The Outlaw Josey Carter
June 12, 2012 11:25 AM Subscribe
Salon writer, Erik Nelson, compares The Outlaw Josey Wales and John Carter, as well the forces behind them.
- John Carter previously (One, Two, Three, and Four), an adaptation of the A Princess of Mars and The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, from Pixar director Andrew Stanton. John Carter returns to public awareness after its unsuccessful theatrical release with the release of the movie's Blu-ray and DVD on June 5th.
- The Outlaw Josey Wales, an adaptation of a book of The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales by Forrest Carter, famously portrayed by Clint Eastwood, is the story of a Missouri bushwacker in the aftermath of the Civil War and his travel into the Southwest.
I quite liked John Carter. It was fun. It wasn't a great movie, but it had heart and soul, which a lot of Big Epic Hollywood Movies don't any more.
Also, the Mars dog.
posted by mightygodking at 11:43 AM on June 12, 2012 [10 favorites]
Also, the Mars dog.
posted by mightygodking at 11:43 AM on June 12, 2012 [10 favorites]
I had completely missed that The Outlaw Josey Wales got a blu-ray release. A film's always got to have an edge. Lone Wattie's been one of my recurring short duration personal saviors ever since the very first viewing.
"We thought about it for a long time, 'Endeavor to persevere.' And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union."
"I didn't surrender. But they took my horse and made him surrender."
posted by Drastic at 11:45 AM on June 12, 2012 [4 favorites]
"We thought about it for a long time, 'Endeavor to persevere.' And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union."
"I didn't surrender. But they took my horse and made him surrender."
posted by Drastic at 11:45 AM on June 12, 2012 [4 favorites]
When geniuses bomb
posted by Atreides
eponysterical
posted by nathancaswell at 11:47 AM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Atreides
eponysterical
posted by nathancaswell at 11:47 AM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
"I didn't surrender. But they took my horse and made him surrender."
"The horned toad says we should go to Mexico."
posted by jquinby at 11:50 AM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
"The horned toad says we should go to Mexico."
posted by jquinby at 11:50 AM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
I'm not entirely sure Josey Wales invented that trope. The man Defeated but Not Broken! Cast Adrift From His Home and Family. But Finding Family Along The Way. It sure is popular though. It is certainly present, as the article points out, in The Dark Tower. And we see it in Firefly.
The problem with Josey Wales is the mental contortions and manipulations it puts the viewer through to have them side with a confederate bushwacker. Obviously in Josey wales the Northern victory over the south is symbolic, the same as the rebel defeat in Firefly. In both, the loss is the loss of freedom ( for some people at least) and the victory is a win for cold efficiency.
They both have great lines though "Dyin aint much of a livin", "Don'y piss down my back and tell me its raining" , "I swear by my pretty bonnet I will end you"
posted by Ad hominem at 11:54 AM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
The problem with Josey Wales is the mental contortions and manipulations it puts the viewer through to have them side with a confederate bushwacker. Obviously in Josey wales the Northern victory over the south is symbolic, the same as the rebel defeat in Firefly. In both, the loss is the loss of freedom ( for some people at least) and the victory is a win for cold efficiency.
They both have great lines though "Dyin aint much of a livin", "Don'y piss down my back and tell me its raining" , "I swear by my pretty bonnet I will end you"
posted by Ad hominem at 11:54 AM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
I also kind of liked John Carter as a film. About the only alternative to making Carter a noble wounded warrior would be to give the novel to someone like Rodriguez who could crank the violence up to 11 and make a big artsy genre joke out of it.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:55 AM on June 12, 2012
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:55 AM on June 12, 2012
I started watching John Carter last night, but was interrupted by our baby waking up and crying. So basically I got twenty minutes of Voiceover, framing story, other framing story and what seemed like a third framing story... That's a lot of opening before the story starts.
posted by Artw at 11:56 AM on June 12, 2012
posted by Artw at 11:56 AM on June 12, 2012
Carter was not helped by the rather muddled "plot behind the plot" which a) made the film long and b) kept the audience from more Thark action. I have waited decades for this, guys, I want more Tharks! however, I really did enjoy it.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:05 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:05 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
I really liked John Carter. It delivered exactly what I was expecting from it narratively, and delivered a HELL of a lot of amazing eye candy.
But then again I'd also read this gorgeously insane comics adaptation of a good chunk of the first book a little beforehand, so I was not exactly going in expecting Citizen Kane, nor was I going in without a clue as to what was going on with Mars.
posted by egypturnash at 12:08 PM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
But then again I'd also read this gorgeously insane comics adaptation of a good chunk of the first book a little beforehand, so I was not exactly going in expecting Citizen Kane, nor was I going in without a clue as to what was going on with Mars.
posted by egypturnash at 12:08 PM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
I liked the cowboy bit I finally got to, with leaping out of windows and such. And hey! He's already found mysterious gold. Squeaky Burroughs pottering about I could live with as a framing story to that. Mysterious NY rain sequence did nothing, and the opening business with airships was just kind of full and confusing without context.
All in all if they'd shown us Burroughs at the estate, maybe had him poke at something Marsy to establish weird stuff might happen then jumped to the old west it probably would be a better start.
That said, for stumbling beginnings it has nothing on the awful Green Lantern which just drags on FOREVER.
posted by Artw at 12:10 PM on June 12, 2012
All in all if they'd shown us Burroughs at the estate, maybe had him poke at something Marsy to establish weird stuff might happen then jumped to the old west it probably would be a better start.
That said, for stumbling beginnings it has nothing on the awful Green Lantern which just drags on FOREVER.
posted by Artw at 12:10 PM on June 12, 2012
One big problem that John Carter had was that it was too similar to Avatar, which cribbed shamelessly from it (yes, I know, Pocahontas Dances with Ferngully and all that, but Edgar Rice Burroughs has prior art); the miniseries idea might have avoided that comparison, which was not flattering to Stanton's film, particularly WRT the setting--those gorgeous jewel-like jungles of Pandora vs. endless beige desert.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:12 PM on June 12, 2012
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:12 PM on June 12, 2012
"Shouldn't we bury him Josey?"
*spit*
"Buzzards gotta eat same as worms"
One of the Best Bad Ass Lines ever
posted by Redhush at 12:12 PM on June 12, 2012 [9 favorites]
*spit*
"Buzzards gotta eat same as worms"
One of the Best Bad Ass Lines ever
posted by Redhush at 12:12 PM on June 12, 2012 [9 favorites]
The Outlaw Josey Wales is just Firefly in the old west. I wish hollywood could come up with one original idea.
Someone comes to town.
Someone leaves town.
Ain't nothing new under the sun.
posted by Tomorrowful at 12:30 PM on June 12, 2012 [3 favorites]
Someone comes to town.
Someone leaves town.
Ain't nothing new under the sun.
posted by Tomorrowful at 12:30 PM on June 12, 2012 [3 favorites]
The problem with Josey Wales is the mental contortions and manipulations it puts the viewer through to have them side with a confederate bushwacker.
Er, there's no real mental contortions or manipulations that go on. The story was written by someone living in the South who wrote speeches for George Wallace and founded racist organizations. To him there was no need to establish that Union Soldiers were the bad guys any more than Ian Flemming needed to establish the Russians as the bad guys in Bond books. It was just a fact. Heck, Frank and Jesse James were seen by many people as heroes for continuing to fight the Civil War by robbing people.
If you either a) accept that some Union Soldiers may have done things like rape and kill civilians or b) disassociate the real life Civil War with the fictionalized Civil War portrayed in the movie, you'll have no problem siding with the Bushwacker. He is a sympathetic character, who has bad things done to him and gets revenge. They pop up all the time, this one just happens to come from a group that is usually portrayed as the bad guys these days.
posted by Gygesringtone at 12:41 PM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
Er, there's no real mental contortions or manipulations that go on. The story was written by someone living in the South who wrote speeches for George Wallace and founded racist organizations. To him there was no need to establish that Union Soldiers were the bad guys any more than Ian Flemming needed to establish the Russians as the bad guys in Bond books. It was just a fact. Heck, Frank and Jesse James were seen by many people as heroes for continuing to fight the Civil War by robbing people.
If you either a) accept that some Union Soldiers may have done things like rape and kill civilians or b) disassociate the real life Civil War with the fictionalized Civil War portrayed in the movie, you'll have no problem siding with the Bushwacker. He is a sympathetic character, who has bad things done to him and gets revenge. They pop up all the time, this one just happens to come from a group that is usually portrayed as the bad guys these days.
posted by Gygesringtone at 12:41 PM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
I also liked john carter a lot. I think it will be one of those movies like Flash Gordon or Princess Bride that grows an audience over time.
posted by empath at 12:44 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by empath at 12:44 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
He is a sympathetic character
Except when he spits on the dog. Never could come around on that.
posted by yerfatma at 12:52 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Except when he spits on the dog. Never could come around on that.
posted by yerfatma at 12:52 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
The maniuplation comes from portraying Josey as a simple man who just wants to live his life and the north as an empire, bent on subjugating simple people who just want to live. It comes from removing the entire context for the war. Sure Josey is sympathetic, but he is fighting for the right to own slaves, and the movie never mentions that.
It is as if Star Wars was a civil war allegory and The Empire was the north.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:53 PM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
It is as if Star Wars was a civil war allegory and The Empire was the north.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:53 PM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
I think Eastwood was making a point more about what war does to men rather than trying to rehash the Civil War. Witness the last lines of the movie. And the chemistry in that exchange at the end always makes me wish I saw John Vernon in more roles than Fletcher and Dean Wormer.
Fletcher: I think I'll go down to Mexico to try to find him.
Josey Wales: And then?
Fletcher: He's got the first move. I owe him that. I think I'll try to tell him the war is over. What do you say, Mr. Wilson?
Josey Wales: I reckon so. I guess we all died a little in that damn war
posted by Ber at 1:06 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Fletcher: I think I'll go down to Mexico to try to find him.
Josey Wales: And then?
Fletcher: He's got the first move. I owe him that. I think I'll try to tell him the war is over. What do you say, Mr. Wilson?
Josey Wales: I reckon so. I guess we all died a little in that damn war
posted by Ber at 1:06 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Obviously in Josey wales the Northern victory over the south is symbolic, the same as the rebel defeat in Firefly.
Ad hominem
This always struck me as very weird with Firefly. The freedom-loving revels vs. the evil, oppressive Union is the purest Southern/libertarian revisionist bullshit. It's very odd to see it repeated in Firefly, a show that so pointedly draws from the Civil War/Old West period.
I don't think Whedon is a Southern revisionist, but I always thought it was very bizarre to have a show drawing so heavily from the Civil War but portraying the rebels as unequivocally good and the Union as bad and never mentioning slavery is really strange. As others have said in this thread, The Outlaw Josey Wales does it because it was written by a Southern racist apologist. I always wondered what point Whedon was trying to make by doing it. Firefly would certainly have been different if Captain Reynolds and crew were bitter apologist for slavery.
I think it will be one of those movies like Flash Gordon or Princess Bride that grows an audience over time.
empath
I highly doubt this. The charge against John Carter was never that it was bad, just that it was a disappointingly mediocre effort despite being done by a hugely talented director with a mountain of money and resources with a great property.
Flash Gordon became a cult hit because it had great camp style. Princess Bride became popular because it's a quirky but genuinely good movie. John Carter is neither of these things. As said above, it looks nice but there's nothing really unique or distinctive about its style or feel. And it really isn't all that good, just okay. It's just another in a long line of bland big-budget summer action movies.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:17 PM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
Ad hominem
This always struck me as very weird with Firefly. The freedom-loving revels vs. the evil, oppressive Union is the purest Southern/libertarian revisionist bullshit. It's very odd to see it repeated in Firefly, a show that so pointedly draws from the Civil War/Old West period.
I don't think Whedon is a Southern revisionist, but I always thought it was very bizarre to have a show drawing so heavily from the Civil War but portraying the rebels as unequivocally good and the Union as bad and never mentioning slavery is really strange. As others have said in this thread, The Outlaw Josey Wales does it because it was written by a Southern racist apologist. I always wondered what point Whedon was trying to make by doing it. Firefly would certainly have been different if Captain Reynolds and crew were bitter apologist for slavery.
I think it will be one of those movies like Flash Gordon or Princess Bride that grows an audience over time.
empath
I highly doubt this. The charge against John Carter was never that it was bad, just that it was a disappointingly mediocre effort despite being done by a hugely talented director with a mountain of money and resources with a great property.
Flash Gordon became a cult hit because it had great camp style. Princess Bride became popular because it's a quirky but genuinely good movie. John Carter is neither of these things. As said above, it looks nice but there's nothing really unique or distinctive about its style or feel. And it really isn't all that good, just okay. It's just another in a long line of bland big-budget summer action movies.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:17 PM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
I think John Carter is as much of a quirky movie as it's possible to make in today's studio system. Mainstream cinema is becoming as homogenous as possible in order to attract the biggest number of bums-on-seats, and that means making films for people who think reality shows are perfectly cromulent entertainment.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:31 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by The River Ivel at 1:31 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
If you either a) accept that some Union Soldiers may have done things like rape and kill civilians
We don't need to -- there were many atrocities on both sides during Bleeding Kansas. Many so-called Jayhawkers, whether or not from Kansas, were only nominally pro-Union and vaguely formed into militias before the war, and essentially using the border war as an excuse for marauding, as shown in Josey Wales.
What's problematic about the novel (less so about the film) is the way it tries to establish these predations as a justification for the entire Civil War. But there's no question that there were conflicts, many of them deadly, between factions.
Trivia: I have distant Quaker relations who may have been involved in the Underground Railroad in Iowa and some of the skirmishes there with fugitive slave bounty hunters. It was a very real situation, not at all abstract.
I always thought it was very bizarre to have a show drawing so heavily from the Civil War but portraying the rebels as unequivocally good and the Union as bad and never mentioning slavery
I thought it was pretty straightforward inverted expectations. Clearly, the rebel living with defeat is a concept that has appeal, and fits the overall storyline that was set up (and rather abruptly brought to closure in the film).
posted by dhartung at 1:39 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
We don't need to -- there were many atrocities on both sides during Bleeding Kansas. Many so-called Jayhawkers, whether or not from Kansas, were only nominally pro-Union and vaguely formed into militias before the war, and essentially using the border war as an excuse for marauding, as shown in Josey Wales.
What's problematic about the novel (less so about the film) is the way it tries to establish these predations as a justification for the entire Civil War. But there's no question that there were conflicts, many of them deadly, between factions.
Trivia: I have distant Quaker relations who may have been involved in the Underground Railroad in Iowa and some of the skirmishes there with fugitive slave bounty hunters. It was a very real situation, not at all abstract.
I always thought it was very bizarre to have a show drawing so heavily from the Civil War but portraying the rebels as unequivocally good and the Union as bad and never mentioning slavery
I thought it was pretty straightforward inverted expectations. Clearly, the rebel living with defeat is a concept that has appeal, and fits the overall storyline that was set up (and rather abruptly brought to closure in the film).
posted by dhartung at 1:39 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
I think Eastwood was making a point more about what war does to men rather than trying to rehash the Civil War
Yeah, I like Eastwood, and I like the movie as a movie. I don't think he is a revisionist. I think it is a compelling story and the temptation to use a decontextualized civil war in your wounded warrior epic is probably pretty strong. I accept that he was well intentioned. "I guess we all died a little in that damn war" is not a terrible message in 1976, the year of the Patty Hearst trial.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:41 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I like Eastwood, and I like the movie as a movie. I don't think he is a revisionist. I think it is a compelling story and the temptation to use a decontextualized civil war in your wounded warrior epic is probably pretty strong. I accept that he was well intentioned. "I guess we all died a little in that damn war" is not a terrible message in 1976, the year of the Patty Hearst trial.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:41 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
I thought it was pretty straightforward inverted expectations. Clearly, the rebel living with defeat is a concept that has appeal, and fits the overall storyline that was set up (and rather abruptly brought to closure in the film).
But the problem is the specific American Civil War allusions, costumes, setting, etc that the show chose. It gives the situation of rebels vs. the Empire certain connotations that it wouldn't have without those specific choices. Whedon could have set up that situation of rebels living with defeat without the specific American Civil War elements, and using them brings a lot of baggage.
It pretty much is exactly the fantasy retelling that Southern apologists make for the war: it was a noble struggle for individual freedom against an oppressive, centralized power.
posted by Sangermaine at 2:06 PM on June 12, 2012 [3 favorites]
But the problem is the specific American Civil War allusions, costumes, setting, etc that the show chose. It gives the situation of rebels vs. the Empire certain connotations that it wouldn't have without those specific choices. Whedon could have set up that situation of rebels living with defeat without the specific American Civil War elements, and using them brings a lot of baggage.
It pretty much is exactly the fantasy retelling that Southern apologists make for the war: it was a noble struggle for individual freedom against an oppressive, centralized power.
posted by Sangermaine at 2:06 PM on June 12, 2012 [3 favorites]
The maniuplation comes from portraying Josey as a simple man who just wants to live his life and the north as an empire, bent on subjugating simple people who just want to live. It comes from removing the entire context for the war. Sure Josey is sympathetic, but he is fighting for the right to own slaves, and the movie never mentions that.
I'm not sure if that's really manipulation so much as telling a story from a point of view that you personally don't agree with. Josey very clearly wasn't fighting to own slaves, he was fighting people who raped his wife, killed his son, and left him for dead. The story is all about his drive for revenge, and his acceptance in the end that getting that revenge wouldn't be worth it. There's no reason this shouldn't be true in the world of that story.
Fiction requires all sorts of suspension of disbelief. I don't think this is manipulation for the same reason I don't claim that since Peter Jackson's King Kong portrays a giant ape getting in a fight with dinosaurs while falling off a huge cliff without mentioning everything wrong with that scenario I'm being manipulated.
posted by Gygesringtone at 2:10 PM on June 12, 2012 [3 favorites]
I'm not sure if that's really manipulation so much as telling a story from a point of view that you personally don't agree with. Josey very clearly wasn't fighting to own slaves, he was fighting people who raped his wife, killed his son, and left him for dead. The story is all about his drive for revenge, and his acceptance in the end that getting that revenge wouldn't be worth it. There's no reason this shouldn't be true in the world of that story.
Fiction requires all sorts of suspension of disbelief. I don't think this is manipulation for the same reason I don't claim that since Peter Jackson's King Kong portrays a giant ape getting in a fight with dinosaurs while falling off a huge cliff without mentioning everything wrong with that scenario I'm being manipulated.
posted by Gygesringtone at 2:10 PM on June 12, 2012 [3 favorites]
It's almost as if fiction were this tool for taking ideas apart and examine them from multiple angles and choosing aspects to focus on Or ignore.
posted by Artw at 2:21 PM on June 12, 2012 [7 favorites]
posted by Artw at 2:21 PM on June 12, 2012 [7 favorites]
I agree that given only two hours, they would have been better off going much smaller, and strictly doing a "Broken Warrior Finds a New Cause" movie; the critics could have just summed it up as 'Oh, I see, it's Josey Wales in Space'. I think it's what they were trying to do with his names through the movie; begins as the broken John Carter of Nowhere as a broken soldier who lost his family and his war, then finds himself far from home and is called John Carter of Earth, then finds something to fight for and finishes up as John Carter of Mars.
It's easier to walk into that story as a popcorn movie than have to develop Barsoomian culture, Red Martians vs. Tharks, Therns and the Ninth Ray, etc. You'd need to a miniseries or something to do all that exposition properly, otherwise it's a whole lot of nonsense. Unless you have fond memories of the books and are waiting to see how they do Woola or the set designs for Helium. Or, of course, Dejah Thoris. [Note to moviemakers; when you put an alien princess in your action movie, but she's the head of the Science Academy as well as a skilled swordfighter, instead of just a swooner in a jeweled bikini? More of that, please. Nobody doesn't like that.]
It's why there have been a lot more successful adaptations of Burroughs' other property, Tarzan. "Orphan raised by apes, becomes noble savage type, makes 'civilized' people look bad". It's a lot easier to do that story in two hours.
I think someone at Disney might have had high hopes of turning John Carter into a Summer Blockbuster Franchise; if so, they blew it. I just hope that they didn't scare a cable network off the idea of a six-parter someday.
posted by bartleby at 2:31 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
It's easier to walk into that story as a popcorn movie than have to develop Barsoomian culture, Red Martians vs. Tharks, Therns and the Ninth Ray, etc. You'd need to a miniseries or something to do all that exposition properly, otherwise it's a whole lot of nonsense. Unless you have fond memories of the books and are waiting to see how they do Woola or the set designs for Helium. Or, of course, Dejah Thoris. [Note to moviemakers; when you put an alien princess in your action movie, but she's the head of the Science Academy as well as a skilled swordfighter, instead of just a swooner in a jeweled bikini? More of that, please. Nobody doesn't like that.]
It's why there have been a lot more successful adaptations of Burroughs' other property, Tarzan. "Orphan raised by apes, becomes noble savage type, makes 'civilized' people look bad". It's a lot easier to do that story in two hours.
I think someone at Disney might have had high hopes of turning John Carter into a Summer Blockbuster Franchise; if so, they blew it. I just hope that they didn't scare a cable network off the idea of a six-parter someday.
posted by bartleby at 2:31 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Josey very clearly wasn't fighting to own slaves, he was fighting people who raped his wife, killed his son, and left him for dead.
Except that it is fiction. Its almost like it was created to retroactively justify bushwacking in miniature. It was written as propaganda.He was a noble guy just yearning to live free until he was viciously attacked by the north.
Of course it makes sense in the world of the story, but why was that story written?
posted by Ad hominem at 2:37 PM on June 12, 2012
Except that it is fiction. Its almost like it was created to retroactively justify bushwacking in miniature. It was written as propaganda.He was a noble guy just yearning to live free until he was viciously attacked by the north.
Of course it makes sense in the world of the story, but why was that story written?
posted by Ad hominem at 2:37 PM on June 12, 2012
Fiction requires all sorts of suspension of disbelief. I don't think this is manipulation for the same reason I don't claim that since Peter Jackson's King Kong portrays a giant ape getting in a fight with dinosaurs while falling off a huge cliff without mentioning everything wrong with that scenario I'm being manipulated.
Gygesringtone
But this isn't what's being discussed. The issue isn't realism, whether a gun fired in a movie shot the correct number of bullets for its type and model. The issue is the presentation and use of historical situations. If there were very deep, historical political associations with the Kong fight, it would be different. There aren't, it's just a fantasy. But there is a lot of baggage surrounding the Civil War and its portrayal in fiction, and this has been a point of contention since the war ended and two this day.
It's almost as if fiction were this tool for taking ideas apart and examine them from multiple angles and choosing aspects to focus on Or ignore.
Artw
Yes, this is the point. Fiction is often used a tool to whitewash or alter perceptions of the past. Look, for example, at Birth of A Nation and its enormous popularity and impact at the time. There's significance in what a creator chooses to emphasize and ignore, especially when the creator is drawing from a charged subject.
You don't get to just declare things exist in a cultural/historical vacuum. A creator makes a conscious choice to put things in their work.
posted by Sangermaine at 2:45 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Gygesringtone
But this isn't what's being discussed. The issue isn't realism, whether a gun fired in a movie shot the correct number of bullets for its type and model. The issue is the presentation and use of historical situations. If there were very deep, historical political associations with the Kong fight, it would be different. There aren't, it's just a fantasy. But there is a lot of baggage surrounding the Civil War and its portrayal in fiction, and this has been a point of contention since the war ended and two this day.
It's almost as if fiction were this tool for taking ideas apart and examine them from multiple angles and choosing aspects to focus on Or ignore.
Artw
Yes, this is the point. Fiction is often used a tool to whitewash or alter perceptions of the past. Look, for example, at Birth of A Nation and its enormous popularity and impact at the time. There's significance in what a creator chooses to emphasize and ignore, especially when the creator is drawing from a charged subject.
You don't get to just declare things exist in a cultural/historical vacuum. A creator makes a conscious choice to put things in their work.
posted by Sangermaine at 2:45 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Remember when that "how to like problematic things article" was posted and people were all "why was this written? This is dumb!" about it?
Haha, yeah. Me too.
posted by kavasa at 2:57 PM on June 12, 2012
Haha, yeah. Me too.
posted by kavasa at 2:57 PM on June 12, 2012
> I think it will be one of those movies like Flash Gordon or Princess Bride that grows an audience over time.
Inconceivable!
posted by jfuller at 3:01 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Inconceivable!
posted by jfuller at 3:01 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Of course it makes sense in the world of the story, but why was that story written?
That story as written by the guy that wrote it or that story as fIlmed by Clint Eastwood? Because TBH I suspect the later has a lot to do with America getting its ass kicked in Vietnam and the soldiers returning getting the shitty end of the stick, and the defeated south narrative being a convenient place to hang that.
posted by Artw at 3:03 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
That story as written by the guy that wrote it or that story as fIlmed by Clint Eastwood? Because TBH I suspect the later has a lot to do with America getting its ass kicked in Vietnam and the soldiers returning getting the shitty end of the stick, and the defeated south narrative being a convenient place to hang that.
posted by Artw at 3:03 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
The Outlaw Josey Wales is a piece of revisionist history. But not in the sense that it tries to revise the Civil War to make the south the victims. It's revisionist in the sense that it is a revisionist western -- perhaps the best, most sophisticated sub-genre of the western.
Westerns were one of two genres that American films used to create the mythology of the west (the other, and weirder, was pirate movies, which is a whole different discussion). And western films pretty much started at the moment the American west ended, at the place it ended -- there was a brief period when the West existed as a stage show, before movies, but those were the exact people who became the original performers, and advisers, and characters. We were already mythologizing the west when we were in it, and film took that mythology and ran with it, crafting a narrative about the making of America.
Because it was such an early genre, the western grew with its actors -- many of the westerns of the 50s starred actors who were well into middle age, and addressed questions of what it means to grow old in a land where you expected to die young. And the revisionist western elaborated on this, retelling the old stories, but instead of discussing how America was made, they used the genre to discuss how it was broken.
We cannot discuss The Outlaw Josey Wales as an Asa Earl Carter piece -- although it would be very interesting to do so, as Carter was a real oddity -- a southern racist who wrote literature as a Native American that presented Indians, Jews and blacks with great sympathy and made rich white southerners the villains. He's an astonishingly perplexing man, and it doesn't do his actual legacy justice to merely identify him as a Wallace speechwriter. In fact, the overriding theme of his books seems conservative -- he focuses on the importance of family. But, as in Josy Wales, Carter's families are ad-hoc assemblages of oddballs and minorities, struggling together for a common good.
But this is not a Carter film, although it is based on his epic poem and credited to him. The script was written by Sonia Chernus, drawing from the book, and then revised by Michael Cimino and Philip Kaufman, under Kaufman's supervision -- he was originally to direct. Kaufman has, at that time, already written and directed The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, a revisionist western about Jesse James, which presents the James' gang's final raid as being one of the last battles of the Civil War, and The White Dawn, which dramatizes the conflicts between Eskimos and white settlers. Kaufman already had experience problematizing the story of the west, and he made movies that were quite sharp in deliberately undermining audience's expectations -- in White Dawn, the settlers are initially quite sympathetic, and the Eskimos and settlers get along quite well at first, which is a hard thing to watch when what is being told is a tale of genocide. But Kaufman didn't make these films to revise our opinions about the events -- the settlers still end up genocidal, and the James gang are still no-account bandits. He just refused to make movies where villainy could be taken for granted, or heroism. And that's what he was doing with Josey Wales.
But more than that, this is an Eastwood film, and a sort of early companion piece to Unforgiven. Eastwood took over direction, and he gives us a Josey Wales who is a spiteful, hateful man, broken by his past and made murderous by it, who ends up, against his will, as the protector of one of Carter's families of misfits. And the film is pressing toward violence, but, throughout it, Wales is pressing against it. In a world of endless war, there can never be safety for the people he is looking to protect, and this is most fully expressed when he rides out alone to meet with the chief of an Indian tribe to argue that there comes a time when old warriors must stop making war.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 3:03 PM on June 12, 2012 [13 favorites]
Westerns were one of two genres that American films used to create the mythology of the west (the other, and weirder, was pirate movies, which is a whole different discussion). And western films pretty much started at the moment the American west ended, at the place it ended -- there was a brief period when the West existed as a stage show, before movies, but those were the exact people who became the original performers, and advisers, and characters. We were already mythologizing the west when we were in it, and film took that mythology and ran with it, crafting a narrative about the making of America.
Because it was such an early genre, the western grew with its actors -- many of the westerns of the 50s starred actors who were well into middle age, and addressed questions of what it means to grow old in a land where you expected to die young. And the revisionist western elaborated on this, retelling the old stories, but instead of discussing how America was made, they used the genre to discuss how it was broken.
We cannot discuss The Outlaw Josey Wales as an Asa Earl Carter piece -- although it would be very interesting to do so, as Carter was a real oddity -- a southern racist who wrote literature as a Native American that presented Indians, Jews and blacks with great sympathy and made rich white southerners the villains. He's an astonishingly perplexing man, and it doesn't do his actual legacy justice to merely identify him as a Wallace speechwriter. In fact, the overriding theme of his books seems conservative -- he focuses on the importance of family. But, as in Josy Wales, Carter's families are ad-hoc assemblages of oddballs and minorities, struggling together for a common good.
But this is not a Carter film, although it is based on his epic poem and credited to him. The script was written by Sonia Chernus, drawing from the book, and then revised by Michael Cimino and Philip Kaufman, under Kaufman's supervision -- he was originally to direct. Kaufman has, at that time, already written and directed The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, a revisionist western about Jesse James, which presents the James' gang's final raid as being one of the last battles of the Civil War, and The White Dawn, which dramatizes the conflicts between Eskimos and white settlers. Kaufman already had experience problematizing the story of the west, and he made movies that were quite sharp in deliberately undermining audience's expectations -- in White Dawn, the settlers are initially quite sympathetic, and the Eskimos and settlers get along quite well at first, which is a hard thing to watch when what is being told is a tale of genocide. But Kaufman didn't make these films to revise our opinions about the events -- the settlers still end up genocidal, and the James gang are still no-account bandits. He just refused to make movies where villainy could be taken for granted, or heroism. And that's what he was doing with Josey Wales.
But more than that, this is an Eastwood film, and a sort of early companion piece to Unforgiven. Eastwood took over direction, and he gives us a Josey Wales who is a spiteful, hateful man, broken by his past and made murderous by it, who ends up, against his will, as the protector of one of Carter's families of misfits. And the film is pressing toward violence, but, throughout it, Wales is pressing against it. In a world of endless war, there can never be safety for the people he is looking to protect, and this is most fully expressed when he rides out alone to meet with the chief of an Indian tribe to argue that there comes a time when old warriors must stop making war.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 3:03 PM on June 12, 2012 [13 favorites]
If you guys want to say Eastwood took a work of civil war revisionism and made of it a work deconstructing the myth of the american west and the building of America as well as an anti-war peice by treating the civil war not as the actual war but as an allegory for war itself then I guess I can get behind that.
Guess that is settled.
posted by Ad hominem at 3:12 PM on June 12, 2012
Guess that is settled.
posted by Ad hominem at 3:12 PM on June 12, 2012
He may have done. He may have just seen it as a neat set-up for some badassery and damn any implications - he probably did both.
Come to think of it story's that mess with the expected order of good guys and bad guys were at the peak of their popularity at this time - think of all the Sven Hassle style stories with German anti heroes. I've always had a love for that stuff, I think because it subverts the normal notions of who we should be rooting for.
If Birth of A Nation were done in the style of Outlaw Josey Wales it would be escaped slaves murdering a bunch of KKK shits.
posted by Artw at 3:19 PM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
Come to think of it story's that mess with the expected order of good guys and bad guys were at the peak of their popularity at this time - think of all the Sven Hassle style stories with German anti heroes. I've always had a love for that stuff, I think because it subverts the normal notions of who we should be rooting for.
If Birth of A Nation were done in the style of Outlaw Josey Wales it would be escaped slaves murdering a bunch of KKK shits.
posted by Artw at 3:19 PM on June 12, 2012 [2 favorites]
OH MY GOD IMAGINE TARANTINO MAKING THAT MOVIE.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 3:24 PM on June 12, 2012
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 3:24 PM on June 12, 2012
Of course, Gone With the Wind isn't about Vietnam, isn't about a non-slave owner, and is still flat out fuckibg awesome, so make of that what you will.
posted by Artw at 3:27 PM on June 12, 2012
posted by Artw at 3:27 PM on June 12, 2012
But this isn't what's being discussed.
What an odd and dismissive thing to say. If I'm part of the the conversation, (which by my count, I'm enough a part of the conversation that I need to stop commenting after this and let other voices be heard) and discussing it, then it is being discussed. There are after all several possible conversations that could go on, not just the one you want to have.
I think that with the movie, there's a case being made that things were left out for the sake of the story. In that discussion, how you view inaccuracies (large and small) in fiction is completely relevant. The comment I was responding to with the bit about suspension of disbelief was about the movie.
posted by Gygesringtone at 3:28 PM on June 12, 2012
What an odd and dismissive thing to say. If I'm part of the the conversation, (which by my count, I'm enough a part of the conversation that I need to stop commenting after this and let other voices be heard) and discussing it, then it is being discussed. There are after all several possible conversations that could go on, not just the one you want to have.
I think that with the movie, there's a case being made that things were left out for the sake of the story. In that discussion, how you view inaccuracies (large and small) in fiction is completely relevant. The comment I was responding to with the bit about suspension of disbelief was about the movie.
posted by Gygesringtone at 3:28 PM on June 12, 2012
TBH I think of the things being discussed Whedon having a Space South without Space Slavery in order to ride vicariously on the cost ails of Joesy Wales is the most problematic - It flattens and simplifies things because Reynolds is no longer a burned up relic of a man who was swept up in a war that wasn't worth fighting but a hero who just happened to be on the losing side. There is no Space Hostory of the Space West to revise, but it does make it a little more in tune with the gut feel of some South will Ruse again jerk.
Then again, there's only no Space Slavery in the Space Civil War story because nobody has mentioned it yet. If the show was still running there would be room to introduce something like that which would flip the notions established previously on their head completly, which could make for a really interesting story.
posted by Artw at 3:38 PM on June 12, 2012
Then again, there's only no Space Slavery in the Space Civil War story because nobody has mentioned it yet. If the show was still running there would be room to introduce something like that which would flip the notions established previously on their head completly, which could make for a really interesting story.
posted by Artw at 3:38 PM on June 12, 2012
Actually there was slavery in Firefly, or at the least indentured servitude. And it was still in existence after the defeat of the rebels.
posted by happyroach at 3:43 PM on June 12, 2012
posted by happyroach at 3:43 PM on June 12, 2012
That doesnt really work then - it has to be some shitty thing that was definitively the Rebels business that the Alliance put a stop to.
posted by Artw at 3:49 PM on June 12, 2012
posted by Artw at 3:49 PM on June 12, 2012
Bloody Kansas was a disgrace all around. John Brown was a terrorist who encouraged murder to influence territorial elections. With historical hindsight, we can condemn both slavery and paramilitary violence.
But the heroism in Josie Wales isn't in the revenge plot; it's the redemption plot. Wales builds a ersatz family from survivors of American atrocities. The most vocal is the jayhawker matriarch who takes every opportunity to badmouth the Confederacy in the presence of Wales. But you also have Lone Waite who would have remembered the Trail of Tears, and Little Moonlight who would have known about, if not been a survivor of the Long Walk. There's something of a bait-and-switch going on in the film. Wales is pitched as something of a Dirty Harry or High Plains Drifter but ultimately ends up a story about ending war and building bridges.
A different vision to Eastwood's that also manages to sidestep around the legacy of slavery is Portis' True Grit. Cogburn is a murderous mercenary who gravitates from atrocity to atrocity (including Bloody Kansas) until he likely drinks himself into the grave. Mattie inherits post-Confederate grudges along with a host of regional and religious prejudices, and takes a bit too much pride in getting the better of the carpetbagging stable owner. I like Mattie as a character, but I don't think she's all that great of a person, and Cogburn certainly is not.
Bunny: OH MY GOD IMAGINE TARANTINO MAKING THAT MOVIE.
I think he just did if trailers for Django Unchained are any indication. My thought was, "Tarantino abolitionist spaghetti western."
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:50 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
But the heroism in Josie Wales isn't in the revenge plot; it's the redemption plot. Wales builds a ersatz family from survivors of American atrocities. The most vocal is the jayhawker matriarch who takes every opportunity to badmouth the Confederacy in the presence of Wales. But you also have Lone Waite who would have remembered the Trail of Tears, and Little Moonlight who would have known about, if not been a survivor of the Long Walk. There's something of a bait-and-switch going on in the film. Wales is pitched as something of a Dirty Harry or High Plains Drifter but ultimately ends up a story about ending war and building bridges.
A different vision to Eastwood's that also manages to sidestep around the legacy of slavery is Portis' True Grit. Cogburn is a murderous mercenary who gravitates from atrocity to atrocity (including Bloody Kansas) until he likely drinks himself into the grave. Mattie inherits post-Confederate grudges along with a host of regional and religious prejudices, and takes a bit too much pride in getting the better of the carpetbagging stable owner. I like Mattie as a character, but I don't think she's all that great of a person, and Cogburn certainly is not.
Bunny: OH MY GOD IMAGINE TARANTINO MAKING THAT MOVIE.
I think he just did if trailers for Django Unchained are any indication. My thought was, "Tarantino abolitionist spaghetti western."
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:50 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Except that it is fiction. Its almost like it was created to retroactively justify bushwacking in miniature.
I think that requires one to bring some baggage to the movie (we could call these people "carpetbaggers"!). I was totally unfamiliar with the source material until now, but I never saw the movie as an apology or glorifying the South. If I remember the flashbacks scenes, I don't think they do Josey Wales much credit. I have no allegiance to the South, but I've wound up arguing similar cases with a member here, back in our college days. My feeling is fighting for the South in the war does not automatically tar you with the brush of "Racist motherfucker who wanted to own slaves". I appreciate that's a stance some people take, but it's amazingly absolutist, especially for someone born a century later. There has to be some room for people like the protagonist of the Drive-By Truckers "The Southern Thing":
I think that requires one to bring some baggage to the movie (we could call these people "carpetbaggers"!). I was totally unfamiliar with the source material until now, but I never saw the movie as an apology or glorifying the South. If I remember the flashbacks scenes, I don't think they do Josey Wales much credit. I have no allegiance to the South, but I've wound up arguing similar cases with a member here, back in our college days. My feeling is fighting for the South in the war does not automatically tar you with the brush of "Racist motherfucker who wanted to own slaves". I appreciate that's a stance some people take, but it's amazingly absolutist, especially for someone born a century later. There has to be some room for people like the protagonist of the Drive-By Truckers "The Southern Thing":
Got shot at Shiloh, thought he'd die aloneposted by yerfatma at 4:52 PM on June 12, 2012
From a Yankee bullet, less than thirty miles from home
Ain't no plantations in my family tree
Did not believe in slavery, thought that all men should be free
"But, who are these soldiers marching through my land?"
Wales builds a ersatz family from survivors of American atrocities.
So much better than what I said. If anything, rather than glorifying the South, the movie gets a bit schmaltzy with its "Can't we all just get along" vibe.
posted by yerfatma at 4:54 PM on June 12, 2012
So much better than what I said. If anything, rather than glorifying the South, the movie gets a bit schmaltzy with its "Can't we all just get along" vibe.
posted by yerfatma at 4:54 PM on June 12, 2012
I think he just did if trailers for Django Unchained are any indication.
Yeah, that's sort of what I had in mind.
Blood on the cotton and all.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 5:42 PM on June 12, 2012
Yeah, that's sort of what I had in mind.
Blood on the cotton and all.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 5:42 PM on June 12, 2012
Reasons I liked John Carter (apologies to Qt3 readers) SPOILERS:
* It is well-written and well-plotted. Some of the dialogue and plot points are very good (details below). None are painfully bad. There was no moment where I said, "This is stupid, why don't they just..." For a big-budget action movie, this is much smarter than I'm used to. It's obvious that the filmmakers at least cared about what they were doing.
* The movie was comfortable showing instead of telling and didn't assume I was stupid. They didn't have to spell out in laborious detail why John Carter had super-powers, the point (and backstory) of Sola having no room for more brands, the fact that Dejah Thoris didn't believe his crazy stories and was just humoring him to escape.
* It's basically a superhero movie, and as such has some of the best super-hero action I've seen in a movie. The bits where Carter is jumping around on the fliers, the fight with the white apes, snatching a falling Deja Thoris out of the sky months before we got to see Hulk save Iron Man -- it was fun to watch, easy to follow, had some humor without being "wacky."
* The comedic timing at the beginning of Carter's escape attempts landing him back in custody. That was tight and funny and helped give him a little bit of character (I admit he didn't have a whole lot.)
* There's actually a lot of humor that works. The Thark leader, bored, upping the ante in the arena.
* The sunships were gorgeous.
* That blue energy weapon looked as good as the Green Lantern FX should have.
* The Tharks - tall and skinny as they should be in a lower-gravity environment. Little details that were both amusing and alien: the scrum to grab an adorable piglet, the way the chiefs clashed horns when they argued, three-handed gestures
* Dejah Thoris is a smart, active, female character. Not a passive McGuffin. She's a scientist who actually sounds like a scientist. Her motives are realistically mixed -- Is she fleeing marriage for herself or to save her city? She doesn't let LURVE for John Carter change her goals -- she only decides to help him after she's convinced he can't/won't prevent the marriage and/or save her city.
* Also the way Dejah Thoris dissed her mother-in-law's wedding dress.
* his pet dog is The Flash.
* James Purefoy. Did he steal this movie with the best hostage-taking sequence since Blazing Saddles? Almost.
* Eileen Page. Did she steal this movie as the alien pretending to be a sweet grandma while explaining his evil plan? Not quite.
* The ending. I didn't see it coming (I was all, "You idiot, why are you doing that?!"). And as I said in my previous comment, I loved what they did with the title at the end.
posted by straight at 6:27 PM on June 12, 2012 [4 favorites]
* It is well-written and well-plotted. Some of the dialogue and plot points are very good (details below). None are painfully bad. There was no moment where I said, "This is stupid, why don't they just..." For a big-budget action movie, this is much smarter than I'm used to. It's obvious that the filmmakers at least cared about what they were doing.
* The movie was comfortable showing instead of telling and didn't assume I was stupid. They didn't have to spell out in laborious detail why John Carter had super-powers, the point (and backstory) of Sola having no room for more brands, the fact that Dejah Thoris didn't believe his crazy stories and was just humoring him to escape.
* It's basically a superhero movie, and as such has some of the best super-hero action I've seen in a movie. The bits where Carter is jumping around on the fliers, the fight with the white apes, snatching a falling Deja Thoris out of the sky months before we got to see Hulk save Iron Man -- it was fun to watch, easy to follow, had some humor without being "wacky."
* The comedic timing at the beginning of Carter's escape attempts landing him back in custody. That was tight and funny and helped give him a little bit of character (I admit he didn't have a whole lot.)
* There's actually a lot of humor that works. The Thark leader, bored, upping the ante in the arena.
* The sunships were gorgeous.
* That blue energy weapon looked as good as the Green Lantern FX should have.
* The Tharks - tall and skinny as they should be in a lower-gravity environment. Little details that were both amusing and alien: the scrum to grab an adorable piglet, the way the chiefs clashed horns when they argued, three-handed gestures
* Dejah Thoris is a smart, active, female character. Not a passive McGuffin. She's a scientist who actually sounds like a scientist. Her motives are realistically mixed -- Is she fleeing marriage for herself or to save her city? She doesn't let LURVE for John Carter change her goals -- she only decides to help him after she's convinced he can't/won't prevent the marriage and/or save her city.
* Also the way Dejah Thoris dissed her mother-in-law's wedding dress.
* his pet dog is The Flash.
* James Purefoy. Did he steal this movie with the best hostage-taking sequence since Blazing Saddles? Almost.
* Eileen Page. Did she steal this movie as the alien pretending to be a sweet grandma while explaining his evil plan? Not quite.
* The ending. I didn't see it coming (I was all, "You idiot, why are you doing that?!"). And as I said in my previous comment, I loved what they did with the title at the end.
posted by straight at 6:27 PM on June 12, 2012 [4 favorites]
Er. My subsequent comment which was, whatever the actual marketing reason for calling the movie "John Carter" without the "of Mars" -- which I thought was stupid before I saw it -- it fits the movie really well. Watching it, I had the impression the director chose to leave of the "of Mars" for story reasons, and that it was a good (and brave! but maybe stupid!) decision.
posted by straight at 6:46 PM on June 12, 2012
posted by straight at 6:46 PM on June 12, 2012
* It is well-written and well-plotted. Some of the dialogue and plot points are very good (details below). None are painfully bad. There was no moment where I said, "This is stupid, why don't they just..." For a big-budget action movie, this is much smarter than I'm used to. It's obvious that the filmmakers at least cared about what they were doing.
Right! Yes! Exactly! In comparison, when my husband and I stepped out of Prometheus, we were almost tripping over one another pointing out plot holes.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:35 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Right! Yes! Exactly! In comparison, when my husband and I stepped out of Prometheus, we were almost tripping over one another pointing out plot holes.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:35 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
I gotta say, film analysis/criticism is one thing Metafilter does really, really well.
posted by mokin at 7:37 PM on June 12, 2012
posted by mokin at 7:37 PM on June 12, 2012
The reason for removing the "Of Mars" thing was stupid. It was because studios have become convinced that movies with the word "Mars" in it cannot make money, mostly because "Mars Needs Moms" did poorly, making back less than a third of its budget. Apparently, they aren't even going to mention Mars in the Total Recall remake.
Never mind that the films with Mars in their title that lost money were sort of crappy. Mission to Mars? The Red Planet? Ghosts of Mars? Mars Attacks? Many are pleasurable, but not so much they can be a tentpole. All suffered from a budget bloat that made it very hard to make their money back.
But Hollywood is a superstitious place, and so they have just decided people hate Mars.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:46 PM on June 12, 2012
Never mind that the films with Mars in their title that lost money were sort of crappy. Mission to Mars? The Red Planet? Ghosts of Mars? Mars Attacks? Many are pleasurable, but not so much they can be a tentpole. All suffered from a budget bloat that made it very hard to make their money back.
But Hollywood is a superstitious place, and so they have just decided people hate Mars.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:46 PM on June 12, 2012
5 seconds in it's all "LOOK IDIOTS, HERE'S MARS!" - I wonder if any felt duped into watching a Marsless movie and left at that point.
posted by Artw at 7:48 PM on June 12, 2012
posted by Artw at 7:48 PM on June 12, 2012
BARSOOM.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:48 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:48 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Whatevs, voiceover dude.
posted by Artw at 7:56 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 7:56 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
IN A TIME
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:59 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:59 PM on June 12, 2012 [1 favorite]
Firefly was an allegory of Libertarian rebels vs. a totalitarian state drunk on its own power. The Reavers were the victims/products of Progressive social engineering- (like the Tuskegee study victims). Serenity told the story of the hell that was paved to with "good intentions".
Can you dig it?
posted by TSOL at 10:34 PM on June 12, 2012
Can you dig it?
posted by TSOL at 10:34 PM on June 12, 2012
CBrachyrhynchos: "I also kind of liked John Carter as a film. About the only alternative to making Carter a noble wounded warrior would be to give the novel to someone like Rodriguez who could crank the violence up to 11 and make a big artsy genre joke out of it."
You know, Rodriguez was originally slotted to do John Carter. When he did Sin City, and wanted to list Frank Miller as co-director, the DGA said he couldn't, as Miller was not a DGA member. Rodriguez told the DGA to get stuffed and quit. So, as the story goes, that cost him the opportunity at John Carter.
(All I can say is "Yay, Rodriguez!" for sticking by some beliefs that actually cost him something, unlike the usual in Hollywood. We'll ignore the Frank Miller fanboy aspect, however.)
posted by Samizdata at 9:09 AM on June 13, 2012
You know, Rodriguez was originally slotted to do John Carter. When he did Sin City, and wanted to list Frank Miller as co-director, the DGA said he couldn't, as Miller was not a DGA member. Rodriguez told the DGA to get stuffed and quit. So, as the story goes, that cost him the opportunity at John Carter.
(All I can say is "Yay, Rodriguez!" for sticking by some beliefs that actually cost him something, unlike the usual in Hollywood. We'll ignore the Frank Miller fanboy aspect, however.)
posted by Samizdata at 9:09 AM on June 13, 2012
And I rather enjoyed John Carter. It was, at its heart, what ERB wanted - a hero story. Good, old fashioned good guy stuff. There was no grimdark, Carter didn't have a dark side he needed to battle, or anything like that. At no point did Sab Than look at Carter and say anything like "You know, we are two of a kind. We are both takers of lives."
Carter was all "Hey, gorgeous smart lady's good guy city needs help! What ho and have at thee!" I really don't think the American moviegoers are ready for such simple goodhearted adventurism.
posted by Samizdata at 9:20 AM on June 13, 2012 [1 favorite]
Carter was all "Hey, gorgeous smart lady's good guy city needs help! What ho and have at thee!" I really don't think the American moviegoers are ready for such simple goodhearted adventurism.
posted by Samizdata at 9:20 AM on June 13, 2012 [1 favorite]
gorgeous smart lady ... What ho
An unfortunate juxtaposition.
posted by stebulus at 9:22 AM on June 13, 2012
An unfortunate juxtaposition.
posted by stebulus at 9:22 AM on June 13, 2012
Carter was all "Hey, gorgeous smart lady's good guy city needs help! What ho and have at thee!" I really don't think the American moviegoers are ready for such simple goodhearted adventurism
To a degree, this is one reason it reminded me of films from sixty years ago or so. I loved it, in part because of this throw back.
posted by Atreides at 10:03 AM on June 13, 2012
To a degree, this is one reason it reminded me of films from sixty years ago or so. I loved it, in part because of this throw back.
posted by Atreides at 10:03 AM on June 13, 2012
Carter was all "Hey, gorgeous smart lady's good guy city needs help! What ho and have at thee!" I really don't think the American moviegoers are ready for such simple goodhearted adventurism.
I didn't find the literary Carter to be all that goodhearted by contemporary standards. The last third of Princes is driven by the fact that he can't murder the prince himself and claim Deja Thoris, so he's sends Kantos Kan on a suicide mission to do so, and then recruits the Thark horde to massacre the people of Zodanga when Kantos Kan fails.
I didn't find the literary Carter to be all that goodhearted by contemporary standards. The last third of Princes is driven by the fact that he can't murder the prince himself and claim Deja Thoris, so he's sends Kantos Kan on a suicide mission to do so, and then recruits the Thark horde to massacre the people of Zodanga when Kantos Kan fails.
Behind us we left the stricken city in the fierce and brutal clutches of some forty thousand green warriors of the lesser hordes. They were looting, murdering, and fighting amongst themselves. In a hundred places they had applied the torch, and columns of dense smoke were rising above the city as though to blot out from the eye of heaven the horrid sights beneath.posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:42 AM on June 13, 2012
I liked that he wasn't that gung-ho good-guy for most of the movie. I liked his, "I'm done fighting. War sucks. Leave me alone." (Which is just as much of a throwback to classic western tropes as gung-ho good-guy.)
When he saves Dejah Thoris the first time, he seems motivated more by curiosity ("What? That's a human being up there!") than heroism. (And how many action movies have we seen where the lead female would have made Dejah's "No, YOU get behind me" annoying and snarky with none of the charm Lynn Collins has?)
Am I the only one who thinks John Carter would make a great double feature with the 1980 Flash Gordon movie?
posted by straight at 12:13 PM on June 13, 2012 [1 favorite]
When he saves Dejah Thoris the first time, he seems motivated more by curiosity ("What? That's a human being up there!") than heroism. (And how many action movies have we seen where the lead female would have made Dejah's "No, YOU get behind me" annoying and snarky with none of the charm Lynn Collins has?)
Am I the only one who thinks John Carter would make a great double feature with the 1980 Flash Gordon movie?
posted by straight at 12:13 PM on June 13, 2012 [1 favorite]
Am I the only one who thinks John Carter would make a great double feature with the 1980 Flash Gordon movie?
No, you're not.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:31 PM on June 13, 2012
No, you're not.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:31 PM on June 13, 2012
Carter was all "Hey, gorgeous smart lady's good guy city needs help! What ho and have at thee!" I really don't think the American moviegoers are ready for such simple goodhearted adventurism.
Clearly not.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:49 PM on June 13, 2012
Clearly not.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:49 PM on June 13, 2012
Just watched John Carter for the second time since buying it last week...still a great time. Now I just need to re-watch Josey Wales.
posted by Atreides at 7:02 AM on June 15, 2012
posted by Atreides at 7:02 AM on June 15, 2012
FYI, apparently John Carter lead the way in DVD/Blu-Ray Sales.
posted by Atreides at 2:32 PM on June 18, 2012
posted by Atreides at 2:32 PM on June 18, 2012
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posted by Ad hominem at 11:37 AM on June 12, 2012 [8 favorites]