93.7 for audio. We drove down and onto the large paved lot with painted lanes and parking slots. I found a place just off center and on the third “row” back out of four row. We could see plenty of cars already there, most of them either mini-vans and SUVs, most of them with their rear facing the screen–as in this picture, taken during the last Indiana Jones movie’s release–at first, this was a little disorienting because it looked like they were facing an invisible screen opposite screen 1, but I quickly caught on that with the vehicle’s hatch doors open, passengers could spread out cushions and blankets to lay down and watch. Many folks had camp and lawn chairs set out besides their vehicles to stretch their legs and get comfortable.

Ben and I headed to the concession stand (pictured here) to check out the goodies. It was a crowded structure on the first floor with a smaller projection booth on the roof where images could be shown at both screens at right angles to each other. Ben ordered some cheese nachos and I got a small buttered popcorn for $3.00, still better than a regular theater concession price. We got back in plenty of time to tune our radio to the right station and soon the movie began.

It was strange watching a relatively small image behind our windshield, less bright than a theatrical screen, but the sound was fantastic coming through our car’s speakers; my seat vibrated with low frequency hums during the action sequences. And the movie?

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a typical summer blockbuster wanna-be, a good number of CGI special effects at the end and peppered throughout, but it was surprisingly straightforward in tone, lacking the tongue-in-cheek attitude I was expecting. The story of a street urchin, Dastan, adopted by the wise king of Persia and made the youngest of three royal brothers, it’s actor Jake Gyllenhaal’s second foray into blockbusterdom after being part of the ensemble of the disaster film, The Day After. Lots of actors who make their reputation in small independent films will do blockbuster rolls to earn big bucks while they take a pay cut on their more artistic endeavors, and as Johnny Depp showed playing Captain Jack Sparrow and Robert Downey Jr. did playing Tony Stark/Iron Man, one can have one’s artistic integrity and blockbuster fortunes too. Jake’s body is super toned up for the athletic role of the adventurous prince based on the video game from which the movie draws both its name and much of its plot.

A mystical dagger is the sought for object since it can be used to roll back time and thus change history so there are plenty of chases, fights, battles and derring-do but although it doesn’t take itself very seriously, it isn’t nearly as campy as Pirates of the Carribean. In fact, its plot is borrowed from recent current events. The Persians, led by Dastan’s oldest brother, invade a sacred city based on a spy’s false report that the city is forging weapons to use against Persia. These false pretenses are part of a larger scheme but somewhere in the writing stage, someone must have noticed the resemblance to the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq based on intelligence reporting Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. But there seems to be no deeper ideological message so this isn’t Avatar. It did occur to me that none of the Caucasian featured players are close to being any ethnicity played on the screen and everyone talks in some type of British accent (to avoid sounding stereotypically “Arabic?”) so one really can’t take this Hollywood hoohaw with anything but a block of salt historically.

The script seems very much by-the-book in it’s structure and this familiarity may be too predictable for some, but the treasured object at the core of the story allow the climax to be surprisingly moving and heartfelt. It felt somewhat like an Alladin story in its style and lack of snarkiness. Benjamin liked it and thinks its the best movie adaptation of a video game, a task full of failures as moviemakers have so often missed what makes a successful adaptation from interactive to straight cinematic narrative. And he liked the drive-in experience but I’m not sure when we’ll find just the right movie to fit the exterior conditions and altered viewing conditions, but at least now he knows something of the wider American filmgoing experience.