“There was more darkness is the darkness” is one of my favorite quotes from John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany which happens to be my favorite book and, as I am fond of saying to my students, I’ve read more than one. The reasons why I treasure this novel more deeply upon each successive re-reading (and I’ve been lucky enough in the past few years to read the book aloud in its entirety to my students) could fill volumes of posts. I won’t go into all that today but it’s quotes like this, quotes that I cannot shake out of my head, that keep me coming back for more.
Though Irving may not like me applying it to popcorn movie summer fare, this quote perfectly encapsulates my thoughts in this particular moment.
This Sunday morning as I ate my cereal and jumped through my favorite websites as is my weekend morning wont, I returned, as I always do, to my usual haunts (and please do click-through them – they are great sites): newsarama.com,ifanboy.com, broncotalk.net, aintitcool.com, trekmovie.com and comicbookresources.com. At Comic Book Resources, I was struck by an article. I’ve linked to it and you can find HERE. It’s from Comic Book Resources’ partner site Spinoff Online and is about what seems to be a dour and dark turn that blockbuster movies are poised to make this summer and beyond.
Movie making is a money-making proposition and I guess no one should be surprised that, when making a super hero or science fiction genre movie, writers, producers and directors are likely to look at what has made the most immediate, prior money. With the case of many of this summer’s offerings, it seems all bets are hedged against the example of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy. As Anna Pinkert in her Spinoff Online article notes, The Wolverine is set to feature a darker, more violent take on the character (is that really possible?). That the story is based on an already dark and violent Chris Claremont/Frank Miller 1980s mini-series backs up this supposition entirely. She mentions Star Trek Into Darkness, wherein the title (which, please note [and, grammar and punctuation nerds, get a load of THIS] has no colon in the it ala Star Trek: Nemesis) actually warns the direction the story is headed. Clever, JJ. Benedict Cumberbatch’s voice over on the trailer ominously warning: “You think you are safe. You are not.”can’t make us feel anything but a sense of dread. A newly released poster for Iron Man 3 features Tony Stark plummeting from great heights head first to what is surely not certain death but, man, it looks super serious. To further make her point, Pinkert highlights what I, frankly, thought was the best part of the Man of Steel trailer – Kevin Costner’s Pa Kent suggesting that, to protect his son from outside forces, Clark might have to let some tragedies occur even if he could stop them. November’s Thor: The Dark World looks, well, dark. In fact next summer’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier is actually about turning a beloved character into a mindless assassin. Dark, dark, dark, dark, dark.
For myself, I am not particularly concerned about this turn. If these stories are interesting, well told and entertaining, I am in. Honestly, I am in if they are uninteresting, poorly told and hardly entertaining. I own the Blu Ray of Green Lantern and DVDs of both The Fantastic Four and The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Hell, I downloaded Daredevil: The Director’s Cut to watch on a plane last month. Spoiler alert: the director’s cut doesn’t make it much better.
What’s interesting to me, though, is that this turn toward darker fare, if inspired by Nolan’s trilogy seems to miss the “rises” of the Dark Knight Rises. The trilogy concludes on a significantly upbeat note – more upbeat than that of the comic book version of the character who will, forever, battle forces of evil and never run off into the sunset (or to Italy) with Selina Kyle. More interestingly, this trend utterly and actively ignores Marvel’s The Avengers, the money-making behemoth of last summer. Wry and clever, fantastic and as jovial as a film about a massive alien invasion of New York City can get, Avengers ought to point out the idea that comic book and science fiction concepts (a demigod fighting alongside an ageless WWII veteran fighting alongside a billionaire, sarcastic, technologist, industrial futurist fighting alongside a gamma created [and computer generated] green rage monster) when played with absolute seriousness by a highly talented cast don’t need to be anything other than they are: re-tellings of mythic stories of good versus evil wherein it’s more than okay for good to win. It’s expected.
I don’t need The Wolverine to be The French Connection with Logan in China. Hugh Jackman is tremendous, but he’s no Gene Hackman and I have the experience of watching Hackman do his thing in The French Connection, anyway. I don’t need Star Trek Into Darkness to be a 911 allegory. I saw Zero Dark Thirty. I don’t need Iron Man 3 to show me Tony Stark is all too fallible. We all have Robert Downey jr’s real life and amazing recovery from addiction to remind us of the fragility of the human condition.
I’ll take my dose of moral ambiguity and the dark side of the soul in independent movie fare.
I’ll take my Star Trek and my superheroes in broad strokes and bold colors, please.
I’ll take them inspirationally.
I’ll take them … rising.
And There Came a Day... 